What Theology and Science (and Ethics and Technology) Can Learn from Indigenous Scholars

DECOLONIZING METHODOLOGIES: RESEARCH AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLESBy Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 3rd Edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2022 Pp. 344. Paper, $25.60. DECOLONIZING RESEARCH: INDIGENOUS STORYWORK AS METHODOLOGYEdited by Jo–Ann Archibald Q'um Q'um Xiiem, Jenny Bol Jun Lee–Morgan, Jason De Santolo. London: Bloomsbury, 2022 Pp. 288. Paper, $26.95. The technology industry is having a “moment.” At a recent workshop for ethics officers from various major companies, such words as “data extraction” and “exploitation” were used to describe business practices that were damaging and had to stop, while ideas such as respecting communities, building trustworthy relationships, and ongoing dialogue were emphasized so that technology companies could learn from those people affected by their technologies and stop harming them.1 The parallels to the ethics described in Decolonizing Methodologies and Decolonizing Research were remarkable. If the books were distilled to a few practical phrases relevant for technology companies, these would be among them. But what is this connection, and why has it appeared now? From my perspective, “colonization” can perhaps be redescribed as raising an exploitative mindset to the level of an ideology and culture, and for this reason, it is not a mere historical period; it is a complete way of construing—and fundamentally misconstruing—the world. Much of the business world is built upon this ideology, so we should not be surprised to find it running rampant in the technology industry. Corporate psychopathology is an entire field of study. From a Catholic perspective, colonization is related to the technocratic paradigm, a concept criticized by Pope Francis in Laudato Si,2 as well as many other Church documents.3 The fundamental error of the technocratic paradigm is construing the entire world as a mere matter to reshape for human ends without respect to what or who may be reshaped. That the Catholic Church was very much involved in colonization and was in many ways a beneficiary of it adds some complexity but does not change the reality. Churches are full of sin. Exploitation is a widespread human phenomenon, and therefore in this sense, colonization would be almost as ubiquitous as sin; indeed, it is a structure of sin: sin and evil raised to the systemic level. To invoke Pope Saint John Paul II, colonization would express the “culture of death.”4 To use Pope Francis's language, colonization is an expression of “throwaway culture” where people are only valued for what they can do and not who they are: children of God, our brothers and sisters.5 As recounted by Thucydides, at the siege of Melos, the Athenians said: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”6 It was 416 BCE. The Athenians were colonizing Melos, and the Melians were urged to surrender. The colonial mindset has perhaps never since been so succinctly described. It is shameless moral cynicism, and approximately two millennia later in the era of colonialism, raised to the level of aspiration—the oppression of others as a divinely sanctioned good pursued by colonizing powers. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States of America detonated 67 nuclear bombs—210 megatons of weaponry—in the Marshall Islands, and the radioactive fallout from these tests still pollutes the nation. Nuclear colonialism saw the powerful exploit the weak “for the good of mankind”—leaving ten percent of the Marshall Islands, to this day, not fit for anything more than short-term habitation.7 One may exist there but not live. I taught high school in the Marshall Islands from 2001 to 2003, and I saw the effects of radiation on my students and their families. Cold War geopolitics, reflecting the binary of Christian divine right on one side and Communist atheist evil on the other, was used to justify destroying entire islands, killing people, and poisoning their descendants. The people of the Marshall Islands looked upon Americans as their liberators from the oppressive Empire of Japan, only to have these liberators push them aside to vaporize their islands and poison the remainder and its people for unnumbered generations. Colonialism is not dead, even as a historical legacy. The sins of the past live on, and die on, not the gift that keeps on giving, but the death grip of exploitation that refuses to release. It appears not only at the level of global geopolitics but in individual relationships whenever we see another person as a mere means to an end, violating the Kantian categorical imperative8 and the Divine command to “Love your neighbor.”9 Colonialism fundamentally bends reality toward evil and away from God, warping our world and our souls toward hell. Some peoples of the world are recovering from some effects of colonization and, in doing so, are telling their stories. This is important to the indigenous people themselves; however, I will assert that this is also of great significance to the rest of the world because, to parallel Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris, we need a decolonization that is thoroughgoing and complete, and penetrates into the very depths of our souls.10 Without this, it is impossible to stop the machinery of sin within which we are trapped and will die. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a New Zealander of Maori descent, brings the concept of decolonization to academic research and method. Decolonizing Methodologies, now in its third edition, acts rightfully as a landmark for reconceptualizing the relationship between Western science and indigenous peoples. The book is very much a critique and a strong one at that. Chapters One-Six focus on this critique, and for those already familiar with the injustices of colonization, there is still much of particularity to learn, but it is not the creative core of the book. Chapters Seven-Thirteen are that creative core. Chapter Seven, “Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda,” dives into some details about how to actually “research” indigenous knowledge. Smith proposes two pathways: community action projects and indigenous research centers within institutions. The first is an approach internal to indigenous communities, working on building them up and furthering decolonization. The second is