Month: April 2023

By Kayris Baggett

Colonial ideals are inextricably intertwined with the process of knowledge production in biomedicine, perhaps especially with regard to the infectious disease subspecialty. Whether through the direct treatment of colonized people as bodies for experimentation or the integration of colonial doctrine within medical teachings, the relationship between colonialism and Western infectious disease is undeniable. The discipline’s former name—tropical medicine—is itself a glaring example of the imperialistic undertones that ran (and still run) rampant in the making and practice of this field. Taking a critical anthropological lens to the histories of knowledge and knowledge production associated with tropical medicine, with a special focus on dengue fever, allows one to grasp colonial realities as they exist today within infectious disease and biomedicine at large.

In order to properly analyze this case study and its implications, one must first understand the etymology of infectious disease as a medical discipline. In the current age, infectious disease seeks to diagnose and treat patients from within the clinical setting. Epidemiology is the study of broader patterns of disease distribution and control, informing practice and policy in the adjacent fields of public and global health. It was not long ago, however, that these two branches were synthesized under the umbrella of tropical medicine, with the common goal of characterizing and documenting maladies hitherto unseen by Europeans as they colonized equatorial regions. Indeed, it can be said with certainty that tropical medicine was an inherently colonial project. This new knowledge system was designed to inform and protect the colonizer, not the colonized: Western doctors needed to understand how to treat soldiers and colonists as part of preserving colonial power structures (Hirsch and Martin 2022). Thus, a positive feedback loop between tropical medicine and colonialism developed from the specialty’s inception in the late 19^th century. As the search for new colonial markets in Asia “transformed the basic premises of modern medicine,” the doctor came to be regarded as the “most effective and penetrating agent of peaceful colonization” (Chakrabarty 2014: 2; Todd 1902: 155). Early bacteriology and parasitology played supporting roles in the civilizing mission of the colonist-savior, while European tropical medical schools made “creating European colonizers” part of the standard curriculum (Neill 2012: 44). Tropical medicine became a cog in the colonial machine, using conflations of modernity and Western-ness to justify the continued appropriation of resources, land, and lives.

Case Study: Dengue Fever

While the aforementioned conflations thread through many colonial histories—some of which are still being written—dengue in Southeast Asia serves as an excellent example. Almost entirely colonized by European powers by the late 19^th century, the region provided a plethora of endemic pathogens to fuel the emerging specialty of tropical medicine (Hafner et al. 2005). Dengue virus is but one of these agents of illness. Accounts of clinically compatible diseases dating back as far as 992 AD indicate that it has thrived in this domain for a very long time (Gubler 2006). Believed to have originated in sylvatic cycles in Asia two to four thousand years ago, the dengue microbe made the jump to humans via mosquito vectors within the last millennium, and is now known to have four main serotypes (Health Desk 2022).

Although dengue virus flourished in pre-colonial Southeast Asia, it positively proliferated with the help of imperial endeavors and globalization in general. The first confirmed dengue fever pandemic was documented in 1779, sweeping across Asia, North America, and Africa, presumably aided by trade routes and interdependent commodity chains (Health Desk 2022; McMichael 2011: 9). Port cities developed for the export of extracted goods were prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and travellers brought them and their viral cargo to new areas. This included transporting different serotypes to new locations, opening populations to re-infection and, as a result, to the much deadlier manifestation as dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Regardless of its prevalence, dengue remained largely outside of public (read: European) consciousness. With the slightest bit of research into why this may be, one is forced to reckon with the colonial design of disease hierarchies and their impact on clinical research and treatment development. Ailments that captured public attention and much-needed private funding, such as leprosy or cholera, were usually associated with high mortality or morbidity rates, highly visible signs of disease, or “specific cultural resonances” that inspired fear, sympathy, activism, or a combination of the three (Meerwijk 2018: 2). Dengue fever did not carry these connotations. It was generally non-lethal, had a short course of illness, failed to cause major epidemics in northern imperial centers, and was dwarfed in importance by its flashier and more worrisome cousin, yellow fever. And so, it became an out-of-sight, out-of-mind disease for most colonizers… until the United States took over the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. After their arrival in 1898, troops were “encumbered” by non-deadly dengue; only when it became “a source of considerable economic loss to the Army” and an overall nuisance did it become worthy of study by American tropical disease specialists (Meerwijk 2018: 5). Even then, no notable strides were made, and the quantities of research related to local post-war struggles—illness-related or otherwise—and to the impact of tropical disease on U.S. soldiers are somewhat disappointingly similar. As will be discussed later, this mindset persists to this day, and dengue continues to inhabit the fringe of medical consideration.

