In Africa From 1884 to 1885, European powers, along with the United States, convened at the
Berlin Conference in order to settle colonial disputes throughout the
African continent and protect the economic interests of their colonial empires. The conference was the primary occasion for partitioning, what Europeans commonly referred to as, "the dark continent", and came about as a result of conflicting territorial claims. The various European colonial powers wish to avoid conflict in their "
Scramble for Africa", and as such drew clear lines over the continent. In 1898, Polish-British author
Joseph Conrad remarked in
Heart of Darkness on how Europeans used color swatches to denote their territorial claims over Africa, a common practice in the period:There was a vast amount of red [Britain] – good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done there, a deuce of a lot of blue [France], a little green [Portugal], smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch [Germany], to show where the jolly pioneers drink the jolly
lager beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the yellow [Belgium]. Dead in the center.An empire had to demonstrate effective occupation of the land they were claiming in order to justify their claims to it. Under these guidelines, scholar Kitty Millet has noted, that
effective "'connoted farms, gardens, roads, railways, [and] even [a] postal service." The only entities which could claim ownership "over these diverse African spaces... had to be one of the powers at the conference. Local or Indigenous groups were neither imaginable as political powers nor visible as peers or subjects of European sovereigns." Not only were Indigenous peoples not physically represented at the Berlin Conference, they were also absent "to the European powers' conceptualization of territory. They were not 'on the map'." Rather, Indigenous peoples were perceived by Europeans as property of the land living in an inferior
state of nature. Prior to their consciousness of their own "
whiteness," Millet notes that Europeans were first "conscious of the superiority of their developmental 'progress' ... 'Savages' had temporary huts; they roamed the countryside. They were incapable of using nature appropriately. The colour of their skins condemned them." European colonial authorities, who policed and controlled the majority of territory in Africa by the early twentieth century (with the exception of
Ethiopia and
Liberia), were notably ambivalent towards "modernizing" African people.
Donald Cameron, the governor of the
colony of Tanganyika as well as, later, of
Nigeria, said in 1925: "It is our duty to do everything in our power to develop the native on lines which will not Westernize him and turn him into a bad imitation of a European." Instead, Cameron argued that "the task of 'native administration' was to make him into a 'good African.'" While the French openly professed that their involvement in Africa was a "civilizing mission," scholar Peter A. Blitstein notes that in practice they rejected African "assimilation into French culture," excluded them "from French citizenship," and emphasized "how different Africans were from French, and how important it was to keep the two races separate."
Mahmood Mamdani has contended that rather than a "civilizing mission," as was often claimed by European powers to be the rationale for colonization, colonial policy instead sought to "'stabilize racial domination by 'ground[ing] it in a politically enforced system of ethnic pluralism.'" In the twentieth century, colonial authorities in Africa intentionally and actively worked to prevent the emergence of nationalist and
working-class movements which could ultimately threaten their authority and colonial rule. They sought to prevent "detribalization," which Europeans interpreted as occurring through the urbanization,
liberal education, and
proletarianization of African people, regardless of whether they were detached from their ethnic identity or community or not. As a result, "detribalization was the ghost which haunted the system" of indirect rule by threatening to undermine colonial capitalist
hegemony in Africa. European perspectives of Africans were thoroughly infused with racism, which, according to
John E. Flint, "served to justify European power over the 'native' and to keep western-educated Africans from contaminating the rest". Additionally, Alice Conklin has found that, in the post-
World War I period, some officials in
French West Africa may have "discovered in 'primitive' Africa an idealized premodern and patriarchal world reminiscent of the one they had lost at
Verdun", a
paternalistic position which nonetheless may have served as a rationale for fears over detribalization and the "consequences of modernity." Under indirect rule, universal
primary and
secondary education were not adopted in European colonies in Africa in order to avoid creating a class of "unemployable and politically dangerous, 'pseudo-Europeanized' natives." A curriculum that instead directed Africans towards fulfilling subservient roles which Europeans perceived them as "destined" to play, commonly as members of the colonial
peasantry and exploited laborers, was alternatively adopted. European fears over detribalization were also demonstrated via their attitudes toward the notion of African
wage labor and proletarianization. For this reason, African wage labor was only determined necessary when it aided the advancement or progress of the colonial capitalist state, such as via the African colonial
mining industry. According to Peter A. Blitstein, not a single European colonial power were "able to see wage workers as anything but 'detribalized' and, therefore, dangerous." As a result, the ideal model for African colonial society was one in which small-scale producers could be provided with temporary migrant labor as needed, since "to recognize Africans as workers would ultimately equate them to Europeans, and, perhaps, require the kinds of welfare-state provisions that European workers were beginning to enjoy – trade union membership, insurance, a family wage." During
World War II, a study authored by four colonial functionaries and commissioned by the
Vichy French government's
ministry of the colonies in 1944 entitled "Condition of the detribalized natives" called for "the systematic and immediate expulsion of any native illegally entering metropolitan France." Historian Eric T. Jennings has commented how this policy was "certainly not new" and had been informed by "a host of
reductionist thinkers from
Gustave Le Bon to
Edouard Drumont or
Alexis Carrel", while also eerily foreshadowing arguments to be used by the modern
French far right. Jean Paillard, an influential colonial theorist in Vichy France, feared "native domination" in which "the colonizers would eventually come under the domination of the colonized." Similarly, the authors of the study maintained that "the detribalized native becomes an immoral creature as soon as he reaches the city," reiterating European colonial viewpoints in the twentieth century by emphasizing that "detribalization" must be avoided above all measures. However, when detribalization becomes "unavoidable", it must "be accompanied by a strict regimen" of control. According to the study, when "left to their own devices," the "detribalized" persons become drunken failures in European society due to their innate inferiority. Jennings argues that this study attempted to invent a "retribalization" effort for the "detribalized" person and was hinged upon the larger "apocalyptic fears of a world dominated by unruly and debauched 'natives,' uprooted from their 'natural environments.'" This study reflected much of the European theoretical perception of detribalized peoples of the period, as further exemplified in
Maurice Barrès's
Uprooted (1941). Following the end of the
Second World War, colonial policy began to shift from preventing "detribalization" to more widely promoting devices for economic and cultural development in African colonial societies. In the case of European colonial governments, they began to promote self-government as a means of obtaining independence. European colonial empires in Africa increasingly opted for
nationalization rather than previous policies of indirect rule and forced contracted or temporary labor. However, according to historian Peter A. Blitstein, the ultimate objectives of the European colonial powers for Westernizing colonized and "detribalized" Africans remained unclear by the mid-twentieth century, as colonizers struggled to articulate how Africans could be brought into congruence with their visions of "modernity." Throughout post-independence Africa, two different types of African states emerged, according to scholar Mahmood Mamdani, which he terms as "the conservative and the radical" African states. While the conservative African state adopted a decentralized form of
despotic authority that "tended to bridge the urban-rural divide through a
clientelism whose effect was to exacerbate ethnic divisions," the radical African state adopted a centralized form of despotic authority that contributed to detribalization by tightening control over local authorities. Mamdani theorizes that "if the two-pronged division that the colonial state enforced on the colonized – between town and country, and between ethnicities – was its dual legacy at independence, each of the two versions of the postcolonial state tended to soften one part of the legacy while exacerbating the other."