an approach that goes out into the larger world and makes decolonizing change from there. Chapters Eight and Nine then go into many proposals for projects that can push forward the above paths in more concrete ways, Chapters Ten and Eleven get into two specific examples in detail, while Chapters Twelve and Thirteen connect research and activism. Lastly, Smith calls for a return to the story, meaning that will enliven matter and minds. Inspired by Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies, Jo-Ann Archibald Q'um Q'um Xiiem, Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan, and Jason De Santolo assembled the edited volume Decolonizing Research. As scholars from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, respectively, they take an inside look at indigenous stories and the power of their meaning for the communities in which they originate. Decolonizing Research is fundamentally a book about ethics and how people should treat each other. Archibald's seven rules for indigenous research give a glimpse: respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy.11 While the editors name the first four as specifically ethical, in a broader sense, they all are. These are rules about relationship, meaning, and story. Every story presupposes relationship: a teller, a hearer, and meaning conveyed. All three must be respected and not exploited. The entire situation must be decolonized. This is a book of stories about stories. As an edited volume, some chapters will resonate with individual readers more than others. Personally, I found the Introduction and Chapters One and Thirteen to be remarkably insightful. These stories are aimed at their own audience but are also a gift to outsiders. They benefit those in science and theology—and technology and ethics—because they highlight the struggle of creating meaning in an ontologically materialistic system that strikes meaning from reality at every opportunity (i.e., the worst of Western culture: scientism, materialist economics, etc.). When the exploitative mindset seeks material to prey upon, it must also remove meaning from that thing preyed upon, lest that meaning somehow defend its matter and make it into something that should not be consumed. This meaning–killing mindset does not merely stop at the sacred objects of foreigners. The covetousness also turns back on one's own society, and meaning begins to drain from all reality as the acid of materialism dissolves old symbols into mere markings. This has happened to our own meaning–systems in the West. For many, religion has come undone, just as the religions of indigenous peoples were undone by colonization. And here arises a key point. Colonization was not an effort of all of the “colonizer” society but rather by a few powerful people with much of the rest of society along for the ride, some more and some less willingly. Christianity certainly was on the ride from the beginning and often eagerly, but the elites controlling colonization eventually found Christianity a target as well. Thus Western religion has been vampirized by those seeking its matter, living and dead, for economic and other purposes—anything but the meaning it carried as its very raison d'être. A living thing can only be bled so long before it dies, and as death approaches, the living wonder if death might not be preferable to the anguish of existence. Suffering suffuses being, and with no reason for it—no point, no meaning, no significance—because meaning is precisely what was stolen and caused this predicament. As meaning collapsed, so did motivation. As motivation collapsed, so then did mental and physical health. Life expectancy shortens and deaths of despair increase—suicide, addiction, alcoholism—just as indigenous communities have long experienced. The “crisis of meaning” in the West did not begin in the last few decades—it began during colonization, with the oppression of indigenous peoples, and expanded outwards from there. That it is now washing over those who created it should be of no surprise because once colonization destroys meaning in one place, its natural logic is to expand through every meaning system, leaving only exploitation in its wake: exploitation of workers, exploitation of matter, exploitation of pleasures. Human beings become “consumers,” and nature merely a substance to consume and discard. Indigenous people experienced this at the hand of colonizers first. They have had longer to endure this oppression—and also longer to adapt and learn how to confront it. They have lessons to share. The ailments of contemporary society are brought on by the effects of colonization, not only of others, but of ourselves, of our own minds, by an evil ideology of exploitation and meaninglessness. This ideological flood can be resisted, even defeated, but only if we recognize the source of the flood and stem the tide. And the tide can only be stemmed by meaning itself—in other words: stories. Important stories. And conveying the meaning of stories is storywork. Our culture has a plethora of stories: fantasy, science fiction, westerns, movies, books, and television, to no end. We see stories as mere entertainment, pleasure, little more than nothing, just words, just markings. Not meaningful, or worse, actively destructive of meaning. But the pleasure of stories is meant as a side effect, not their main goal. Their main goal is meaning, and specifically, meaning for the sake of life. Stories are not mere frivolous entertainment; stories are the meaning of life itself. Jesus, the Logos, is the Word of God. While the Gospels tell his story, Jesus is literally story itself, himself, the injection of meaning into matter in the most concrete and particular way imaginable, as a person at one place and one point in time. As Stanley Hauerwas has noted, Christians are a story–formed people.12 And, indeed, all people are: we are the stories we tell ourselves. And that means that telling the story of Jesus is storywork. If we are called to imitatio Dei, imitatio Christi, to be like Jesus, then we must know who and what Jesus is. Jesus is storywork. And perhaps it takes another culture that is recovering from colonization to help us to see that ourselves. This must be a part of the science and theology discourse, and in a more general sense it must be a part of the ethics and technology discourse as well. Christianity is colonized. The science and theology discourse is