The next major set of dengue-related concerns arose in the wake of World War II. The destruction of towns and cities in Asian theaters of war would have left many without access to clean running water, creating an ideal environment for mosquito-borne illnesses. The other side of the coin was not any better. As Southeast Asian nations gained independence between 1945 and 1957 and reconstruction efforts got underway, massive urbanization was frequently quick to follow (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2004). Subsequently, dengue and many other viruses became hyperendemic, and these populations were the first to fall victim to the aforementioned fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever (Gubler 2006). Finally, the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948, intended to serve as a unified authority on global health under the umbrella of the United Nations, filled the vacuum of healthcare-related resources and support for newly independent nations. The potential for International-Monetary-Fund-like dependence concerns aside, one cannot ignore the fact that the WHO was white-dominated in its infancy, if not still. The authors of the book on international public health most likely shared a very similar mindset: that of a white, Western-educated, financially-well-to-do, cisgender, heterosexual male. This is an enduring truth for many dominant occidental knowledge-producing fields, including biomedicine.

These ideological hegemonic structures persisted in tropical medicine throughout (and after) its integration into infectious disease, epidemiology, and public and global health as we know them today. Dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever remain unsolved problems, and a case in point. There are no effective antiviral drugs. While there are two approved vaccines, only one (Dengvaxia) is designed for all serotypes, and it confers only partial non-lifetime immunity in 50% of recipients, requires three doses over the course of a year (which can present major accessibility issues), and its recipient population is limited to children aged nine to 16 with a laboratory-confirmed history of dengue living in high-risk regions (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2023). The only large-scale mitigation efforts are mediated by the World Mosquito Program (WMP), which releases modified mosquitoes to reduce the transmission capability of dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika vectors without compromising ecosystems (2012). While the WMP’s method has proven to be sustainable and effective in protecting humans from these pathogens, it takes time for the reduced-transmission trait to accumulate in a sufficient proportion of the mosquito population, and faster solutions with more guaranteed results would be ideal. Nevertheless, dengue fever is but one of twenty neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs, affecting an estimated one billion people across the globe (World Health Organization 2023). Upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that disparities in disease distribution play a significant role in maintaining the patterns of uneven development which underpin global inequality (Escobar 1994). The socioeconomic burdens associated with NTDs support neo-colonial power dynamics by reinforcing the cycles of poverty in which so many former colonies find themselves after gaining independence. The often already overloaded and under-equipped state of new nations’ healthcare systems and general infrastructure is exacerbated to a devastating degree. It is indubitable that many of the factors which caused dengue and similar ailments to fall through the cracks of scientific research in the 19^th and 20^th centuries are still applicable to NTDs today. One could wonder if, with global warming broadening the latitudinal range deemed habitable by certain disease-carrying mosquito species, these forsaken maladies will gain more attention as they affect Western powers to greater extents, as with dengue following the American occupation of the Philippines. Ongoing struggles to transcend colonial constructions of recognition and difference could become indisputably conspicuous if NTD-related research expands in correlation with Western interests. In being explicitly designated as ‘other’ and ‘lesser’ relative to illnesses that occupy more prominent positions in public and scientific consciousness, NTDs can be viewed as colonial legacies being acted out on the global stage before our very eyes. Infectious disease and public health understandings, hierarchies, and endeavors continue to be embroiled in the politics of recognition.