Southern Africa presenting green copper-bearing rocks to the Dutch East India Company at the Cape, which initiated an expedition to extract the ore by the Dutch in 1685. In the seventeenth century, the
Dutch East India Company was importing shiploads of slaves to South Africa, transferring the former colonial station for passing ships into a slaveholding colony. In 1685, the
Cape Colony's last company commander and first governor,
Simon van der Stel,formed an exploration party to locate a copper reserve that the Indigenous
Nama people had shown him. The Nama were reportedly described by the colonists as "'very friendly'" and scholar Kitty Millet notes that, "relations were so amenable between the Nama and the
Dutch settlers that the Nama treated the colony to a musical 'exhibition' for the governor's birthday." However, shortly after Dutch settlers introduced slave labor to the region and arrived in increasingly greater numbers, conflicts from 1659 to 1660 and 1673 to 1677, followed by a smallpox outbreak, caused the majority of the Nama to flee from their traditional territory. Those who remained soon "existed as 'detribalized indigenous peoples'." Early maps created by European colonizers portrayed an image of southern Africa as a
terra nullius of "uncivilized" Indigenous villages and "wild beasts." As early as the 1760s, Europeans sought to organize Nama settlements in the region into "'natural' preserves" that would enable segregation of colonists from Indigenous peoples. When the British first took over the colony in 1798,
John Barrow, a British statesman, perceived himself as "a reformer in comparison with the
Boer [Dutch] 'burghers' and government officials whose embrace of slavery, and land grabs, had destroyed not only Nama tribes living near them, but also the land itself on which they staked their farms." The Nama tribes on the
Namaqua plain had been absorbed into the South African colony as "individual units of labour" and reportedly lived "in a state of 'detribalization.'" As the Nama were increasingly exploited and brought into subservience to Europeans, many completely abandoned the territory of the expanding Cape Colony, choosing instead to settle along the
Orange River. Many were also absorbed into
Oorlam communities, where "they existed as herders and 'outlaws,' conducting raids on Boer farms." From 1800 to 1925, approximately 60 missionary societies from Europe established more than 1,030
mission stations throughout southern Africa. A study on the location and role of these mission stations by Franco Frescura noted how throughout the nineteenth century, there was a "spreading geographical presence of missionaries over southern Africa", which paralleled the restructuring of the social, economic, and political landscape of the region by colonial forces. Despite their stated purpose, missionaries were reportedly unsuccessful in converting many Indigenous people to Christianity. One study reported that only about "12% of people on mission settlements were there for
spiritual reasons" and that the majority of people often remained either for a "material advantage or psychological security." Throughout southern Africa, while "some groups such as the
Basotho and the
Tswana openly welcomed missionaries, others like the
Pedi, the
Zulu, and the
Pondo vehemently rejected their presence as a matter of national policy." In some cases, entire populations relocated away from the mission settlements and ostracized members of their community who had been converted or resided at the settlements, effectively expelling them from their communities. In 1806,
German missionaries working under the
London Missionary Society were reportedly the "first white persons" to arrive in what is now modern-day
Namibia. They soon founded mission stations with surrounding fields and territories in an effort to Christianize and
sedenteraize the Indigenous peoples. However, because of the harsh climate and severe drought, their attempts at maintaining the stations failed. They converted one Orlam
kaptein,
Jager Afrikaner, the father of
Jonker Afrikaner, who would become an important Namibian politician. Missionaries struggled to indoctrinate the Indigenous peoples in the region with their ideologies due to outright opposition from the
Herero, who were the most powerful Indigenous group and were unconvinced of the professed "holy mission" of the missionaries. European settlers considered the Herero, like other Indigenous people in the region, as "uncivilized" because they did not practice sedentary farming nor openly accept
Western ideologies. A German missionary illuminated this wider perspective regarding his encounters with the Nama people: "The Nama does not want to work but to live a life of ease. But the Gospel says he must work in the sweat of his brows. He is therefore opposed to the Gospel." This was a common perception among missionaries in southern Africa, who "sought to impose an alien morality and work ethos upon the local people without realizing that these undermined their most basic social and cultural tenets and were therefore largely resisted." In the nineteenth century, as Millet reports, there was a "concerted effort" by the Dutch
Cape Colony government to "detach individuals from the tribal group" of the Orlam, "to 'detribalize' them through labor, either through indenture or enslavement." In order to maintain the colonial capitalist order, the Dutch "not only wanted to destroy the physical polities of indigenous tribes among or in proximity to them, substituting them with a docile class of labourers, but also wanted them to forget, completely, their prior existence as 'independent' peoples. The colony's 'health' depended on the removal of independent tribes and, in their stead, the visibility of the 'detribalized' servant." As the European colonists targeted Orlam
kapteins, scholar Kitty Millet notes, "even more 'detribalized' individuals [joined] the 'fugitives' already established at the margins" of colonial society. However, either oblivious to or refusing to acknowledge their own role in generating this deeply entrenched resistance, European colonists credited Orlam resistance with what they perceived to be an "ontological predisposition" within the detribalized Orlam people, which allegedly reflected a "primitive 'state of being'." They presumed that the Orlam's reestablishment as communities at the fringes of colonial society was an expression of their inherent nomadic disposition. As resistance continued to the colonial order, more and more groups with "diverse origins" also joined Orlam collectives, despite being notably "unrelated to their
kapteins." Despite the heterogeneity of the Orlam collectives, they were able to fight their own subjugation and reestablish themselves as an Indigenous
polity. Over time, the burgeoning numbers of resistance groups could not be sustained by the surrounding region of the Cape Colony because of low rainfall and drought. As resources depleted, detribalized Orlam resistance groups moved northward and eventually crossed the Orange River to reunite with the Nama. Each of the Orlam resistance groups requested permission from the Nama
confederation and reentered Nama land between 1815 and 1851. As they reintegrated into the Nama community, the Orlam groups quickly transformed how the Nama perceived themselves and their relationships with the neighboring Herero, as well as with the colonial traders and missionaries who had accompanied the Orlam resistance groups in their reintegration. As a result of this reintegration, Kitty Millet notes that a new Nama leadership emerged under
Kido Witbooi's grandson,
Hendrik Witbooi. Witbooi was a Christian who understood his leadership as a
divine mandate. While traditional Nama tribes had preferred
pacifism to armed conflict prior to the integration of the detribalized Orlam groups, Witbooi altered this understanding and believed it was his mission to continue the resistance effort among the Nama. Hendrik Witbooi was killed in battle with German colonial military forces in 1905 and is now understood to be a national hero in Namibia. In the nineteenth century, European missionaries sought to eradicate Indigenous ways of living and knowing through the process of Christianization to, as scholar
