Educational Catalogue of Resources: Colonialism

Kwame Nkrumah's Education in West Africa is a condemnation of colonial education systems for their contribution to the erosion of African cultural identity and national development.

In 1948, Harry Haywood grappled with the dilemma of the systemic oppression and exploitation of Black Americans, particularly in the Black Belt region of the South, where they were "colonized" within the U.S. capitalist system.

Aimé Césaire, a French poet and politician writes about the lasting and ongoing effects of colonialism and its impact on culture, history, and civilization as a whole.

Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan revolutionary politician, presented this report as the II Conference of African Peoples in 1960.

In this report, Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan anti-imperialist, talks about the lasting impacts of imperialism within Africa, particularly the French troops and their acts of colonization.

In 1962, Harold Cruse confronted socialism's failure to recognize the significance of Black nationalism in the African American struggle for liberation, particularly the failure to understand the black people’s condition as a form of domestic colonialism.

Mehdi Ben Barka, amongst his many roles of being a politician, was a spokesperson of the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP). This following report goes through Ben Barkas' addresses to the Moroccans, particularly focusing on the relationship between the Moroccans and Algerians. 

In collaboration with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Harry Haywood wrote this unpublished manuscript, Towards a Revolutionary Program for Negro Freedom.

"To begin with, the white world defines who is white and who is black." Walter Rodney goes on in this highly provocative work highlighting the power dynamics present between Black and white people and the deeply rooted systemic pushback non-white people face.

In The Imperialist Partition of Africa, Rodney expands by providing many examples of the imperialist countries, Britain, France, and Germany, coming into the African continent as a "white racist virus" and dividing the continent up for extraction.

Martinez and Vásquez go through the experiences of what the Spanish colonizers did to their land. They tell the story of Mexican Americans (Chicano's) and their fight for freedom.

In Orientalism (1978), Edward W. Said critically examined the Western perception of the "Orient", arguing that it was constructed as a counterpoint to the West and used as a means to assert Western dominance.

When Guyana had originally gained its independence from the British colonizers in 1966, their systems still ran on the model of the bourgeois democratic system of Britain.

In this collection of essays, Said goes through the political discontent going on during the separation of Palestine and Israel, in particular focusing on the 1993 Oslo Accords. These essays demonstrate that often times there is a hidden agenda behind the work of front-facing leaders, demonstrating Said's critique of those involved.

This collection of poetry was Darwish's most favoured one, which he provided to the translator Mohammad Shaheen, himself.

Sociologist Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí argues that British colonial rule imposed a rigid gender binary on Yorùbá society, which had previously organized roles and status by seniority, lineage, and community rather than biological sex.

Martínez states that white supremacy is fundamental to the existence of America. She breaks down colonization, through conversations around Indigenous peoples, followed by the enslavement of African labour.

In this interview, Mohammed Harbi talks about his experiences as an Algerian, specifically within the political context, and the lasting impact of the French colonizers. 

Qwo-Li Driskill addressed the problem of the erasure and colonial violence against Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous identities. Driskill critiqued the ways in which colonialism, Christianity, and Western gender norms disrupted and marginalized Indigenous understandings of gender and sexuality.

Aimé Césaire, a French poet and politician writes about the lasting and ongoing effects of colonialism and its impact on culture, history, and civilization as a whole.

Political theorist and historian Mahmood Mamdani argues that European colonial powers invented rigid “native” identities to divide colonized populations and entrench domination.

Tanya Talaga, an journalist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, talks about the experiences of Indigenous children at schools in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In particular, she surrounds the conversation around the deaths of seven Indigenous high school students who had travelled to Thunder Bay to attend Boarding school.

All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward is a part of the CBC Massey Lecture series. In this book, Talaga, a journalist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, writes about the history of resistance, resilience, and civil rights activism of the Indigenous peoples.

Talaga, a Anishinaabe and Polish descent journalist and author, writes about her conversations surrounding the Canadian history of colonization upon Indigenous peoples.