Future Directions

With all that being said, the concept of decolonizing infectious disease and biomedicine at large is a daunting one. The knowledge used in medical education and practice (and those of many other fields) today relies on understandings gained via colonial means and conveyed by conventionally Western authors. Knowledge represents a fundamental form of power: the thought system established as ‘objective’ and ‘pure,’ key tenets in Western biomedicine, was and is used as an instrument of colonial dominance. In this vein, history legitimizes and perpetuates colonial systems of thought and power because it has the potential to, and often does, marginalize or altogether remove alternative voices. This realization raises concerns related not only to the teaching of historical knowledge, but also to the production of it, as these unilateral narratives frequently serve as the bases for further history-writing. What are the ramifications of standards or histories established using knowledge from a homogenous set of perspectives? How do we grapple with the voices that were and are overwritten or erased? How do we parse out these concerns and their heavy implications for the teaching, learning, and application of medicine as we know it? Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers some reassurance that these questions are potentially answerable. Firstly, by remaining cognizant of the politics contributing to which stories are told and by whom, one can begin to pick away at these concerns (Trouillot 1995). Secondly, one cannot ignore the ways in which histories are made through their telling in the pursuit of a complete ‘truth.’ Lastly, maintaining an awareness of silences, blank spaces where subaltern perspectives could and should exist, is imperative. These principles are all applicable to decolonizing the medico-historical record. While there are, of course, complicating factors—for example, not every actor is aware of their agency in the creation of knowledge, its documentation, or its teaching—making these part of a standard approach to learning may be sufficient to begin the process of unraveling everyday colonialities in the classroom. Jennifer Johnson supplies further impetus (2016):

[One must find] ways to dismantle binary pairings, most notably, metropole/colony, Western biomedicine/“traditional” medicine and colonial/post-colonial. These points of intersection… point toward a continuum, rather than a rupture, of time and space, thus pushing historians to re-evaluate medical authority, scientific knowledge production and local agency in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.

Her words invoke the work of Arturo Escobar in their call to construct different ontological vantage points that diminish the dominance of black-and-white dichotomies (2018). Euro-centric vertical hierarchies have fundamentally infiltrated our methods of structuring knowledge, down to the very ways we perceive the world. It is easy to see these stark divisions in action in Western biomedicine, with its implicit presumption of the Cartesian duality among others such as normal/abnormal, right/wrong, central (biomedicine itself)/peripheral (every other healing system). When one considers these profoundly ingrained divisions in conjunction with those to which decolonial theory is sometimes susceptible, the potential benefit of pluralizing thoughts and histories as part of the postcolonial project is undeniable. Approaching knowing and learning from a position of horizontal relationality would more authentically recognize and reflect the diversities of the lived human experience. With ideas from Trouillot, Johnson, and Escobar, one can begin to re-balance the unequal power dynamics behind dominances and silences in knowledge on an everyday basis—and it is these kinds of small-scale consistent efforts that create widespread, deep-rooted change. Although it may not be easy or simple to implement these notions, they impart some level of hope unto aspiring un-doers of colonial influence.

