Cultural death. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook
The criticism of colonization usually comes when discussing its consequences and the brutality of the methods of the colonizers. Not as much attention is payed to the flawed idelology behind it, apart from being cruel, it was actually self defeating. On one hand the colonizers made it their mission, considering it their duty owing to their supposed moral superiority, to "civilize the savages". These so-called savages did not have knowledge of science and rationality, they believed. Therefore, the colonizers forced European laws and institutions upon them such as forcing the English language upon them after forcibly recruiting 'half-caste' children into European schooling systems in Austrailia. A dialogue from the film 'Rabbit-proof fence' which presents this issue effectively presents this ideology: "Half-caste children have been gathered up and brought here to give them the benefit of everything our culture has to offer. For if we are to fit and train such children for the future, they cannot be left as they are, and in spite of himself, the native must be helped."
This was done without understanding the culture of the indigenous peoples themselves and their social institutions.
However, along with this, the colonized had to be kept lower than the colonizers by purposely disenfranchising them and keeping them in an obviously lower position than the Europeans. James Cook does this by treating the chiefs of the people of Hawa'i poorly. Gananath Obeyesekere notes in his book that he dealt with the chiefs as if they were common seamen. A notable incident of Cook having a chief whipped is also a significant example. There is a glaring inherent contradiction in the very ideology; an irrational one!
So there was a very intentional process carried out by the colonizers to erase the culture of the indigenous people, for erasing the unique identity of those people would mean that they would be more accepting of the identity their conquerors ascribe to them; one that is subservient to them. This was done by supplanting their social institutions with ones modelled after Eurpean ones. "When Cook lands in a new land, he not only takes it over on behalf of the Crown, in a series of ceremonial acts but wherever he goes, he plants English gardens.This act is primarily symbolic, supplanting the disorderly way of savage peoples with ordered landcsapes on the English model...These symbolic acts of deomestication are also acts of appropriation parallel to the symbolic taking over the country by the ceremonial planting of the English flag" (Obeyesekere p.g.12).
This was done without understanding the culture of the indigenous peoples themselves and their social institutions.
However, along with this, the colonized had to be kept lower than the colonizers by purposely disenfranchising them and keeping them in an obviously lower position than the Europeans. James Cook does this by treating the chiefs of the people of Hawa'i poorly. Gananath Obeyesekere notes in his book that he dealt with the chiefs as if they were common seamen. A notable incident of Cook having a chief whipped is also a significant example. There is a glaring inherent contradiction in the very ideology; an irrational one!
So there was a very intentional process carried out by the colonizers to erase the culture of the indigenous people, for erasing the unique identity of those people would mean that they would be more accepting of the identity their conquerors ascribe to them; one that is subservient to them. This was done by supplanting their social institutions with ones modelled after Eurpean ones. "When Cook lands in a new land, he not only takes it over on behalf of the Crown, in a series of ceremonial acts but wherever he goes, he plants English gardens.This act is primarily symbolic, supplanting the disorderly way of savage peoples with ordered landcsapes on the English model...These symbolic acts of deomestication are also acts of appropriation parallel to the symbolic taking over the country by the ceremonial planting of the English flag" (Obeyesekere p.g.12).
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