#decolonize science

Whenever someone introduces a critter as

"Englishman's nightjar/lizard/swooping figwit", or whatever,

ask "Okay yeah sure, but what's it really called?"

Because I guarantee you that before Mighty WhiteMan taped his name on it, it HAD A NAME ALREADY. A name people had ALREADY been calling it for a good thousand years or more.

Referring to something that someone else believes in as "unscientific" (read: with the associated stigma that unscientific = not real) is a form of covert colonization propaganda and should be properly scrutinized.

Colonization efforts across the globe used the guise of "scientific facts" and "scientific progress" to perform genocide upon countless groups of people due to an existential insecurity that rapidly malingered into a hegemonic ideology that was dependent upon the catharsis supplied by the alluring ideal of being able to "prove" something for certain.

This lead to propaganda which was produced with the intention of rationalizing the oppression, subjugation, and theft of resources of all those targeted by colonization.

So keep an eye out for specific phrasing that attempts to establish itself as irrefutable. This is a paradoxical sentence, but "nothing is certain". We should strive to learn, but also accept that the social construction of "truth" is heavily biased towards the privileged,

We must dissolve the myth that people are lesser for not knowing something with absolute certainty. We must denounce the myth that anyone can be lesser for any reason at all.

Absolute Proof is not a necessity to existence, nor to enjoyment, nor to suffering.

The pursuit of knowledge can lead to great feats or terrible pitfalls, but as they say: it is the journey that matters, not the destination.

Free yourselves from the limitations of the idea that something need-be an already corroborated, pre-existing experience in order for you to be having it.

Please,

Discover;

Discover wholly.

Siphula decumbens

S. decumbens was a tough one to find information on! Probably because it is incredibly variable and therefore difficult to locate. And also because quite frankly, most lichenology studies take place in the north. This fruticose lichen grows in erect or decumbent (resting flat) that are flattened and if branched, forms short, irregular lobules. The surface is chalky pale and can be dimpled or fenestrate. These rounded lobes form dense or loose tufts on soil, rock, rotting wood, and trees. It is largely found in the southern hemisphere, but its range extends northward in China and Japan. Yet another lichen I hope can be studied more in the future. I want to know more about this cute stubby baby! 

Follow for more daily lichens! 

Abstract

The nursing profession currently exists in the untenable position of holding social justice as a core value of the profession but operating within dominant oppressive systems of colonialism and racism. Decolonizing and Indigenizing nursing are proposed as strategies toward reconciliation; however, little is known regarding specific nursing actions toward decolonizing and Indigenizing the profession. This scoping review highlights approaches, barriers, goals, and the utility of decolonizing and Indigenizing nursing knowledge, education, research, and practice. Synthesizing these will provide ideas and inspiration leading to praxis while also highlighting the reality of the challenges of this work.

By: Colin Wright

Published: Sep 24, 2025

The ideological capture of academia has spread beyond the humanities and social sciences into medicine and healthcare, and the consequences are increasingly dangerous. What began as a campaign to promote “equity” and “social justice” has become a full-blown assault on the scientific standards that made modern medicine possible. Universities and professional associations now pressure researchers and practitioners to pledge loyalty to ideological dogmas, while redefining knowledge itself to include political slogans and cultural traditions masquerading as science. The infiltration of pseudoscientific concepts into disciplines that deal with life-and-death matters should alarm us all.

One of the most troubling manifestations of this trend is the push to “decolonize” and “indigenize” science and medicine. These campaigns rest on the claim that Western science is merely a cultural preference, unfairly privileged over “Indigenous ways of knowing.” But this framing ignores a basic truth: the scientific method became dominant not because white Europeans imposed it on others, but because it works. Its results are consistent across cultures, and its universality is what makes it the most rigorous and inclusive method of producing knowledge ever devised. To reject it in favor of subjective “ways of knowing” is to undo centuries of hard-earned progress in order to virtue signal.

The latest example of this ideological creep comes from a peer-reviewed article in Advances in Nursing Science titled A Scoping Review of Action Toward Decolonizing and Indigenizing Nursing. The paper is presented as a neutral survey of literature, but in reality it is an ideological manifesto. Its authors insist that nursing is “permeated by Eurocentric norms that reinforce Whiteness” and call for replacing Western frameworks with “Indigenous and subaltern philosophies and knowledge.” Nurses, they argue, must condemn oppression, embrace activism, and reject the profession’s longstanding apolitical stance. Patient outcomes, strikingly, are never mentioned.

Instead, the paper urges nurses to adopt concepts from The Red Deal, a political manifesto, and to prioritize “caretaking” paradigms that involve “divesting” and “healing the planet.” Research, we’re told, should move away from controlled trials and replicable data toward storytelling, talking circles, and “holistic narrative approaches.” The authors even complain that institutional review boards scrutinize decolonizing research too closely—apparently forgetting that scrutiny is what keeps quackery out of medicine.

The infantilization embedded in this ideology is staggering. Indigenous scholars demand to be treated as serious academics while simultaneously insisting that their work not be judged by the rigorous standards that every other scholar is expected to meet. They want their ideas elevated not because they are true, useful, or supported by evidence, but because of who they are. The notion that ancestry should confer immunity from critique or a free pass around evidentiary standards is the exact opposite of intellectual respect.

