Decolonization and reframing narratives
| Australian Aborigines archive | Islam |
decolonization, n., the process of freeing an institution, sphere of activity, etc., from the cultural or social effects of colonization.
In a world where decolonization is trending, the West is being colonized by illegal immigrants (Lionel Shriver, 2026)
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| Captain James Cook, hated white male colonizer. |
Abstract: Decolonization, as the foundation of an academic research process, primarily seeks to include marginalized communities such as Indigenous peoples within narratives around historic, geographical place-based colonization by largely Christian nations between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, wherein they were generally excluded and suffered as victims. The example is given of Australian Aboriginal peoples during the first two centuries of European settlement following the British invasion of 1788. In the academy's pursuit of this declared noble cause, the author raises the issue of concerns over the so-called 'rewriting of history' wherein an emphasis is placed upon interpreting the past through a modern-day societal lense overwhelmingly critical of the actions of colonizers. The possibility of positive outcomes arising from colonization are not considered. This process, though well-meaning, is in many instances considered inappropriate as it can result in the censorship of historical facts to appease the concerns of contemporary elements of society who are, to put it bluntly, traumatised by the truth and victims of "toxic empathy". The writer would call for openness and the negation of "causing offence" as a mandatory research inhibitor. "Cancelling" of ideas and individuals is likewise deplored as both are antithetical to the promotion of critical thinking as an important element of any democratic society. Rather, the author calls for an enhanced inclusionary regime alongside continuation of traditional methods of placing historical events in their historic context, as opposed to a contemporary context, thereby revealing lessons for contemporary consideration. Those lessons exist such that the mistakes of the past are not repeated due to ignorance and the imposition of censorial regimes. "Cancelling" will hide such lessons from present and future generations, to be replaced by ignorance. Amidst all this, the recent upsurge in illegal immigration to the West by followers of Islam is revealed to be a wave of recolonization supported by those promulgating the decolonization agenda.
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Contents
- Introduction
- Past to present
- Reconsideration
- Moving On
- Recolonization
- References
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1. Introduction
In 2025 so-called decolonization is a popular movement in the Western world, especially within the academic area of Indigenous Studies, and none more so perhaps then in Australia, where, since the Bicentennial year of 1988 - marking two hundred years since the British invasion - there has been a explosion in books, articles, audio and video on topics such as the Frontier Wars, the Stolen Generations, and all those elements of cultural genocide practiced by the British empire locally. For example, under the reign of Governor Lachlan Macquarie between 1810-1821, massacres of innocent people were officially condoned (viz. Appin 1816), cultural practices were banned (e.g. a proclamation by Macquarie during 1816 banned the carrying of spears and other hunting implements vital to survival), children were taken from families for a school in Sydney, traditional custom and lore was supplanted by British law, death and disease ravaged the society unchecked, and the policy of Assimilation (i.e. cultural genocide) was practiced through to the middle of the twentieth century. The impact of British colonization on the Aboriginal civilisation of Australia was therefore horrific and horrendous, with an unstated move by the invaders towards extinction openly spoken about during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Clearly, it had to stop. As a result, and somewhat belatedly, two hundred years after European settlement, during 1988 Australians began in earnest to think about actively redressing some of the mistakes of the past. Decolonization theory was one of the tools eventually developed by the academy, often in alignment with political theories such as Marxism. But what precisely did that word mean, and what actions did it entail? This is not easy to answer, and some historical context is required to do so.
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2. Bringing the past into the present
The present writer was shocked when he encountered during 1987-88 Henry Reynold's historical account of atrocities against the Aboriginal people within 1981's The Other Side of the Frontier and Eric Wilmot's 1987 semi-fictional biography of Pemulway (Reynolds 1981, Wilmot 1987). Born in 1956, and raised in the northern suburbs of Wollongong - a town located on the east coast of Australia approximately 50 miles south of Sydney - he had no real knowledge of Indigenous society or history. Once, at primary school, the Aboriginal man Laddie Timbery had visited from La Perouse and showed the students boomerang throwing. Apart from that, and a stamp featuring the head of an Aboriginal man from central Australia, there was nothing really to educate the writer in regards to the complexity and richness of Australia's Indigenous cultural heritage.
