How Colonizers Use Mind Control: A Conversation with Cindy Blackstock

The “merciless Indian savages…”  Those words in the United States Declaration of Independence entrenched the way colonial states defined Indigenous peoples as “savage” and their relationship with the “civilized Americans” as represented by federal and state governments. This dehumanizing propaganda was the pen of history, of social norms and laws writing on our societal manuscript about what the United States is and who we are as Americans. It served to normalize and even legitimize the wrongful dispossession of land, resources, and even the children of Indigenous peoples. Colonialism is a potent societal mind control virus infiltrating society so that contemporary human rights abuses such as the chronic underfunding of public services as basic as water on reservations is excused, explained, and rationalized when the deprivation of water for non-Indigenous folks in Flint Michigan made headlines and movies.