At one point the authors declare that “narrative research by non-Indigenous researchers is not the same as using Indigenous research methods and should not be assumed to produce the same findings.” What makes this claim especially absurd is that it violates one of the most basic principles of science: universality. The validity of a result does not depend on who performs the experiment, but on whether the methodology is sound and the findings replicable. If two researchers follow the same protocol and arrive at different results simply because of their identity, that’s not proof of multiple “ways of knowing”—it’s proof that the methodology is garbage.

The section on practice is perhaps the most concerning. The authors call for embedding “Indigenous knowledge” directly into nursing practice, including “cultural safety” measures, anti-racism activism, and a rejection of the profession’s traditional apolitical stance. But do we really want nurses forming talking circles while patients need bedpans changed? Do we want them prioritizing activism over clinical competence? The paper is explicit that one of the main “barriers” to decolonizing nursing is precisely that nurses tend to be apolitical. But thank goodness for that. A nurse’s job is not to lecture patients on politics but to provide care.

Throughout, the authors substitute ideology for utility. They invoke capitalism as a barrier to decolonization. They even go so far as to suggest that land be “returned to Indigenous peoples” as part of decolonizing nursing. What on earth does property redistribution have to do with bedside care? These proposals have nothing to do with health, safety, or evidence-based medicine. They are ideological demands inflicted onto a profession that should resist them at all costs.

What makes all this worse is that the ideology is gaining momentum. The paper notes that more than half the studies in this area have been published in the last three years. This is not a fad on the way out. It is being institutionalized in nursing schools, professional associations, and peer-reviewed journals. Nurses who simply want to treat patients according to the best evidence will be marginalized or even disciplined for refusing to go along. We already see this happening in Canada, where Amy Hamm—a nurse who state the biological reality that males are not females—has being relentlessly persecuted by her professional body. The demand is not just that you respect patients, it is that you publicly affirm the ideology, no matter how absurd or unscientific.

The likely outcome of this trajectory is grim. If health disparities are reflexively treated as proof of racism, then every failure of these Indigenous approaches will only be used to justify more of them. Suppose Indigenous patients receive “decolonized” care while non-Indigenous patients receive evidence-based medicine. If outcomes diverge, the gap will be attributed not to the obvious cause—that one group received care rooted in pseudoscience—but to systemic racism. The feedback loop is perfect. Bad ideas never die because failure is always reinterpreted as proof of oppression. The only losers will be the patients whose health is sacrificed to ideology.

Science does not belong to the West. It belongs to everyone because it is the only method we have that transcends culture and identity. Its universality is its greatest strength. To dismantle it in the name of reconciliation is dangerous. Real respect means holding all knowledge to the same high bar, and real justice means ensuring that all patients receive the very best care evidence can provide.

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Abstract

This elder Afro Feminist critical autoethnography explores questions of justice and freedom. The research lens combines critical race, intersectionality, and critical consciousness theories. The literature review examines cultural wealth, processes of liberation, contemporary and global Afro Feminist futurists, and expanded sources of wisdom and guidance. The research focuses on what tools trouble and reframe oppressive mindsets towards possibility and liberation. In seeking elements that nurture liberatory consciousness, my study examines seven decades of lived experience through multiple reflective and creative data sources. Liberatory consciousness is a cultivated state that filters out dominant, colonial toxins and shifts towards regenerative, expansive healing. Data include contributions from co-research partners, such as ancestors, animals, archetypes, cosmology, the environment, and spirit. The study finds five essential decolonial tools for nurturing liberatory consciousness. Convening a council of imaginal and ancestral advisors emphasizes the importance of cultivating intentional relationships and being mindful of growth opportunities within those relationships. Engagement with the strengthening aspects of Community Cultural Wealth enhances resources. The process of the Cycle of Liberation provides a step-by-step model to empower and combat inequities, oppression, marginalization, and discrimination. The restorying process creatively resolves trauma through the artistic process of revisiting, reviewing, revising, and releasing lived experiences. Finally, spirit is a catalytic, vibrant, relational energy source. Through ongoing personal, group, and community transformation, as well as visionary restoration and the imagining of possibilities yet to be realized, we can move toward liberated mindsets and spaces. This journey allows us to reclaim, liberate, and restore collectively. Asé.

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I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.

But is it perhaps childish or morbid to terrify oneself with visions of a totalitarian future? Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can’t come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn’t come true. Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.

-- George Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)

Eerie.

[ Note: In 1949, Orwell subsequently wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. ]

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"One of the key contributions of critical theorists concerns the production of knowledge. Given that the transmission of knowledge is an integral activity in schools, critical scholars in the field of education have been especially concerned with how knowledge is produced. These scholars argue that a key element of social injustice involves the claim that particular knowledge is objective, neutral, and universal. An approach based on critical theory calls into question the idea that objectivity is desirable or even possible. The term used to describe this way of thinking about knowledge is that knowledge is socially constructed. When we refer to knowledge as socially constructed we mean that knowledge is reflective of the values and interests of those who produce it."

-- Ozlem Sensoy/Robin DiAngelo, "Is Everyone Really Equal?"