Schooling as biocolonialism

Children, seeds and future

Around Los Angeles today the clamor for organic foods and non-genetically modified (GMO) foods resounds with people of all social classes and cultures. What about genetically modified children? Here, I’m not referring to children conceived through In Vitro Fertilization, but to the colonial practices of modern schooling which actually seek to genetically modify Indigenous Peoples through a panoply of policies, standards, techniques and institutions designed to alter our essence and being as the first Peoples of this continent. Today, public schooling largely remains an act of biocolonialism which starkly seeks to “kill the Indian to save the man”. The purpose of schooling as biocolonialism is to continue to subject Indigenous Peoples into becoming both the consumers and producers of the global capitalist political economy. Biocolonialization in education occurs through the direct manipulation of the “human genome” in Indigenous children by first isolating the material of interest in dominant culture, then inserting it into the target host organism, the Indigenous child. In education, the “material of interest” is referred to as “standards”. Beyond biocolonialism sanctioned only by a government entity, in modern public education this also involves biopiracy conducted by profit-driven private interests, companies and ideologues. The “genome” in this case, refers to the spirit of childhood among Indigenous children.

At least three paths lay before Indigenous Peoples today in the words of celebrated Seneca scholars John Mohawk and his wife, Yvonne Dion-Buffalo, we can become “good subjects”, “bad subjects” or “non-subjects”. This lays out a clear analogy to the choices confronting Indigenous Peoples with regards to biocolonization, biopiracy and intellectual property rights of Indigenous Knowledge as they decide upon the future of their own children. Indigenous parents must see the relationship between the institutionalization of children through schooling, and the dehumanization of their children through schooling which occurs on a daily basis all in the name of progress, equity and civilization. However, education need not always be colonizing. Schools like Semillas del Pueblo – Xinaxcalmecac and Anahuacalmecac challenge the underlying principles of alienating schooling. Conceptually stronger yet, is the recognition that Indigenous Knowledge ought to be defended from the vantage point of customary law (usos y costumbres, Yehc ohtzintle), recognized now as part of the inalienable rights of sovereign peoples around the world. Such a reliance upon Indigenous Peoples’ customary law establishes a protocol which mirrors the practice of Americans and other European governments which look to English, royal and common law, not to mention ancient Roman and Greek law as precedent. An education rooted in the inalienable sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples which cultivates each nation’s customary law (usos y costumbres) reinforces a cogent approach to self-determination, autochthony and autonomy (Greek legal constructs themselves) in education. Children educated in the global geo-political context of the world we face today present a potential of multidimensional transformation that is unprecedented for Indigenous Peoples in many ways.

Dr. Debra Harry, of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism writes, “In the long run, it will not be changes to Western law that will truly protect Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. The only way that all aspects of our cultural heritage will survive is to ensure its continued practice by Indigenous peoples within the distinct and unique life-ways of our peoples. It must retain its communal nature and not be exploited for commercial gain. We must learn from the wisdom of our Elders that our Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage must be lived and practiced, and transmitted from generation to generation within our communities, as we have been doing for millennia.” Education - formal and informal, familial and institutional will continue to have a role to play in our children’s lives. The question is whether or not our children are cultivated in a way that contributes to their unique humanity or alienates them from it.  Certainly, our children might well inherit a waiting game, between the descendants of millenarian cultures, and the protagonists of a self-destructive political economy and their dependencies. Are your children rooted, conscious and prepared?

Tohuehuetlahtoltlamachilistle is in general a reference to our ancestral laws according to Azteca-Chichimeca Tolteca doctrines of dependency upon the natural order of Mother Earth. Ixnamique is a legal principal within Azteca-Chichimeca jurisprudence that essentially recognizes the mutually bound destinies of all people. Ixnamique translates loosely to life-death in that each person’s life is inextricably bound to the others’ as well. Where Ixnamihque refers to a duality, Tlahtqueh Nahuahqueh references the four principals of that which gives life and that which regulates life in the universe. Tlahtqueh Nahuahqueh means, the owner of that which is near and far. The underlying legal principle of Tlahtqueh Nahuahqueh is that human beings do not own anything in this world, or any other for that matter, it belongs to itself. The universe is a natural commons of all living beings. Human beings have a special trust relationship as caretakers and guardians in some cases, in some places, but in common as children of the universe with at times distinct, but by and large interrelated obligations to all of our relations. Duality and interconnectedness are two of many cultural teachings, laws, indigenous to Anahuac that should be central to the education of Indigenous Mexican children and possibly all children. Do your children learn about any positive Indigenous Knowledge in school today? If not, you may want to question your priorities in life.