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| Gwoya Tjungurrayi (c. 1895 – 1965), postage stamp, Australia, 1950. |
All the history books he encountered spoke of brave explorers "discovering" Australia, from Captain Cook in 1770 through to Burke and Wills and beyond. The fact that the Aboriginal people had been living there for hundreds of thousands of years was totally ignored. As the writer grew up he therefore became interested in the early colonial period history of where he lived. As a result, he was bewildered when, in 1987, a fellow local historian and friend said to him, "You are so racist!" The writer had to agree, though his internal excuse was that this "racism" came primarily from ignorance. This caused the writer to read Reynolds and Wilmot and spend that year and the following trying to rid himself of a deep lack of knowledge of Aboriginal society, culture and the impact of the British invasion. The result was the publication during 1989 by the University of Wollongong Aboriginal Education Unit of a 640 page compilation of archival and published records entitled Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850 followed four years later by a second, 480 page volume (Organ 1989 & 1993). The writer had become an intellectual decolonizer, though he was unaware of this at the time, and only during 2025 did he seek to understand the scope and implications of that term.
So is there a problem with that? Well, no and yes. You see, in 2025 academia promotes not only the integration of Indigenous peoples input into its ongoing analysis of history and culture - a good thing - but also rewrites and censors history, and excludes non-Indigenous individuals from its free and open study and analysis - a bad thing in the writer's opinion. A reverse racism has appeared over the previous decade, and that is also not a good thing. The writer is therefore conflicted. As an avid and active decolonizer since 1987, the question now arises in his mind: Quo vadis?, i.e., where to from here? So, what brought this questioning about?
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3. Reconsideration
In 2025 the subject of decolonizing research practices came up. What, precisely, did the word mean? The following 2022 definition was both helpful and linguistically ambiguous for the academically uninitiated, including the present writer who has spent almost three generations working in academic environments:
[Original version] Decolonizing research practices question Western cultural normativity and work to expand the perspectives of academic research through inclusion of First Nations ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological perspectives in research design, enactment, and outputs. Indigenist Research frameworks necessitate that research is carried out with, not on, First Nations Australians. The use of methodological tools, such as yarning and storying, that aim to disrupt the researcher/research power dynamic and emphasize relationality are critical to decolonizing research efforts. These Indigenist Research approaches can also be brought into conversation with new materialist and post-human theoretical approaches to develop decolonizing research practices that are attentive to multi-species and multisensorial entangled encounters. (Somerville & Turner 2024)
This text highlighted some of the concerns the writer held with the direction research and promotion of Indigenous cultural heritage and history had taken since 1989-93, for amongst the improvements (e.g., digitisation of original documents), there was also new and worrisome restrictions. To the uninitiated and non-academic public it was word salad, a largely unintelligible and impenetrable mass of words and statements understood at a glance by only a few who, for example, are aware of the meaning of words such as ontological, epistemological, axiological and especially yarning in the Indigenous context. Sure, it was included in a peer-reviewed article, and was not meant for the general public as such. But if students are being taught such material, then its defining elements should be known and readily accessible to that general public who, at the end of the day, will be the recipients of its outputs.
Whilst the writer accepts the importance, and indeed nobility of the above description of the scope of decolonizing research practices, it also has some problematic elements. These will be addressed below, and with the help of a dictionary the new regime presented therein will be unravelled in an Idiots Guide format, alongside a critical assessment made in order to work out the best way forward in supporting the research endeavour and the vision of people such as Henry Reynolds, and the present writer, to reveal the truth of the past and the richness of an Indigenous culture that was never appreciated by the invaders.
As an historian long focussed on the early colonial period of Australian history (1770 to c.1850), the writer was interested in its application to what he had done in that area over the years since 1984, and what he would do, going forward. To be frank, the precise meaning and impact of the phrase decolonization, especially in the academic context, was not understood prior to the 2025 revelation. It quickly appeared, however, that despite his 1987 epiphany, the present writer was obviously still somewhat of a perpetrator, enmeshed to a degree in Western cultural normativity. Not up on the precise meaning of the term, he was content with his 1970s era learnings and later 1980s directions from University of Wollongong academic historians, none of whom where Indigenous, though he did collaborate with Indigenous people in the production of his two archival texts in 1989 and 1993.