Encountering colonial influences within facets of Western society is less akin to finding a needle in a haystack and more to bumping into a pachyderm in a room full of elephants. The fundamentally colonial nature of tropical medicine and related younger fields continues to manifest in the ways we understand and approach disease, including dengue fever. Despite its relatively lengthy history, dengue has yet to receive the level of public attention or scientific research necessary to generate effective treatments and vaccines. This illness, along with the twenty other neglected tropical diseases, is something of an orphan in the worlds of biomedical and public health, in large part due to inherited colonial designs and hierarchies. It is what we do with our awareness of these inheritances that will define our success as contributors to the postcolonial project. Classic defenders of critical theory call us to rebel against the often insidiously ubiquitous colonial regimes of truth that run deep within global society today. We must approach dominant histories with open eyes in order to understand what lies beyond such limited narratives, and actively seek out subaltern voices. We must deconstruct old systems of recognition and create new ones that make space for multiple stories and knowledges. We must release reductionist dichotomies that keep us from coexisting within that kind of plural space. In the style of Escobar, our world is ours to make and unmake within the pluriverse… not at the expense of others, but in concert as mutually flawed beings just trying to comprehend a little more about life and living than we did before. Ours is a complicated and sometimes dauntingly damaged society, but it is with hope and pragmatic optimism that I leave you with these words from Ari Satok:

Fear cannot be quarantined

But neither can love,

Kindness too can spread,

Catastrophe can hold in it the seeds of compassion If we choose to let them grow.

Works Cited

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The Dengue Vaccine.” Last modified April 3, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/dengue/vaccine/parents/eligibility/faq.html.

Chakrabarty, Pratik. Medicine and Empire: 1600-1960. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Gubler, Duane J. “Dengue/Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever: History and Current Status.” Novartis Foundation Symposium 277, no. 1 (2006): 3-16. https://doi.org/10.1002/0470058005.ch2.

Hafner, James A., et al. “Thailand.” Encyclopaedia Britannica website. Accessed April 22, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/place/Thailand/The-postwar-crisis-and-the- return-of-Phibunsongkhram.

Health Desk. “What is dengue and where did it originate from?” Last modified July 21, 2022. https://health-desk.org/articles/what-is-dengue-and-where-did-it-originate-from.

Hirsch, Lioba A., and Rebecca Martin. “LSHTM and Colonialism: A Report on the Colonial History of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (1899– c.1960).” Project report, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2022. https://doi.org/10.17037/PUBS.04666958.

Johnson, Jennifer. “Review: New Directions in the History of Medicine in European, Colonial and Transimperial Contexts.” Contemporary European History 25, no. 2 (May 2016): 387-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26294107.

McMichael, Philip. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2011.

Meerwijk, Maurits Bastiaan. “Dengue Fever, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Southeast Asia.” PhD diss., University of Hong Kong, 2018.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Southeast Asia, 1900 A.D. – present.” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, October 2004. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11&region=sse.

Neill, Deborah J. Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

Satok, Ari. “Untitled Poem.” Unknown date, accessed March 23 2020.

Todd, John to Rosanna Todd, letter of December 3, 1902, in Letters, p. 155.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.

World Health Organization. “Neglected Tropical Diseases.” Last modified January 16, 2023. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/neglected-tropical-diseases#:~:text=Neglected%20tropical%20diseases%20(NTDs)%20are,who%20live%20in%20impoverished%20communities.

World Mosquito Project. “Our Wolbachia Method.” Accessed April 25, 2023. https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/en/work/wolbachia-method.

by Andrew Sun

All the time, I uncover the folds and creases of my identity and positionality as an Asian American. 

There exist nuances of my identity I am proud to display. They include the shared sanctity of hotpot and dimsum, the student cultural showcases of music and art and dance, and the shared immigrant backstory, the marathon toward generational stability. I am proud to sit in and struggle against the history of Asian American oppression, from Japanese internment, to the Chinese Exclusion Act, to modern-day anti-Asian vitriol and hate. 

Often framed as a meme or joke, there is a personal aspect of my identity in which I do not feel overwhelming pride: the overabundance of Asian and Asian American men in mathematics classrooms, and the exclusive and inequitable environment it often creates for others. In March, I used the phenomenon as fodder to receive funding to visit Seattle, simultaneously an active battleground for an ethnic studies infusion in math, and a haven for the pan-Asian community. My transformational trip at the beginning of April cosigns, alongside what I have learned in class, the critique I present against mathematics as it currently conceptualized, especially in the US.

