Native Studies 20
Unit 1: Indigenous Worldviews and Ways of Knowing
Learning goal: I can analyze how colonization has suppressed Indigenous worldviews through forced assimilation, removal of children, banning of languages and ceremonies, and imposed legal systems.
In Goal 3 you learned that there are more than 5,000 distinct Indigenous nations across the globe. Each of those nations had its own governance, its own laws, its own relationship to land, and its own way of passing knowledge forward. Colonization did not just take land. It systematically attacked the worldviews that connected people to that land.
This was not accidental. Colonial governments understood that if you destroy a people's worldview, you destroy their ability to organize, resist, and govern themselves. A people who no longer know their own language, ceremonies, laws, and governance structures cannot easily assert their rights to land and self-determination.
Understanding this logic is the core of this lesson. The tools of colonial suppression were different in different places and times, but the underlying goal was the same: to replace Indigenous worldviews with the worldview of the colonizing power.
These terms give you the conceptual tools to analyze what colonization did and how it worked. Learn them as a system, not as a list.
Colonization did not always look the same. Different colonial powers used different strategies at different times, and those strategies fell along a spectrum from containment to physical destruction. Understanding this spectrum helps you see colonization as a deliberate system rather than a series of isolated events.
Note: These stages are not always sequential. Colonial powers could use multiple stages simultaneously, or shift between them as their goals and circumstances changed. The spectrum is a tool for analysis, not a fixed timeline.
The following four mechanisms are the primary ways colonial powers targeted and suppressed Indigenous worldviews. Each one is a form of violence, even when it did not involve physical force. Each one also generated resistance.
Forced assimilation is the policy of requiring Indigenous peoples to adopt the culture, religion, language, and values of the colonizing power. It is built on the belief that Indigenous cultures are inferior and that Indigenous peoples would be 'improved' by abandoning them.
The most explicit statement of this logic came from Richard Henry Pratt, who founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1879. His stated goal was to 'kill the Indian, save the man.' This phrase captured the logic of aggressive assimilation: the person could be saved, but only by destroying their identity.
Forced assimilation operated through education, Christianity, legal prohibition, and economic pressure. Indigenous peoples who maintained their cultures were often denied access to government services, employment, and legal protections.
The removal of children from their families and communities was one of the most devastating tools of colonial assimilation. The logic was direct: if you could raise a generation of children without knowledge of their language, ceremonies, laws, or governance, the culture would die within a generation.
This strategy was used across the globe. In Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, governments established residential and boarding school systems that forcibly removed Indigenous children, sometimes from infancy, and placed them in institutions far from their communities. In these schools, children were forbidden from speaking their languages, punished for practising their cultures, given European names, and subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
At least 6,000 children died in Canadian residential schools. In Australia, the Stolen Generations policy operated from the 1910s into the 1970s, with Aboriginal children removed from their families specifically to 'breed out' Indigenous identity. Similar policies operated across Latin America, in mission schools in Africa and Asia, and among Sami communities in Scandinavia.
Colonial governments understood that language and ceremony were the primary vehicles for transmitting worldview across generations. Stories, songs, prayers, and ceremonial practices carry law, governance, ethics, and knowledge in a form that cannot be easily written down or extracted. Banning them was an attack on the transmission system of Indigenous knowledge itself.
This took many forms. In Canada, the Indian Act banned the Potlatch in 1884 and the Sun Dance in 1895. People could be imprisoned for dancing. Sacred objects were confiscated by police. In Wales, British authorities used a device called the 'Welsh Not,' a piece of wood hung around the neck of any child caught speaking Welsh, to shame and punish the use of the Indigenous language. In the American Southwest, Indigenous children in boarding schools had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their languages.
Every Indigenous nation had its own legal system. Cree wahkohtowin, Haudenosaunee Great Law, Maori tikanga, and thousands of other legal traditions governed relationships between people, land, and creation. Colonial powers replaced these systems with European legal structures that did not recognize Indigenous law, Indigenous land title, or Indigenous governance.