The writer thought he was doing the right thing, but that 1980s right thing was now no longer right in 2025. In essence, the writer agreed with the intention and vision of the decolonization agenda, but wondered about the practical implementation of some of its elements. To assist with the process, the above defining paragraph was rewritten in simpler language and with some alterations, as follows:
[Alternate version] Decolonizing research practices question and address past practices which excluded Indigenous people from participation in, and co-ownership of, the outputs. This new regime aims for inclusion of First Nations perspectives in research design, enactment, and outputs, in order to expand the perspectives arising out of ongoing academic research. This requires that such research includes First Nations Australians as equal partners. It should not simply be carried out on them, or exclude them. The use of Indigenous directed yarning and story telling, which aims to disrupt the traditional, exclusionary research power dynamic controlled by non-Indigenous researchers, is critical to decolonizing research efforts. It will introduce a greater degree of truth and accuracy to the process. Such practices will be more inclusive and revelatory of practical realities across the board. (Organ 2025)
The majority of the original paragraph is acceptible theoretically and practically. However, one of the problematic statements in it was:
Indigenist Research frameworks necessitate that research is carried out with, not on, First Nations Australians.
This was rewritten by the present writer as:
This requires that such research include First Nations Australians as equal partners. It should not simply be carried out on them, or exclude them.
The original version of the statement was problematic because it is racist and censorial in the writer's view. To say that the only people who can study a specific culture are members of that culture is racist. Implementation of such a policy could in turn lead to bias and censorship of such research. Of course, the non-inclusion of members of that race has, in the past, lead to bias and censorship. So, what is the solution? The authors suggest one in an earlier piece outlining their encounter with Cullungutti Mountain, as sacred piece of Country located by the Shoalhaven River, Nowra, on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Their abstract outlining the process of "composting" reflects the academic terminology revealed in the previous Decolonizing research practices quote above. It basically comprises face-to-face encounters with Country, just as the previously discussed abstract relied upon with face-to-face encounters with Indigenous peoples:
[Composting] To contribute to ongoing efforts to move beyond colonial and anthropocentric modes of knowing, being and doing, this article reflects on experimental endeavours to meet a Mountain — Cullunghutti in New South Wales. We do this by reflecting on the theoretical approaches that informed our modes of engaging with, and attempts to represent, multispecies and multisensorial encounters with the Mountain. Guided by an anticolonial and “compost-ist” ethic, we outline and interrogate our research efforts to develop a framework to enable us to attune our bodies with this multifaceted, more-than-human place and its past, present and speculative future. What we find is that the liveliness of the Mountain resists efforts to “know it”, instead inviting us to meet with it in multiple, open and agile ways that unsettle and fragment the hyper-separation of humans from more-than-humans. We identify the concept of composting as a generative mode of representation and research method capable of supporting practices of mutual inclusion that can move across temporal, species and ontological boundaries. In so doing, we highlight the necessity of transgressing discrete disciplinary boundaries to encourage uptake of collaborative and cooperative research that challenges binaries, resists reifying particular forms of knowing, and works towards recuperative futures. (Bethany and Sommerville 2020)
As an aged historian, the present writer finds objection in the term "anti-colonial" as it is both implied and actually negating, censorial and anti-historical. "Post-colonial" is much preferred and more appropriate to the contemporary process of assessing and dealing with colonial past.
Once again, the terminology and topics referred to in this abstract move beyond the simple task of historical research and geographical encountering, into the realms of a attempting to understand a "more-than-human place", efforts "to attune our bodies" to that place, and of practices that "move across temporal, species and ontological boundaries." The present writer is very much aware of the deep spiritual significance of Cullungutti, and understands the authors aims, having published during 2024 a blog entitled Cullungutti - Sacred Mountain. It would seem to the present writer that the only way to really understand that place is to have a deep connection with Country spanning generations, and to have Indigenous roots. That is a reality which is cultural and goes beyond all other efforts at knowing. Any individual who possesses that is indeed fortunate.
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4. Moving on
In the opinion of the present writer, it is clear that ideally research into racially specific aspects of culture and history should be open and broad, but also include input from members of the race being studied. This input should be a normal part of the process, but not mandatory, especially if the research merely involves the use of secondary sources. If it excludes such input from Indigenous people, and states as much, then the resultant outputs must be judged accordingly. Such analysis applies to any cultural study and historical assessment, and is not simply limited to that of the Australian Aboriginal people.