Jason Hickel argues, mold them into "the
bourgeois European model."However, by the early twentieth century, as a result of the "insatiable appetite [of colonizers] for cheap labor," the previous colonial policy of indirect rule began to weaken considerably, which resulted in the emergence of numerous informal settlements on the peripheries of "white cities" in southern Africa. In response to the overwhelming "unauthorized" urbanization of Africans, European colonial administrators eventually adopted the moralizing approach of their missionary counterparts and sought to "reform" African shanties, which were regarded as undisciplined chaotic spaces that blurred the order of colonial society as a "social-evolutionary misfire." Social scientists of the period upheld this perspective and disseminated these ideas widely, as represented in their perceptions of the "detribalized" African subjects who they perceived as inhabiting these peripheral informal settlements. , South Africa. ca. 2008
Austro-Hungarian philosopher
Karl Polanyi referred to "detribalized" South Africans in highly racist and pathological terms, stating that the "
kaffir of South Africa, a noble savage, whom none felt socially more secure in his native
kraal, has been transformed into a human variety of half-domesticated animal dressed in the 'unrelated, the filthy, the unsightly rags that not the most degenerated white man would wear,' a nondescript being, without self-respect or standards, veritable human refuse." Anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski similarly "decried 'detribalized' natives as 'sociologically unsound' monstrosities who had lost the regulated order of 'tribal' society – but given their lack of access to the necessary material resources – had failed to approximate the structure of 'European' society." The "out-of-category" status of "detribalized" urban South Africans was perceived as a threat to the European colonial order. In South Africa and Namibia, the colonial government soon "forced [their] relocations into modernist
townships laid out along rectilinear grids" with the stated intention of conditioning "detribalized" Africans to become "happy, docile subjects" who would "internalize the values of European domesticity." While Europeans and
white South Africans during this period classed all urban Africans as "detribalized," this was largely an extension of existing racism which had flattened all Africans into indistinguishable masses of "disorderly" racialized subjects and was not necessarily reflective of reality. In fact, many Indigenous people working on European-owned farms and in urban districts were not formally "detribalized," or detached from their "tribal" identities or communities. White South Africans adopted, what they considered to be, a "civilizing mission" with reluctance, conceding that "urban Africans" were "needed as labor" and "could [thus] not be 'retribalized.'" The first townships at Baumannville,
Lamontville, and
Chesterville were constructed in the 1930s and 1940s for this purpose. According to Hickel, the planners of these townships sought to "reconcile two competing ideas: on the one hand a fear that 'detribalization' of Africans would engender immense social upheaval, and, on the other hand, a belief that 'civilizing' Africans into an established set of social norms would facilitate docility." These conditions and perceptions continued throughout the
apartheid era in South Africa and Namibia. South African political theorist
Aletta Norval notes that as the apartheid system expanded, "the 'detribalized Native' had to be regarded as a 'visitor' in the cities until such time as the ideal of total apartheid could be reached" through complete racial segregation. In
Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971),
Soweto poet
Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali authored a poem entitled "The Detribalised" in which he described the consequences of detribalization and township life in South Africa. In a review of his work by Doreen Anderson Wood, she acknowledges how "sociologists and anthropologists have observed how detribalization and forcing mine workers into compound living [has] weakened family life in Africa, but few portray it with Mtshali's punch." Wood asserts that because they have been "denied admittance into full twentieth-century life[,] the detribalized fall into a vacuum of surface sophistication with no values underpinning it." Mtshali's poem encapsulates the experience of an unnamed man who was "born in
Sophiatown, or
Alexandra, I am not sure, but certainly not in Soweto." This "detribalized" man, in Mtshali's perspective, did not care for politics or concern himself with the imprisonment of anti-apartheid figures like
Robert Sobukwe or
Nelson Mandela on
Robben Island, and was perhaps reflective, in Wood's words, of men who had been removed from the "stabilizing influences of tribal life" as a result of colonialism.
In the Americas Regarding the greater
Mesoamerican region, scholar
Roberto Cintli Rodríguez describes how the Spanish inflicted two forms of colonization upon Indigenous peoples. While the first conquest refers to the military conquest campaigns under the authority of
Hernán Cortés and other conquistadors, "La Otra Conquista [or
the Other Conquest] included religiously motivated crusades to destroy all the temples, 'idols,' and books of Indigenous peoples." Coupled with centuries of violence, in which millions of Indigenous people were "devastated by war, mass killings, rape, enslavement, land theft, starvation, famine, and disease", the Other Conquest was simultaneously facilitated by the Spanish from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries with the central objective of destroying "
maíz-based beliefs and cultures of Indigenous peoples, ushering in a radical shift in the
axis mundi or center of the universe from maíz to the Christian cross," with the threat of death, torture, and eternal damnation for a refusal to conform to the colonial order. Rodríguez illuminates that although outright usage of force from the church has faded, official church messages in
Latin America still continue to reinforce this practice today. Spanish colonizers established a system of "
congregaciones (the congregation of peoples) and the project of
reducciones (spiritual 'reductions')" in an effort "to corrall Indians into missions or pueblos for the purpose of reducing or eliminating or 'killing' the souls of the Indians, creating Christians in their place." This method of "spiritually reducing Indians also served to facilitate land theft", and was first implemented in 1546, only to be reaffirmed numerous times throughout the colonial period. In 1681, as part of the
Laws of the Indies, issued by the
Spanish Crown for the
American and the Philippine possessions of its
empire, "continued the reduction of the Indians (their instruction in the Holy Faith) 'so that they could forget the errors of their ancient rites and ceremonies'." The reduction policies instituted by the Spanish colonizers "included the systemic demonization by Spanish friars of virtually all things Indigenous, particularly the people themselves, unless saved or baptized." The "official Spanish practice regarding what language, indigenous or Castilian, should be employed in the evangelization effort [throughout New Spain] was often confused." The "colonial aim" was to
Hispanicize the Indigenous people and to forcibly separate them from identifying with their cultural practices; "church and state officials intermittently used various decrees reiterating the official position and requiring that the Indians systematically be taught Spanish," such as one issued by the archbishop in
Mexico City in 1717. At the same time, because many missionaries were "more interested in trying to impart what they considered the basis of their faith to the native peoples as quickly as possible" through Christianization, this led many to "acquire the rudiments of the indigenous languages" for the purposes of indoctrinating Indigenous people to become Christians.