colonized. Technology ethics is colonized. Now they need to be decolonized. But how? Oppressed people have set an example for us. We need to take, with Jesus and our fellow humans, the victim's perspective. We need to throw off the vampirism of materialism that has drained the meaning from our culture. This vampirism that steals hope and leaves us in despair is evil. It is fundamentally anti-human. And we need to fight against it. Decolonization is, as I see it, fundamentally an effort to oppose the mentality that proposes sin as the most rational of all choices: one that sees all matter as mere means to selfish ends. Colonization insidiously hides behind concepts like science and technology and efficiency and economics, but it corrupts them. How does decolonizing methodologies help us when the world is in crisis? At the very least it tells us that the world of the powerful still doesn't care about us and that we have to practice our own knowledge and values, advocate for the care we are entitled to, be creative in our responses and look after ourselves as communities. It also tells us, as I hope the book conveys, that critique is not enough. (285) The point of pointing out exploitation is not to poke the oppressor in the eye, but rather to poke the oppressor in the heart, to grasp their innermost soul, in such a way that the pain and discomfort becomes therapeutic and not mere torture. This requires avoiding a resentful, vindictive approach in favor of a forgiving and grateful approach. Yes, anger is appropriate. Yes, resentfulness and desire for revenge are understandable. But negative emotions, when ossified and hardened and raised to the level of culture, are ultimately harmful not only to those they are directed toward, but also those who are experiencing them. The Marshall Islanders were, to me, shocking in their capacity to forgive. “Oh, we know you didn't do that!” they said to us, we Americans, guests in their nation, descendants of a nation all–too–human in its morals, who colonized, vaporized, and poisoned their land and people. We all so easily essentialize by group … yet they had forgiven us. We were not even them to them. They had moved on. Not moved on so far as calling justice “even”—the US government still has medical bills to pay and islands to decontaminate—but moved on from anger in their hearts toward the joy that life can when is not only but it well in Decolonizing Research when is about not just of one people and one culture and one if of all peoples and all and all is much to be But if we to the not just it, then indigenous and must for of is a to with perhaps for the of evil but after other are there is much to not be And Smith this well as Western and indigenous into one Western culture, the of colonization, is the in which scholars can exist as to of this is not in or two other with peoples. This is not to the of Western colonization, but only to point out that not all colonization is the All sin is but sins can in and these from knowledge to meaning, toward meaning directed to Decolonizing Methodologies and Decolonizing Research are in the need this because we are in an situation on this right Not merely the but use and relationships and are all and in need of This requires built upon meaning and an of what are meant to do in life. This is not something indigenous scholars can do on their group of people do on their The world is and to The of the one to them can only we need the of all peoples to their most with the world. The Western of meaning could have brought the West to but are to more than we each our in a of and we might not only ourselves but each other. We need of of might a natural after but what we need is the us to you the meaning of what you from and then you will see its This is something these books have and we should with As a last point, however, I might that in some of the to have an of the as if “colonization” did not exist before colonization. did not come to indigenous peoples with the of it just it to a level. can be no return to a there is only a forward in which all of our are This requires a of I do not we should that we have to that all stories are in this they may be to various communities. While in in Decolonizing Research the need for to and that there is right we actually do need to the we are in the world and we need them To we might of the and at the of the as the each other while the of the We have is in the that the story our own does take time. This must be in to us into the beings we need to but the of is and we can never be enough. We need to go into action and hope that the stories we and our are enough. And this is an to in our of we need each other even we as over long we might as communities in time. The reason that I have Decolonizing Methodologies and Decolonizing Research with stories from my own is that I a that ideas found in that on the must be and are very of I by the story and last is a and to the that are to be and are to be the world is in because are and people are While this is an upon our of it is not yet because the exploitative mindset still sees the world as a target of It a of the technocratic paradigm because, ultimately we are to created and it just as created and calls it for its own not for the sake of exploitation by this is the to the and the by of people, or indigenous or over We might well we somehow come to sin and live in a we To my This is a parallel of the we make a system out of to the technology ethics workshop that began this where this very much of the to ethics in of or The is, is impossible … at least in this world. there will be no or but we should not get of even if we and have their to and this is the most important point, while is and are very We can do And we can do And our right now will us on paths that or toward these and and before us, we should life so that you and your children may and not its not not not as on that the Athenians Melos, death and have been by the strong upon the The exploitative the technocratic paradigm, and colonization, has its But these on the who are why their has their It is because they have the they did not life and A is and those who have the worst are doing their part not only to make their own but to the world. For this, we can be These two books into what We can only if we first learn it. And their a It is not but it is and it. To Archibald in Decolonizing the is about to

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