#this is the draft for a thesis abstracr

[giovanni-bottesini]

There's something I've noticed a lot more recently as I've taken up my late grandmother's genealogist role in my family's Scottish clan (something which still sounds fictional to me) which I see as yet another example of well-meaning white settler leftists approaching important conversations with a very flawed mindset consisting of what some would call "white guilt" and the self-sacrificial or "repentant" approach to decolonization that lets you skip learning about any culture at all! You can just say "I'm a white settler on stolen land. That sucks and I hate it." and buy an orange shirt on the internet while you're supposed to be doing your day job for the government.

This isn't about giving up your own cultural identity as a "sacrifice" to those who have had them stripped away. The goal is always to know more about ourselves, each other, and the unbelievable extent to which our ancestors documented everything they could about themselves. No matter how unimportant you might think your middle-class suburban family might be, there are millions of people dedicating their entire lives and careers to using every bit of data they can find to make leaps in understanding I couldn't piece together if I tried.

Do you resent your rich, white, Catholic upbringing? Don't you want to just forget it all, throw out those dumb old documents, and renounce your European origins in solidarity with the indigenous peoples? Well, first of all, uniteforchange.com is a good place for folks in "Canada" to start out if you're in a position to pay reparations (folks encouraged to rb with international community/mutual aid funds) but please make sure your family documents remain in caring hands! Donate them to a university or research institute, or any sort of passionate genealogist in your family or community so the knowledge doesn't just rot in your poorly-insulated attic.

Or read the documents yourself! Bring them to a local library and scan them, upload them to a database like familysearch.org or geneanet.org and figure out why your family is catholic, what they may have practiced before, and how you ended up as a settler rather than living in Ireland, or Italy, or Hungary, or anywhere else considered "white" enough (nowadays) to get the "good" side of colonialism: having their culture leeched out of them whilst participating in the destruction of others, rather than being destroyed.

Decolonialism isn't ever about hating your identity and trying to bury it out of shame, or appropriating another culture that feels "better" to your conscience. It's about understanding yourself, hard realities and all, looking back at the countless people who were silenced before their voices could be heard, and fighting like hell for the people who still have the chance.

Realizing your history should disturb rather than comfort you, but realizing your privilege should not demoralize you; it should empower you.