Brazil "'' is a derogatory term meant to denote "civilized Indians" — a generic name that was given to detribalized baptized Indigenous people. It has also been used to mean "half-breed" or "of mixed blood."
Portuguese colonizers arrived on the eastern seaboard of South America in 1500 and had established permanent settlements in the interior regions of
Amazonia a century later. Expeditions into the interior were carried out by Portuguese
bandeirantes, who often "depended on Amerindians as rowers, collectors, and guides."
Bandeirantes frequently turned these exploratory crusades "into
slaving expeditions" through abducting, detaining, and exploiting the
indigenous peoples of Brazil. It has been used interchangeably with
caboclo, recognized as a
derogatory term "equivalent to
half-breed" or "of mixed blood", as well as
carijó, which also referred to "detribalized Indians". These labels differed from
gentio, a similarly derogatory term which referred to unconverted and non-assimilated Indigenous people. Slave expeditions by the
bandeirantes continued throughout the eighteenth century with the intention of stealing precious metals, especially gold, from the interior, which further led to "the acquisition of land grants, official appointments, and other rewards and honors" for white male settlers. At the same time, "Indians seized in confrontations with colonists were used as mining, agricultural, and domestic laborers", while others, and especially Indigenous women, faced
rape and sexual assault. While the expanding network of Jesuit missions "provided a measure of protection from the slavers who made annual expeditions into the interior," they simultaneously altered "the mental and material bases of Amerindian culture forever." While
tapuios were "nominally free" (or free in name) at the missions, they were actually "obliged to provide labor to royal authorities and to colonists, a practice that frequently deteriorated into forced work hardly distinguishable from outright slavery." The
aldeias also proliferated the "spread of European diseases, such as
whooping cough,
influenza, and
smallpox, against which native populations had no immunity," which "killed tens of thousands of Amerindians" and pressured others to retreat deeper into the interior. While in the mid-seventeenth century "the Amazonian population was mainly indigenous except in the urban centers... by the middle of the eighteenth century, except for native groups that fled to remote refuge areas, the region's population consisted mostly of detribalized, subjugated
tapuios" The detribalized population of Indigenous people "were survivors or captives of raids" for over a century and "now lived in
Mineiro towns and other localities under the tutelage of colonists." They were "detribalized for diverse reasons, of various ethnic and/or geographic origins, brought to live in or born into colonial society and thereby incorporated in the social and cultural life of
Minas Gerais during the eighteenth century." New legislation in the 1750s, sought to affirm "the freedom of Brazil's Indians," which was articulated "in a series of royal laws." This was only extended to Indigenous people who had been Christianized and somewhat assimilated: "once the state 'conveyed the law of God to the barbarous nations, reducing them to the Catholic faith and to the true knowledge of His Holy Name'." However, it "provided a mechanism by which Indians who migrated to towns and villages could defy colonists' attempts to keep them in bondage." While revolts by detribalized Indigenous people were common, following the relocation of the
Portuguese Crown to Brazil in 1808, "mission villages were destroyed, their resources seized, and inhabitants [were] pressed into forced labor." As the size of the white population reportedly grew, "a new wave of military action" was carried out against "remaining tribal groups." Many
tapuios or
caboclos inhabited "the same flood plains from which their ancestors had been displaced by the Portuguese" while culturally intact and "remaining Indian groups [had] confined themselves largely to managing inaccessible upland areas." Many t
apuios as well as "black slaves, and other workers fled" following the revolt "because they were
cabanos [rebels] or to escape forced labor." Regarding the Brazilian province of
Amazonas, Herndon and Gibbon recorded that the Brazilian government continued to fear the power of the
tapuios to revolt against "the foreigners," given their greater numbers as well as "the terrible revolution of the
Cabanos (serfs, people who lived in cabins) in the years from 1836 to 1840, when many
Portuguese were killed and expelled." As such, the President and government asserted "that laws must be made for the control and government of the sixty-thousand
tapuios, who so far outnumbered the property-holders, and who are always open to the influence of the designing, the ambitious, and the wicked." The population of the province was recorded at "thirty thousand inhabitants – whites and civilized Indians," yet Herndon and Gibbon admitted that "no estimate can be made of the number of '
Gentios,' or savages." The American lieutenants expressed their support for further colonizing the region, even advocating for
American slaveholders to do so:I presume that the Brazilian government would impose no obstacles to the settlement of this country by any of the citizens of the United States who would choose to go there and carry their slaves; and I know that the thinking people on the Amazon would be glad to see them. The President, who is laboring for the good of the province, and sending for the chiefs of the Indian tribes for the purpose of engaging them in settlement and systematic labor, said to me, at parting 'How much I wish you could bring me a thousand of your active, industrious, and intelligent population, to set and example of labor to these people;' and others told me that they had no doubt that Brazil would give titles to vacant lands to as many as came.
Mexico '' system, which organized people by racial classifications.|alt= Mexican anthropologist
Guillermo Bonfil Batalla and other scholars have used the term "de-Indianization" to describe a "historical process through which populations that originally possessed a particular and distinctive identity, based upon their own culture, are forced to renounce that identity, with all the consequent changes in their social organization and culture. The process of de-Indianization in Mexico was a colonial project which largely succeeded, according to Bonfil Batalla, "in convincing large parts of the Mesoamerican population to renounce their identification as members of a specific Indian collectivity." He acknowledges how many Indigenous peoples throughout Mexico were historically expelled or displaced from their traditional territories, while others may have been exterminated, "as was the case with the
Great Chichimeca of the arid north." These genocidal conditions had the effect of detribalizing many Indigenous people by subjecting them to "conditions that made continuity as a culturally different people impossible." Although this process has been referred to as "mixture" or
mestizaje under the colonial Mexican framework, "it really was, and is,
ethnocide." In urban centers, spatial segregation between "Indians" and Spaniards, or
peninsulares, was instituted by the colonial order, to separate the colonized from the colonizers.''
