- Preface
There is no way to fully measure the depths of the cultural wounding that came from colonialism and imperialism. While statistics in part measure the impact of the devastation, particularly of poverty, homelessness, suicide, hunger and a devastating dependence on drugs and alcohol, none fully capture the harm to the spirit of a community as whole, especially when calculated across multiple generations. As I think about the idea of a cultural wounding, at the metaphorical level, the ravages of a fire that impacts a forest comes to mind; and how over time, there is also healing from the conflagration that occurs organically.
- Introduction
Defining the De-Colonial Project This manuscript builds upon all of the work that precedes it, including my own work in and with community. As a colonial studies scholar, trained as anthropologist, historian and literary scholar, I have been thinking and writing about New Mexico history, including slavery and identity, which formed the subject of my doctoral work, for over two decades. In becoming the State Historian of New Mexico, a position I held for a decade, and in other subsequent positions, I have been working in and with community to recover histories, particularly the silenced and forgotten, and to help realize the relevance of these stories to the present and future.