Germs Are the Deadliest Agents of Colonization
Part 1
The History of Pandemics: How Pandemics Have Facilitated Colonization Globally
Pandemics are a common consequence of contact with colonizers.
The earliest recorded pandemic originated in the Athenian Empire in 430 BC during the Peloponnesian War. More than two thirds of Ethiopian, Egyptian, and Libyan civilizations perished. The disease, suspected to have been typhoid fever, was a significant factor in the conquest of the Spartans. Whether strategically planned or happenstance, this amounted to germ warfare. Africa, the birthplace of humanity, experienced the sudden disappearance of thriving cities and kingdoms as a result.
In the Americas, Europeans brought disease, slavery, and conflict to indigenous populations. In 1497, the indigenous populations of the Caribbean, were exposed to diseases such as smallpox, measles and bubonic plague by the Europeans. With no previous exposure, these diseases devastated indigenous people, with as many as 90 percent dying throughout the north and south continents.
Today, we are facing the beginning of a deadly and accelerating pandemic.
If what’s past is prologue, pandemics expand empires while disenfranchised groups suffer most.
In the US, Native Americans, Black people, unhoused people, incarcerated people, elderly people, pregnant women, differently abled people, and so many other dispossessed peoples are facing unprecedented exposure risks, critical shortages of care and supplies, and pernicious erosion of our mental and emotional health. Meanwhile, government officials have made every effort to use this crisis as an opportunity to line their pockets and those of corporate America.
Uninterrupted, the pattern of genocidal biological violence, conquest and colonization will continue to repeat.
Part 2
Profiting from Pandemic: From the Fur Trade to Wall Street
Pandemics lay the foundation for extreme exploitation and colonization.
Pandemics do not occur in isolation. In fact, outbreaks flourish as a result of international trade, the pandemic superhighway.
Some of the first contact between colonizers and natives in the Americas involved trade. Through deception and brute force, unscrupulous fur and rubber merchants enslaved indigenous peoples from isolated tribes to work for them.
On Wall Street, the products and services of racial capitalism contribute to the proliferation of diseases and the destruction of economic livelihoods.
Even more dangerously, pandemics lead to unregulated expansion and unbounded freedom for financial and government institutions. This in turn exploits the public’s disorientation, suspends democracy and allows for wild free market policies to create even greater exploitation.
From hoarding supplies to price gouging to selective testing and treatment, pandemics have uncovered the paucity of communal care and the vast racial inequities. If we are to honor our elders, raise our children, love ourselves, protect our environment, defend the most marginalized, and dignify workers, we can’t go back to the way things were.
Part 3
Imagine & Innovate: Designing (and Demanding) Our New World
Wellness is a public good, we must (decolonize) design accordingly.
We are all indebted to the underpaid and overworked. From healthcare and hospice workers, farmworkers, grocery workers, janitors, and so many other critical and heroic frontline community members who are working to mitigate the devastation of this pandemic. We must imagine a world where those on the front line — the labor force folks that have historically been classified as “low-skilled” who are now suddenly classified as “essential workers” — are paid for the true value of their labor. We owe it to these workers who are sacrificing so much, to our ancestors, to each other and to those yet to come to imagine a world where health and wellness excludes no one. Our efforts must tap into the depths of our radical imaginations and the breadth of our innovative capacities.
Innovation is indigenous to Black and native cultures.
Descendants of Africa and other indigenous peoples have survived physical and biological genocide, destruction of civilizations, and slavery. Yet, historically they have been the designers and originators of communal wellness.
We must take collective responsibility for this on-going process of creating community wellness. We submit that our New World is values-driven. Our vision for a New World without colonizers and the pandemics they create, centers on respect, responsibility and relationships that are shared through wisdom, community and culture. Our New World will take our relational organizing and collective imagination to produce. Let’s get out into these (virtual) streets!
About the Author
Aida Mariam Davis is the founder of Decolonize Design. Her primary interests lie in advancing African Diaspora and Indigenous Philosophies in community centered design.