Because the colony of New Spain was "built upon the exploitation of the work force and the agricultural production of the Indians, particularly in the regions of Mesoamerica," it became "fundamental for the Colonial regime to define clear ethnic boundaries between Indians and non-Indians." However, the boundaries between the ethnic categories of the colonized in colonial Mexico were "relatively flexible in practice" as the colonial structure was primarily concentrated on maintaining the "hierarchical superiority of the Spaniards" above all else. There were important distinctions between "rich mestizos," who held structural power in Mexico historically and upheld the Westernization plan introduced by European invaders, from poor or working-class rural and urban mestizos. In spite of the elaborate attempts to classify the castas
and assign to each one [individual] a clear position in the stratified order of colonial society, those who were neither Spaniards (peninsulares or criollos) nor Indians never found precise placement in a society that rested on the rigid dual order of colonized and colonizers. Even though the castas
were formally defined by the percentage of different blood they carried – American, African, and European – in reality it was social criteria, not biological, that defined the different groups. Undoubtedly, a large number of racial mestizos who were born and grew up in Indian communities were considered Indians. In the same way, many racially pure Indians passed for Mestizos when they left their communities of origin and became serfs or free laborers. Some mestizos were taken for creoles, and the passage from one group to the other had less to do with relative "purity of blood" than with other social factors, among which wealth was especially important.After the successful Mexican War of Independence in 1821, "ethnic inequality continued, as the criollos'', i.e. persons of Spanish descent born in the Americas, became the dominant group of the new nation." At the time, a minority of the country spoke
Spanish, yet it was established as "the
official language of the nation." Citizenship in Mexico became "synonymous with
Western culture and thus excluded Indians,
Blacks, and other non-European groups unless they renounced their supposedly 'backward' and 'inferior' cultures." Through the implementation of these homogenizing practices, "
criollos hoped that the majority of Indians and Blacks in Mexico would eventually be dissolved by European immigrants and the nation would be adequately whitened." The
criollo elite of the new Mexican nation also instituted a widespread
land grab of Indigenous territory throughout the country. While during the Spanish colonial period, the government had "recognized the collective property of Indigenous communities, since it was interested in extracting the surplus produced by Indian peasants," following independence, "individual property became the only legally recognized form of
land tenure, according to the supposedly universal principle of
Liberal individualism, and therefore Indigenous communities thus lost legal title to their holdings." The Mexican government "used armed force to suppress Indian resistance, and in cases where it was successful, Indian lands were distributed and their communities were destroyed." In the 1820s, the government instituted a
General Colonization Law which "paid non-Indians to take up residence in Indian country and work the land... based on the assumption that Indians would recognize and choose to emulate the virtues of 'civilization' once they had been exposed to them." This method was implemented throughout the entire country. When armed force and colonization failed, "the Mexican government used a policy of deportation from tribal homelands to other parts of Mexico." While these methods were devastating to maintaining the identities and communities of Indigenous peoples in Mexico, "it was not governmental policy that led to the detribalization and assimilation of most Mexican Indians." While "some Indian communities were able to maintain their existence, most were broken up as hundreds of Indians were slowly forced off their land and into Mexican towns, mining communities, and ranches as laborers." In 1883, the Mexican government passed the Land Law Act, which "affected thousands of small-scale and detribalized Indian communities", as noted by legal scholar
Martha Menchaca. A few years after the law's passage, which required "all public lands be surveyed for the purpose of development", the ruling class of Mexico and foreign corporations owned approximately "one-fifth of Mexico's total land mass, or 68 million acres of land". Once the land was "surveyed", "Mexican farmers had to prove legal ownership" and the courts often "upheld the corporations' surveys", which caused "many poor farmers... to migrate north into Texas, a task made easier by the railroad infrastructure." The
Lerdo Law of 1856, which planned to provide "each family... part of the tribe's communal holdings" through privatization, had "stripped the tribal councils of their legal authority over their community's land", and since
Benito Juárez died in the midst of its implementation, judges now "held the power to interpret property law and decide to support the surveying companies or recognize that the Lerdo Law had been improperly executed." As a result, "Indians who heeded President Juárez's orders and privatized their holdings but failed to disband their tribal councils could argue in court that although they were not given deeds, the Spanish land grant titles [from the colonial period] were still valid since they were not detribalized communities." On the other hand, "Indians who had disbanded their councils had no legal recourse because they were detribalized Indians." In the latter case, if detribalized peoples "managed not to get evicted from their lands, the main option left was to remain in their homes and become
tenant farmers." However, many people "chose to join the northern migration" and "some detribalized Indians began a journey that would eventually transform them into U.S. citizens" as a result. By the end of the nineteenth century, well-over 100,000 Mexicans had migrated north into the southwestern United States, both as a result of the Mexican government's land theft through the Land Law Act and the labor shortage in the United States following the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the unofficial "
Gentlemen's Agreement" with
Japan in 1907. As a result, many employers in the southwest opened contracting opportunities in border cities such as
El Paso, Texas. Although the official U.S. immigration policy at the time prohibited contractual labor outside the United States, employers hired agents to travel to the interior of Mexico and convince rural and urban Mexican citizens that high wages and new job opportunities were available in the United States. Following the loss of land, low wages, and instability throughout the Mexican countryside, many poor Mexican people, particularly from the states of
Jalisco,
Guanajuato,
Zacatecas, and
Michoacán, migrated north to initially become railroad workers, laying track for low pay. A 1909 report concluded that Mexican laborers did the majority of the railway work in Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and
southern California. Following the railway work, the majority of Mexican laborers were employed in the agricultural sector, working on cotton fields in Texas, sugar beet farms in northern Colorado, and citrus orchards in California, as well as mines throughout the southwest. By 1920, the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States was over 222,000, the majority of whom had previously been made landless by the Mexican government or worked on rural ranches. This massive land grab in the nineteenth century soon sparked a series of peasant revolts throughout Mexico "from the 1840s to the
Mexican revolution of 1910". Scholar
