Instead, prefer systems that force self-interrogation and thought before moving to wider-scale mechanisms to solve for coloniality and capitalism

Some modern ideologies have justified the degrading of the values of sharing and caring for others regardless of religious beliefs, skin color, and ethnicity while glorifying Euro-American-Australian cruelty, robbery, terrorism, and genocide. Had the European settlers and their descendants have shared their knowledge and technology and cared for indigenous peoples, the world would be built on human centered values that could have promoted multicultural lifestyles rather than Euro-centered values. By attacking indigenous cultures and lifestyles, the peoples of European background intentionally dismissed some aspects of their own history and culture that existed in Europe prior to the emergence of mercantilist capitalism in which peoples shared and cared for one another although there were oppression and exploitation. The Euro-Americans-Australians and their descendants have acted as they always had modern knowledge and technology to claim racial and cultural superiority by suppressing their premodern history and culture that existed before the 16th century. The crimes committed against indigenous peoples in the names of God, commerce, progress, civilization, culture and/or race or religion for making money and acquiring lands should be recognized by the present generation of the previous European settlers and other human groups to understand the historical root of modern human rights violations and to seek a just political solution for existing socio-economic, cultural and political problems of indigenous peoples. All powerful individuals and groups should critically interrogate themselves morally, culturally, socially, and politically in order to develop their humanness rather than hiding their criminal behaviors and actions under the discourses of modernity, civilization, religion, race or culture and continue to commit similar crimes by engaging or supporting unjust and corrupt political and ideological practices. Engaging in or supporting a system that annihilates human beings is morally, ethically, and intellectually wrong because of ideological and cultural blindness and/or to satisfy the appetite for power and money. By understanding the devastating effects of colonialism its various forms of violence on the indigenous peoples, the present generations of Euro-American-Australian descendants and their collaborators in the Global South should start to uplift the surviving ones by making restitution and by promoting their struggles for self-determination and multicultural democracy. All governments and institutions in the West need to stop repeating lies and misinformation about the indigenous peoples by incorporating their authentic history, culture, and humanity in school and college education. Celebrating the contributions of the indigenous peoples, recognizing the crimes committed and compensating them, and accepting the diversity of these countries will blossom the humanity and the diverse cultural and ethnonational backgrounds of these countries by resurrecting the damaged humanity of the executioners and the victims. Without critically understanding the processes of capitalist broadening and incorporation and without adequately learning about the crimes of colonialism and continued subjugation, we cannot confront the moral, philosophical, and political contradictions in the capitalist world system in order to move toward establishing a just and truly egalitarian democratic world order. It is urgent that serious scholars establish a single moral, intellectual, legal, and political position in the study and understanding of the problems of indigenous peoples and suggest pragmatic policies to eliminate or reduce racial/ethnonational inequality, underdevelopment, poverty, and ignorance in the modern world system. Humanity should stop to brag about its progress, civilization, scientific revolution, and religion until it goes back and studies its crimes against its weakest elements so it can critically understand its darkness, barbarism, and falsehood. 35 The colonial knowledge elites have treated the indigenous peoples as historical objects because of their powerlessness. These elites with the support of the nation-state produced “official history” that completely denied a historical space for the colonized and dehumanized peoples around the world. As M. A. Rahman (1993:4) notes, “domination of masses by elites is rooted not only in the polarization of control over the means of material production but also over the means of knowledge production, including control over social power to determine what is useful knowledge.” With their colonization and incorporation into the capitalist world system, the indigenous peoples could not develop independent institutions that would allow them to produce and disseminate their historical knowledge freely. Negative views about the indigenous peoples prevented mainstream and modernist from understanding the histories and cultures of indigenous peoples. While colonial elites and their supporters continue to support the official version of history, indigenous and a few critical scholars have realized the necessity of a plurality of centers in knowledge production and dissemination. A few innovative scholars have recognized the importance of looking at a society from different cultural centers and have developed the emergent indigenous studies. The emergent indigenous studies indicate that the indigenous peoples are transforming their five hundred years of historical defeat to victory through intellectual, political, and armed struggle because of the emergence of an educated class that started to develop indigenous consciousness. Furthermore, contemporary publications on indigenous cultural and social history challenge a top-down paradigm to historiography and make the indigenous peoples subjects rather than objects of history. “Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource,” D. J. Haraway (1991: 198) writes, “never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and authorship of ‘objective’ knowledge.” Indigenous studies as liberation knowledge recognize the agency indigenous peoples and promote social justice. In the capitalist world system, the indigenous peoples who do not have states cannot fully develop their institutions, including educational one, and promote social justice for their societies. Therefore, to promote their human rights that are enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, colonized peoples must intensify their national struggle to achieve national self-determination, statehood, and multinational democracy. Critical humanist scholars in universities must promote a single standard for humanity by supporting the aspirations of these peoples. At the beginning of the twentieth-first century, with the intensifications of globalization and the proliferation of ethnonationalisms, the nature and role of the nation-state are being challenged and changed by the globalizing structures, such as transnational elites, multinational corporations, technological transformation, the revolution in international communication and transformation of information, and by forces of ethnonational diversity and multiculturalism. The development of indigenous movements in different parts of the world shows that there are political and economic crises in various states in particular and the global system in general. The development of cultural and social movements among colonized peoples is seen as an integral part of the worldwide struggle for cultural identity, multiculturalism, economic freedom, social justice, and inalienable political and cultural rights of these peoples.