One of the major failings of colonization has been the openness of its dealings with Indigenous cultures and civilizations. Governor Macquarie not only hid his actions against the local people, but also lied about them to authorities back in England. As a result, it took some two centuries for the truth to be revealed to the general public, with Henry Reynolds one of the pioneers in achieving that. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the colonial and post-colonial era through censorial and restrictive race-based research practices. In going forward, and not backwards, decolonization practices must respect the writings of the past for what they are - good, bad, or indifferent - and use them as primary source material, not something to be hidden away for fear of in some way influencing or affecting the present, or excluded for simply upsetting some person. Critical thinking is based on openness, accountability and the seeking of truth. Censorship is antithetical to such research. So-called Indigenist Research frameworks can threaten that.
The present writer is supportive of openness and inclusion, but not at the cost of replacement by censorship and exclusion. A middle way is easy to achieve, whereby freedom of thought, expression, speech and writing will lead to truth telling which is accessible to all. The present writer has actively practiced that since 1989, and will continue to do so into the future. Decolonization is a noble venture, however it cannot be an excuse to rewrite or censor the past and re-present it only in the image of the present day views and beliefs of a section of society. The lesson of history is not simply to not repeat the mistakes of the past, but also to reveal those mistakes to their fullest extent and to the widest possible audience.
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5. Postscript - Recolonization by stealth
Amidst all the talk of decolonization in higher education institutions and amongst Indigenous populations, in the background a movement has arising which is the very antithesis of what Western intellectuals have supported and sought to achieve though support of that agenda. Over the first two decades of the new millennium, an upsurge in legal and illegal immigration to the West - Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, great Britain - by followers of Islam is revealed to be a wave of colonization, by stealth. In turn, it is vigorously supported by those promulgating the decolonization agenda, mostly on the Left, but also by conservative governments seeking cheap labour forces. This surprising turn of events was pointed out by interviews with American author Lionel Shriver during March 2026 in support of her novel A Better Life, which revealed the impact on those being colonized from the new, mostly Islamic colonizers. Needless to say, the novel was greeted with howls of protest from the Left, and welcomed by conservative commentators.
Why recolonization? Because the stated goal of Islamic ideology is a global caliphate, i.e., the global implementation of Islamic nation states operating under Shariah law based on the teaching of Muhammed as seen in the Qur'an and biographical Hadith texts. This covert invasion utilises the Islamic concept of taqiyya to mask its true aim, as individual demand refugee status and protection when the truth lies in the spreading of Islam. In 2026 the decolonization victims are not Indigenous populations as such, though they do suffer, but the Infidels, which is how Islamic ideology classifies all those who are not Muslim or have submitted to Islam. Lionel Shriver's novel presents the fate of these new victims of colonization in the starkest manner, and in the ultimate example of hypocrisy, is viciously slammed by the Left. The contemporary relevance of this was recently highlighted in Australia with the controversy arising over former Australian of the Year Grace Tame's "From Gadigal to Gaza, globalize the Intifada" chant to a crowd on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall.
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5. References
Organ, Michael, A Documentary History of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850; including a Chronological Bibliography 1770-1990, Aboriginal Education Unit, Wollongong University, 1989, 646p.
-----, A Documentary History of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1900; including a Chronological Bibliography 1770-1990, Report for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 1 December 1993, 364p.
-----, Cullungutti - Sacred Mountain, blogger.com, 16 April 2024.
Reynolds, Henry, The Other Side of the Frontier, James Cook University, 1981, 234p.
Shriver, Lionel, A Better Life, HarperCollins / The Borough Press, 17 February 2026, 296p.
-----, Spiteful Liberal Women, Islam, 5th Columns & Parasites, my new novel on immigration - Lionel Shriver, The New Culture Forum, 15 March 2026, YouTube, duration: 67.25 minutes.
Somerville, Wendy and Bethany Turner, Engaging with Indigenous Research Methodologies: The Centrality of Country, Positionality and Community Need, Journal of Australian Studies, 44(2), 2020, 182-184.
-----, Exploring decolonization methods in place-based research: Weaving together archival research, Yarning and Walking with audiovisual resources, Sage Research Methods: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research Methods, 21 March 2024, 1-24.
Turner, Bethany and Wendy Somerville, Composting with Cullunghutti: Experimenting with How to Meet a Mountain, Journal of Australian Studies, 44(2), 2020, 224-242.
Wikipedia, Lionel Shriver, Wikipedia, accessed 17 March 2026.
-----, Gwoya Tjungurrayi, Wikipedia, accessed 17 November 2025.
Wilmot, Eric, Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior, Bantam, Sydney, 1987, 310p.
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| Australian Aborigines archive | Islam |
Last updated: 17 March 2026
Michael Organ, Australia
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