Florencia Mallon has proposed that, in response, Indigenous communities developed "their own popular Liberalism, one that recognized communal institutions and property, and that defined citizenship in terms that did not exclude culturally different groups." In the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, with the increasing development of the national capitalist economy and
industrialization, "Indigenous communities were forced to migrate to the cities" and "large farms". As a result of that process, many became detribalized as they "adopted Spanish as their main language and abandoned their traditional sense of ethnic identity, shifting their allegiance to the national identity being constructed by the [Mexican] state." It was in this process that "entire [Indigenous] communities also changed their language, and their ethnic self-identification, from Indian to Mestizo." This is reflective in statistics of the era. While in 1808, Indians and Mestizos were estimated to comprise 60% and 23% of the population respectively, by 1885 this was 38% and 43%, and by 1921 this was 29% and 59%. From 1808 to 1921, it is estimated that approximately 3 million people experienced this cultural and ethnic transformation from Indian to Mestizo, which was about 1/3rd or 1/4th of the entire population of the country at the time. In the midst of this detribalization and de-Indianization process in Mexico, the nationalist ideology of "mestizaje" was formulated "by intellectuals closely linked to the State" in the late nineteenth century. The Mexican government instituted national policies "aimed at achieving the racial and cultural homogenization of the population under the Mestizo category." Mexican nationalist ideologies now asserted that the country was a "mestizo society" which harmoniously combined the cultures of Indigenous peoples and Europeans. In reality, while the majority of "popular classes and sectors", including traditional rural communities and urban
barrios, neighborhoods, and towns throughout Mexico, had "Indian origins" which were "often very recent", the "upper-class sectors" were "derived more or less directly from the Spanish colonizers" and tended "to conserve non-Indian cultural forms". In contemporary Mexico, "many [Indigenous] cultural traits" continue "to be present in a de-Indianized collectivity". Bonfil Batalla demonstrates this by examining the comparisons between poor rural and urban
mestizos and
Indigenous peoples of Mexico.'' to demonstrate how there is an "effective presence of that which is Indian... in almost every social and cultural aspect of the country", that "the presence of Indian culture is, in some aspects, so commonplace and omnipresent that one rarely stops to think about its profound significance, or about the long historical process that made possible its persistence in social sectors that assume a non-Indian identity today." Members of the privileged elite classes in contemporary Mexico, who are largely descendants of European colonizers have been noted to still regard "anything that is Indian, any trait that recalls the original ancestry of Mexican culture and society" as backward, grotesque, and inferior, by using derogatory and racist language such as "
naco". There remains "many Mestizos living in traditional peasant communities whose culture is closer to that of the Indigenous peoples than to that of the modernized urban elites, despite the fact that they no longer speak an Indian language." This segment of the population "could very well 're-Indianze' itself" and in many communities throughout Mexico "such processes of re-Indianization are already well under way." In 2000, the ethnic composition of Mexico was recorded as 18% Amerindian, 10.5% of which openly identified as detribalized. There is also evidence that increasing numbers of the detribalized Mexican population may be openly identifying as Indigenous, given the rapid increase in
population size in recent national census figures.
Peru De-Indianization has been cited as an essential element to the formation of the colonial
Peruvian nation-state, "which was and in many ways continues to premised on the
overcoming of indigeneity, that is to say on the de-Indianization of Peru."
Indigenous peoples in Peru could therefore be "redeemed" through the process of de-Indianization or assimilation into the colonial order of Western "progress". De-Indianization was implemented through various efforts of the state, such as through "education", yet "those who did not de-Indianize, because they refused to do so or because resources to implement the process of de-Indianization were lacking, could be, and indeed came to be seen as in need of being, erased from the purview of the nation-state. This historical marginalization of the indigenous, in this sense, is best understood not as a lack of or failure of the Peruvian nation-state, but as its necessary and constitutive condition."
United States Upper South and Northeastern In the seventeenth century, detribalization was implemented against Indigenous communities in the upper South region of the
Thirteen Colonies in order to strengthen the position of the colonists. As historian Helen C. Rountree documents, systemic efforts were made "to detribalize the
Powhatans" of Virginia, and various methods were implemented to "civilize" them and otherwise incorporate detribalized persons into colonial society. Until 1691, detribalized Indigenous people could "enter the middle- or lower- levels of [colonial] society" through interracial marriage. Following the prohibition of interracial marriage, "Indians were expected to join the lowest, non-white ranks." There is evidence that an Indigenous person who was perceived as detribalized had greater claims to land rights, exemplified via the case of Edward Gunstocker, whose land rights were perceived as valid by American colonial courts because he was detribalized. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the colonists in the
Virginia Colony attempted to "convert the Powhatans culturally" through permitting them to engage in a form of paid labor under the watchful eyes of white employers with the intention of "civilizing them and making them Christians." Indigenous children were taken from parents to become "servants" for colonists, who assured their parents that they would be treated well and not as slaves. However, as noted by Rountree, the colonists "did not draw a clear distinction between 'servants' (i.e., domestic employees) and slaves, either for Indians or for Africans." While few Indigenous people accepted these offers willingly in the early part of the seventeenth century, pressures from colonists increased, especially after Indigenous people were progressively impoverished following the stealing of land and effects of the emerging colonial economic system. In 1889, the state of
New York published a report of a "special committee" of the legislature. It was based on having "asked for a solution of the 'Indian problem' from men living in nearly every section of the state." In answer to the question "What can be done for the good of the Indian?" relating to the
Onondaga in western New York, the consensus was determined as follows: "exterminate the tribe and preserve the individual; make citizens of them and divide their lands in severalty." Chancellor of
Syracuse University Charles N. Sims replied: "Obliterate the whole tribe; make them citizens; divide all the lands among them and put them under the laws of citizenship in the State. It is the merest farce in the world to treat them as a nation." Dr. Johnathan Kneelant of
Syracuse, who was for several years a physician to the tribe, said: "I have recommended that they be detribalized and made citizens." Much of the responses throughout the report indicate similar attitudes toward various Indigenous nations throughout the state. This rhetoric indicates how detribalization was perceived as unquestionably necessary for the progress of the American
settler colony by descendants of colonizers.
