Before predator came: A plea for expanding first nations scholarship as european shadow work

Turning to the second of the two epigrams that I included in this chapter: Europeans and Euro-Americans who insist on running away from the destructive elements of our collective shadow unconsciously feed the power of predator. As its power accumulates, so too does its destructive potential. At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, that destructive potential threatens every living creature on this planet. Defusing that potential for global annihilation requires all of us, especially Euro-Americans, to begin a highly conscious and deliberate process of collective shadow work crucial to the process of remembrance requisite to the creation of any truly inclusive project of decolonization. While space renders it impossible for me to provide a full accounting of the history of the genocidal forces responsible for virtually eliminating the Indigenous cultures of Europe, I hope that the limited portion of the story told here can awaken a new interest among Europeans and European Americans in their Indigenous past and its destruction by the forces of internal colonization. For European Americans in particular, we need to inquire into the history of our ancestors' journeys across the Atlantic. Did they really leave Europe to escape religious persecution, or were the majority of our ancestors deemed elements of a surplus population whose deportation could help facilitate predator's virulent spread to other corners of the earth? Did the enclosure movement and the subsequent deportation of the unemployed and "criminal" elements to the Americas, Africa, and Australia constitute our own "Trail of Tears"? Was it a forerunner to the reservation system imposed on the Indigenous People that predator would later establish? These and other questions abound. Seeking their answers is vital for the sake of remembering ourselves. First Nations scholars from the Indigenous Peoples of North America and elsewhere have shown us the door; it is up to us to walk through it. It's the only path home.