Two main models of colonial legal imposition emerged. Direct rule, used by France and Portugal in many of their colonies, replaced Indigenous governance structures entirely with European bureaucracies, laws, and courts. Indirect rule, used more commonly by Britain, nominally retained Indigenous leaders but placed them within a colonial hierarchy that required them to enforce colonial law. Both models undermined Indigenous legal authority. Both denied Indigenous peoples legal standing in relation to their own lands.
The legal concept of terra nullius was central to this process. By declaring Indigenous territories legally empty, colonial governments could claim land title without treaty or negotiation. Even where treaties were signed, colonial courts consistently interpreted them narrowly and in favour of the colonizing state.
Across all four mechanisms, a single logic operated: Indigenous worldviews were treated as obstacles to be removed, not as knowledge systems to be respected. The Potlatch was banned because it redistributed wealth in ways that contradicted European capitalism. Children were removed because their families transmitted the worldview. Languages were suppressed because they carried the knowledge. Legal systems were replaced because they governed relationships to land that colonizers wanted.
This was not the random cruelty of individual actors. It was policy. It was planned, legislated, funded, and implemented by governments, churches, and institutions across the globe over centuries.
It was also resisted. At every point in this history, Indigenous peoples found ways to preserve their languages, practise their ceremonies in secret, maintain their legal traditions, and keep their children connected to their communities. That resistance is part of this history too.
Answer the following in your notes or journal. These questions are asking you to analyze, not just describe. Try to explain the reasoning and logic behind what happened, not only what happened.
• The handout argues that colonizers targeted worldview specifically because destroying it undermined Indigenous peoples' ability to resist and govern themselves. Do you think this was a conscious strategy or an unintended consequence? What evidence supports your position?
• Look at the spectrum of colonial control. Where on the spectrum would you place the banning of the Potlatch? Where would you place the residential school system? Explain your reasoning.
• The concept of terra nullius declared that Indigenous land was 'nobody's land.' What does this tell you about the role of law in colonization? Can a law be unjust? What happens when it is?
• Colonization happened differently in different places: direct rule in French West Africa, indirect rule in British Nigeria, residential schools in Canada, the Stolen Generations in Australia. Despite these differences, the goal was similar. What does that tell you about colonialism as a system?
Key terms in this handout: colonialism, imperialism, settler colonialism, terra nullius, Doctrine of Discovery, assimilation, cultural genocide, ethnocide, intergenerational trauma, direct rule, indirect rule, segregation, acculturation.
The following sources informed the content of this handout.
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (2015). Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: Summary of the final report. Government of Canada.
Facing History and Ourselves. (2020). Banning Indigenous culture. https://www.facinghistory.org/en-ca/resource-library/banning-indigenous-culture
The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2023). Potlatch ban. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/potlatch-ban
The Indigenous Foundation. (2021). The Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius. https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/the-doctrine-of-discovery-and-terra-nullius
United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UN General Assembly.
Wikipedia. (2025). Indirect rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_rule
These resources extend the ideas in this handout at an accessible level.
CBC News. (ongoing). Residential schools coverage. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/residential-schools [Current reporting on residential school findings, survivors' stories, and ongoing responses. Regularly updated.]
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. (n.d.). https://nctr.ca [Houses the records of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, survivor testimonies, and educational resources.]
Survival International. (n.d.). Genocide. https://www.survivalinternational.org/genocide [Country-specific documentation of colonial genocide and ethnocide globally, with current cases.]
These resources provide deeper theoretical and historical grounding.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409. [Foundational article on settler colonialism as a structure rather than an event. Explains the logic of elimination that drove assimilation policies globally.]
Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Purich Publishing. [Examines how colonial suppression of worldview operated through education and what decolonization of education requires.]
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton University Press. [Analyzes how both direct and indirect colonial rule transformed Indigenous governance in Africa and created legacies that persist today.]
Hope for Wellness Help Line: 1-855-242-3310 (24/7, available in English, French, Cree, Ojibway, and Inuktitut). For students experiencing distress related to the content of this handout.