Southwestern in New Mexico. The Spanish colonial period began under Jose de Oñate in 1598, who inflicted atrocities on
Acoma Pueblo, killing "hundreds of Acomas, and burned houses and
kivas." Ongoing resistance by Pueblo religious leaders propelled the Spanish to use missionaries in order to "convert the Indians to Catholicism" and thus encourage them to disidentify from their Pueblo community and cultural practices. Historians Deborah Lawrence and Jon Lawrence note that a new "form of slavery developed whereby Indians who were obtained by Hispanics through war or trade were taken into Spanish households as servants." These "detribalized Indian captives" were referred to as
genízaros and eventually "managed to merge into the larger society over generations." In the eighteenth century, the population of detribalized people in
New Mexico increased, particularly of the
genízaros, who were now commonly held in servitude throughout before being released upon Christianization or adulthood. This increase was largely due to the prevailing "trade of human captives" which was carried out throughout the region. As noted by historian
Lisbeth Haas, the Spanish had "granted
genízaros and lower-status settlers land throughout the eighteenth century in order to create buffer zones between nomadic raiding and the colonial towns, including those of Pueblo Indians, such as
Santo Domingo and
Ysleta." Neighboring tribes including the
Navajo and
Comanche participated in the servant and slave trade of detribalized people and others at trade fairs in
Abiquiu and Taos Pueblo until the mid-nineteenth century. Following the
Mexican-American War and the ratification of the
Treaty of Guadalupe, the U.S. government quickly violated its agreement and failed to acknowledge the citizenship stipulation it had agreed to under the treaty. As noted by scholar
Martha Menchaca, the U.S. government instead began a process of
racialization which ascribed to Mexicans different legal rights on the basis of race." While "Mexicans who were
white were given full citizenship," mestizos, Christianized Indians, and
afromexicanos (mixed race people of African descent) were accorded inferior legal rights." While prior to the Mexican-American War, "Mexico had extended citizenship to all people living in Mexican territory irrespective of race," including the "right to vote, run for office, enter any profession, transact business with whomever one chose, marry freely with no racial restrictions, and obtain title to land grants," following American occupation, a new racial system was imposed upon the conquered territories of the Southwest. The federal government provided the various state governments of the ceded territories "the right to decide which Mexicans would be given citizenship." In Texas, citizenship was only extended to Mexicans "as long as they were not of black descent." At the same time, "detribalized Christian Indians who paid taxes and had adopted the lifestyle of Mexicans were also given citizenship but with limited rights," being excluded from the right to vote, and conditional property rights, only "if they could prove that they spoke Spanish and that their ancestors had been legally emancipated from the Spanish missions." However, while the Mexican-controlled
New Mexico legislature (which had authority over the territory of Arizona at the time) "extended citizenship to all former citizens of Mexico" in 1851, the United States congress quickly "rescinded this decree" and denied Black and Indigenous people citizenship in 1853. Soon after Arizona was established as a separate entity in 1863, "its first legislative assembly voted to reserve citizenship for white males." People of Indigenous descent were also discriminated against based on their affiliations, as "Spanish-speaking
mestizos who resided in the main colonial towns" were "assumed to be Mexican," making them "exempt from Indian policies." Indigenous groups who managed to not be displaced or "subdued by the Spanish and Mexican governments were placed on reservations or forcibly driven out of the Southwest" by American settlers and the military. If any Indigenous people refused to submit to the American occupiers, they would be "politically-labeled [as] warlike" which could serve as a justification for their imprisonment or military attack by state forces. Those groups who were considered peaceful "were visited by an agent of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to determine if they should be extended the legal rights of Mexican
mestizos" in central colonial settlements. Ultimately, the BIA granted these rights to "the
Coahuiltecan and
Apache in Texas, the
Pueblos in New Mexico,
Pima Indians of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys in
Arizona, and
Chumash,
Gabrieleño,
Luiseño, and groups of
Yuma Indians in
California."Once the legislature had made their decisions, many Indian villages were relocated onto reservations and some were allowed to remain in their village with their property respected (e.g. the Pueblo), but the majority had their lands confiscated and were forced to move. Individuals who were detribalized and lived among the Mexicans but were culturally identifiable as Indian were ordered by the federal government to be counted among the peaceful Indian populations.... The legislatures were given the power to determine if detribalized Indians were to be granted the political rights of Mexican
mestizos. In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Russian Empire sent "several government commissions" to survey the "quantity of
arable land" for "prospective settlers," which concluded that "the steppe nomads possessed surplus land, which could be allocated to Slavic settlers." The "appropriation of 'Kazakh' surplus land" was perceived by officials as "legally justifiable" following "the
'Kazakh' Khans submission to the Russian throne" which transferred control over their land to "the property of the Russian monarch." The migration of Slavic settlers into Central Asia peaked between 1906 and 1912, "when approximately 1.5 million new Slav migrants poured into the region." By 1916, it was estimated that there were 3 million European settlers in the region. Since settlers were privileged by the Russian Empire, they were "given larger and more fertile tracts of land" while "farming plots allocated to [Kazakhs] were often useless for cultivation." The loss of access to the fertile lands was "a devastating blow to the 'Kazakh' nomadic economy" and forced many Kazakhs "to adapt to the
sedentary lifestyle, or to move southward in search of new grazing lands for their herds." However, "the sedentarization of some 'Kazakhs' ... did not always necessarily lead to their detribalization, since most of the newly established 'Kazakh' villages were settled by ex-nomads deriving from the same clan and tribal origin." As such, many Kazakhs were able to retain their immediate clan and tribal identities. At the same time, the "pan-horde identities," which had previously existed prior to Russian colonization, were "significantly weakened with the abolition of the hordes, since no alternative institution remained to sustain them." Overall, the influx of Slavic settlers changed "the demographic structure of the region," resulting in the "emergence of two broad and distinct cultural groups," the Slavic settlers who were "primarily followers of the
Orthodox Christian faith" and the
Muslim Kazakhs, which included both "pastoral nomads and newly sedentarized farmers" and the related
Kyrgyz and
Karakalpak ethnic groups, who were speakers of Kazakh dialects and "physically exhibit[ed]
Mongoloid features." Tsarist colonial policies "privileged the Slavic settlers over the steppe nomads" and segregated the Kazakhs, who along with other non-Christian steppe peoples were considered belonging to the so-called
inorodtsy ["allogeneous"] category. This exacerbated sociocultural tensions between the two groups, as the Slav population became viewed as "agents of the Tsarist colonialism, and hence equally responsible for their socio-economic problems." These tensions and oppression by the Russian Empire eventually culminated in the
1916 revolt in Central Asia. Following the
Russian Revolution in 1917, the Kazakhs were widely dispersed and had been "battered in the civil war" with the Slavic settlers which had preceded "the establishment of
Bolshevik control." The "surviving clans, villages, and
auls (migratory groups) reconstituted themselves as Soviets and tried to carry on as before," although new policies were quickly imposed upon them. Similar to European colonial efforts in Africa, Soviet nationality policy initially "emphasized '
indigenization' of the institutions of local government." However, while in Africa, European powers instituted these policies to prevent working-class consciousness and to control the majority of Africans as peasant laborers for their empires, the fundamental purpose of Soviet indigenization policies were "precisely the opposite of the European policy of colonial indigenization in Africa." In this sense, "Soviet policy was not designed to preserve 'traditional' content, but to replace it." The goal was not to ensure that a "good
Uzbek" remained a "good Uzbek," as European powers had believed of the "good African," but to "make him a good 'European' in the sense that Europeans were modern and most Uzbeks were not." As a result of this Soviet ideology toward the colonized peoples of Central Asia, "plenty of smashing of traditional institutions was done by the Soviet state in the name of
socialist transformation," which resulted in detribalization. This was done through education policies, which were implemented through a "universal Soviet curriculum" instituted in the same manner "regardless of the pupil's ethnic identity." The "economic and political logic" of this curriculum was to create "a loyal, modern, interchangeable population suitable for rapid industrial development." While colonial governmental policy in Africa did not seek to employ a "civilizing mission" for fear of creating an urbanized "detribalized" population of workers who may rebel against the colonial order, the Soviets attempted to "ultimately transform and integrate all peoples into one political community." Progress was notably perceived as slow by the Soviets in Central Asia, as "
Stalinist authorities consistently bemoaned the slow process of working-class formation among the Central Asian peoples" and "relatively low numbers of Central Asians in institutions of higher education in the late 1930s and 1940s" was a "sore point for a regime preoccupied with training 'nationality cadres.'" Following decades of
Soviet control in the twentieth century, "the party had still failed to undermine indigenous religious and clan authority" throughout much of Central Asia. While other "Turkic nationalities emerged through a processes of detribalization [over centuries], the modern Kazakhs emerged instead through expansion and adaptation" under the weight of external authority.
