3 Religion and coloniality

So far you have been introduced to the notions of colonisation and colonialism. The next key term that you will explore is ‘coloniality’. The term coloniality was introduced by the Peruvian scholar Aníbal Quijano as a response to academic Eurocentrism in order to address the coloniality of academic knowledge.

There are important distinctions between colonisation, colonialism and coloniality. While ‘colonisation’ broadly refers to the process of physically establishing colonies in ‘new’ territories, and ‘colonialism’ refers to entire systems of influence and exploitation, coloniality refers specifically to the control and management of knowledge by the ‘universals’ of Western modernity, Eurocentrism and global capitalism (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018).

It might be difficult to follow this rather dense definition of coloniality and what ‘universals’ mean in this context, but do not be discouraged. You will now learn how religion can be considered a ‘universal’ within colonial thought. To explore this, you will be guided through an example of the Sámi practice of joik, which shows how Indigenous ways of knowing and being were positioned within a hierarchical order of religion.