What is Decolonization?
Decolonization refers to both a historical process and an ongoing practice of dismantling colonial structures. In its original geopolitical sense, it describes how colonies under foreign control gain independence and sovereignty, breaking from colonial rule to reclaim the right to self-governance and self-determination. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers.
In contemporary discourse, decolonization has expanded to encompass the work of undoing colonial legacies across epistemological, cultural, spiritual, and institutional domains. More recently, “decolonization” has come to take on a related meaning, that is critical appraisal of Western culture and its institutions in order to remove the legacies of hierarchical, racialized thinking towards minorities and other cultures. However, this expansion has generated significant debate. Scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argued in their influential 2012 paper “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” that decolonization refers specifically to the return of land to the Indigenous, criticizing the view that decolonization can be used as a broader term for social activism.
In spiritual and wellness contexts, decolonization addresses how colonial powers systematically suppressed Indigenous healing practices, imposed Western epistemologies, and commodified sacred traditions. Colonial powers did not just seize land—they attacked cosmology, criminalized ceremony, burned manuscripts, renamed sacred sites and systematically discredited the spiritual epistemologies of conquered peoples.
Origins & Lineage
The term decolonization, though coined slightly earlier, became popular in the 1940s-1960s context of Asian and African independence movements when European empires finally foundered. Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961) was characterized by Stuart Hall as the “Bible of decolonization”—at that time, the word decolonization referred to the literal process of a colonial country gaining political independence.
Frantz Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique on July 20, 1925. As a psychiatrist, Fanon was concerned with the psychopathology of colonization and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization, and he supported the Algerian War of independence from France as a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. His earlier work, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), analyzed the psychological dimensions of colonial oppression. France’s repression in Philippeville marked, in Fanon’s words, “the point of no return,” and it shaped his understanding of decolonization as an inherently violent process.
Immediately following World War II there was a wave of decolonization throughout Asia, followed by the Middle East, and in the 1960s sub-Saharan Africa. India’s independence in 1947 from British colonial rule became a catalyst for other Asian countries seeking self-determination. The decolonization process in Africa began in earnest in the 1950s, with most colonies becoming independent of European powers in that decade and the 1960s; the process was complete by the end of 1980.
Fanon’s work became a central text for the Black Panthers in the US, influencing liberation movements globally. His theoretical framework continues to shape contemporary decolonial theory, particularly regarding the psychological and epistemic violence of colonialism.
How It’s Practiced
Decolonization manifests differently across political, cultural, and spiritual domains. At its most fundamental level, the practice of decolonial research and activism involves a commitment to the principles of Indigenous self-determination and repatriation of Indigenous land.
In institutional settings, a land acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes, respects, and honors Indigenous communities as the traditional stewards of the land and draws attention to the ongoing violent exploitation of land, life, and labor that particularly impacts Indigenous and Black people. However, scholars like Tuck and Yang emphasize the importance of challenging systems of colonization through the acknowledgment of Indigenous rights through substantive actions like land repatriation rather than merely symbolic gestures.
In wellness and spiritual spaces, decolonization practice involves examining power dynamics and cultural appropriation. Decolonization speaks of a deliberate process to dismantle the lingering effects of colonial structures culturally and spiritually, questioning whose knowledge is valued, whose practices are deemed legitimate, and whose bodies are centered in conversations about health. Moving from cultural appropriation to cultural appreciation requires self-education, humility, and a willingness to listen, understanding the difference between borrowing from another culture in a way that is respectful and reciprocal, and taking from it in a way that is extractive and harmful.
Decolonization, in its fullest sense, is the process of acknowledging that violence and working—structurally, not just symbolically—to undo its ongoing effects. This includes supporting Indigenous teachers and practitioners financially, crediting knowledge origins, respecting closed practices, and centering Indigenous voices in spaces that engage with their traditions.
Decolonization Today
Contemporary seekers encounter decolonization work across multiple domains. Many spiritual communities now begin gatherings with land acknowledgments, though the effectiveness of these practices remains contested. Educational institutions offer courses on decolonial theory, while museums and cultural organizations reassess their collections and narratives.
In wellness spaces, decolonization appears in critical examinations of yoga studios, meditation centers, and alternative healing practices. Decolonising yoga means different things to different people, but it isn’t necessarily about defining who is or isn’t “allowed” to participate in the practice—instead, it’s about identifying and repairing any harm that was caused from yoga being appropriated or commodified.
Indigenous-led initiatives focus on land repatriation, language revitalization, and the restoration of traditional governance systems. Organizations such as the Native Land Conservancy and the Cultural Conservancy prioritize land repatriation, ecological restoration, and the revitalization of traditional land management practices, ensuring that Indigenous peoples have control and decision-making power over their ancestral territories.
Online communities discuss decolonial practice in contexts ranging from food systems to mental health, education to environmentalism. However, the word decolonization shows up in workshop descriptions, Instagram bios and Substack headers—often with little weight behind it, functioning as a signal of alignment rather than a commitment to change, managing to replicate the very extractive dynamic it claims to oppose.
Common Misconceptions
Decolonization is not simply diversity, inclusion, or social justice by another name. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools, and the easy adoption of decolonizing discourse turns decolonization into a metaphor.
The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. These include claiming Indigenous ancestry to deflect responsibility, treating decolonization as purely intellectual work, or conflating it with other justice movements.
Decolonization is not about individual enlightenment or personal healing in isolation from structural change. Decolonising is not about arriving at certainty—it is about walking with integrity, one step, one question, one offering at a time. Even the urge to “get it right” when decolonising can be a form of white supremacy, as the desire to appear especially thoughtful or well-intentioned often stems from perfectionism and fear rather than from true relationship or accountability.
It is not a completed project but an ongoing commitment. The processes of colonization have involved the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land which represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence, and engaging in decolonization as practice necessarily involves consideration of the enduring impacts of property on Indigenous relationships to land.
How to Begin
Begin by reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1952) to understand the psychological and political foundations of decolonial theory. Follow with Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” (2012) for critical perspective on how the term is used and misused.
If you occupy Indigenous land, research whose territory you’re on using resources like native-land.ca. Learn the actual history of that land’s colonization, not from settler perspectives alone but from Indigenous historians and community members.
In spiritual practice, examine your relationship to traditions outside your own lineage. Ask: Who am I learning from? Are they from the culture this practice originates from? Am I paying Indigenous and BIPOC teachers fairly? Have I been given permission to share these teachings? Am I centering my own experience or the sovereignty of the source community?
This practice demands a commitment to understanding historical contexts and power dynamics underlying these practices as well as a willingness to challenge your own assumptions and biases. Seek out Indigenous-led organizations and support their work financially. Attend events where Indigenous teachers speak about their own traditions on their own terms.
Most importantly, recognize that decolonization will be uncomfortable and incomplete. It requires material redistribution, not just changed consciousness. It centers Indigenous sovereignty, not settler comfort.