Saudi Arabia As an extension of European colonialism and Westernization, towns and urban centers in
Saudi Arabia housed two different worlds, in which "the 'native' town exists alongside a 'Western' town." In former colonies throughout the
greater Middle East, a second colonial city was often simply constructed next to the "old town" as part of the colonial order. Cities in Saudi Arabia such as
Riyadh,
Jeddah, and
Dammam exemplified this type of colonial configuration in the 20th century. Westerners segregated themselves from those in the "native" town centers and lived together "in more or less discreet and hermetically sealed compounds." It was in this urbanized setting that "the modernization and individualization of Saudi society unfolded" at a rapid pace, which broke down "traditional social structures" and "served to detribalize society, to make the family cell its basic unit, and finally to split the family itself into conjugal micro-elements." The
unification of Saudi Arabia, "was in every respect not only a victory of town over desert but
a victory of the family over the tribe." The increasing "urbanization of Arabia therefore also corresponded to a sedentarization or detribalization of the
nomads," accompanied by the Western family-centered model. Many nomadic families soon after became "detached from their tribal history and sense of belonging."
In Oceania Australia , Qld 1900 In 1788, there was estimated to be approximately 251,000
Indigenous Australians (including
Aboriginal Australians and
Torres Strait Islander people) in what is now referred to in the
Western context as Australia. By 1901, it was estimated that the population had declined to 67,000 as a result of European diseases, invasion and occupation. Indigenous groups which had survived were "either institutionalized on
government or
mission settlements or allowed to form camps on the fringes of upcountry towns, pastoral properties, farms, and mines, which were usually tucked away well out of sight of the busier centers of colonial life." By the 1880s, "the European populace became predominantly urban", which increasingly divided most European settlers from the Indigenous people. Racist perceptions of the Indigenous people were rampant throughout the
European Australian population by the end of the nineteenth century as "derision and contempt expressed in the mid-century years deepened toward a malevolent vilification". A member of the
South Australian parliament who perceived "the detribalized Aborigines of
Port Darwin in 1882 as 'degraded specimens of humanity... some less manlike than a griming and chattering monkey....' and questioned '...whether, on the whole, any beings bearing the semblance of humanity could be found more low-sunk than these...' may be bracketed with the member of the new
Commonwealth Parliament in 1902 who said: 'There is no scientific evidence that [the Aboriginal] is a human being at all'".In the vicinity of such places of employment it is proposed to provide reserves where unemployed aborigines will be more or less maintained under tribal conditions by those in employment, and whither, during periods of unemployment, those who have been employed may retire. The purpose of these reserves is to provide the aborigines with the means of continuing their present state of existence—a semi-tribal life—but the ultimate intention is that they shall be brought under the same control as is now proposed for those who are regarded as detribalized. In the vicinity of the white settlements, it is proposed that the detribalized aborigines shall be educated and trained in various avocations, in which they can make a living without competing with the whites.This practice was instituted with the underlying assumption "that Aboriginal culture had collapsed, or would soon do so everywhere, and that assimilation into a European mode of life was the one rational possibility". Australian colonial authorities believed the Indigenous population "should be trained for a settled life and useful occupation; taught to recognize authority, law, and the rights of property; given religious training to 'replace the stability of character which has been lost by the destruction of their ancient philosophy and moral code'". Section 71 of the
Welfare Ordinance 1953 stated that "a person who has the control or management of ward" shall not fail "to provide the ward with
reasonable food, shelter, clothing, and facilities for hygiene". However, what was constituted as "reasonable" was "governed by delegated legislation and influenced by the ideology of
assimilation". As a result, "reasonable" was meant to "inevitably reflect a nuclear family structure". This preference was made "evident in the reports of [Australian] Patrol Officers." Scholars have since argued that "assigning nuclear family names" was "a means of ‘detribalizing’ indigenous Australians at this time". Until 1970, Indigenous Australian children were forcibly removed from their families and communities throughout Australia and became part of the
Stolen Generations. In a 1980 study on European-Australian and Indigenous Australian relations in
Western Australia, Kenneth Liberman reflects on how European-Australian settlers imposed their standards of "morality" onto Indigenous Australians, with "the implicit attitude that the best thing which European society could do for Aboriginals was to make Europeans of them". According to Australian anthropologist
A. P. Elkin, "European society was endeavoring to turn Aboriginal people into individualists" by teaching them the "
moral value of work". He notes how European-Australian pastoralists forced "Aboriginals living on their stations to perform some sort of token labor before they hand them their government social welfare check," viewed Indigenous children as undisciplined, and perceived their ownership over the land as justifiable based on their alleged superior morality. At the time, "the former national
Minister of the Interior argued... that it was not only impossible to accept Aboriginal land claims but that it was 'wholly wrong'". In a
Ted Talk, Stolen Generations survivor Sheila Humphries spoke of being stolen from her parents, the torture and abuse by the nuns who managed the orphanage where she was detained, and the attempts by police officers and doctors to steal her own children from her years later: "My mother was taken, I was taken, they wanted to take my twins". In recalling her relationship to her mother, Humphries reflects on the disturbing realities of this era of Australian history which produced cross-generational detachment, trauma, and loss of familial and communal structures for Indigenous people:I woke up one morning, two o'clock in the morning, sobbing my heart out, and my late husband said to me, "What's the matter?" All I could say to him at that time was, "I want my mommy. I want my mommy." He said, "I'll tell you what, [...] I'll take you back tomorrow and we'll go and visit her grave". So, we went back the next day, and it was like I was going to a funeral for the first time in my life. A mother whose name I didn't know, until 30 years later. I found out her real name. Mother darling had nine different names. She was placed in so many institutions, baptized into so many religions, and given so many names. == Retribalization ==