It behooves me, though, to start with a vignette of those proximate to the problem — because as an Asian American man in college mathematics, I exist as far from the problem as possible.

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Shraddha stumbled into the dimly lit Chinatown restaurant, loosened up by the teachers-only happy hour. The Friday before Spring Break deserved its own celebration, the beginning of a respite from an exhausting yet liberating job: teaching students about the power dynamics and oppressive tacts that shapes mathematics as we understand it today.

“Hi I don’t know your name. What are we even talking about again?”

The conversation that followed jarred me more than most, half a drunken rant and half a genius at work (maybe both were true). Shraddha and the other two folks (all people of color) I ate with were all part of a non-profit to infuse Seattle’s public school district with an ethnic studies lens; they had beforehand worked within the system, before being unceremoniously ousted as white parents realized the danger to their positionality as power brokers of society. I sensed from my hosts anger and disdain that, as a personal beneficiary of the system of mathematics education, felt incomprehensible until I considered my epistemic limitations.

The immediately preceding conversation exacerbated my disillusionment. I had conversed in a posh coffee shop with a white lady, Tracy, who also sought to make mathematics more inclusive, through the opening of an interactive math museum. She balked a bit when asked about the group I was to then eat dinner with, before diplomatically praising their efforts to “disrupt” the exclusive mathematics education of Seattle’s district. I recall feeling relatively inspired and satisfied by all but this one tidbit. 

The ensuing dinner would completely blow up this one inconsistency. When I asked Shraddha about Tracy, she did not hold back, bashing her advocacy as entirely insufficient, using a lot of swear words that I won’t quote. She clarified for me the distinction between their efforts: Tracy was book-educated about the historical westernization and ethnic cleansing of math, but did not believe that students should be taught of these disparities — it becomes the goal of the educator, then, to provide inclusive teaching to connect everyone’s mathematical journey to the real world, the world that they’ve lived. To Shraddha, such connection is not possible without the students’ candid understanding of the oppression and power dynamics to shape the mathematics that we understand today. Her education included her lived experience.

The end of that day left me jarred precisely because I felt more comfortable during my conversation with Tracy than with Shraddha. I struggled against the realization that much of my discomfort with Shraddha came about because of her lack of professionalism, a standard that in the larger context of her work to liberate those left out of accessing mathematics entirely, felt completely trivial. My comfort with Tracy reflected my privilege.

To both groups, I asked the question: “What can I do as an Asian American man in math, part of an overrepresented group, to contribute to change?” The critique I present is one piece of what is hopefully a much larger contribution to the overlap between the knowledge project of postcolonialism and decolonialism, and the justice project of ethnic studies in math. Against the constraints of the privilege of my identity, I attempt to roleplay and embrace the more radical vision Shraddha champions, that being to investigate the ways in which colonial mathematics folds into the present.

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Principally, mathematics is characterized as the ultimate form of objective, unshakable truth to justify the exploitative intentionalities of the colonizers. I will first contextualize such an argument with its predecessors in the social sciences and natural sciences, before arguing for the argument’s extension to an ostensibly more rigorous field in mathematics, where logical proof justifies any and all assumptions as its mechanism of objectivity.

Social science as a field faces much criticism for attempting to utilize the same methodologies as the natural sciences, despite the inherent variability of human behavior as opposed to natural and biological processes (Drum 2012). Namely, natural and biological phenomena are more structurally consistent and “modelable” than their social counterparts; in some sense, much of humanity is scarred by its utter insanity.

Even so, social science, in carrying the label “science,” has allowed it to assume an inappropriate level of power, empowering colonizers to mask manipulative intentionality with objectivity. In addition, social science has been granted by societal systems (be it economic, cultural, or otherwise) a certain universality that effectively constitutes colonization of the imagination: “By admitting the existence of a universal process (modernity, capitalism, globalization) and of forces that, when all is said and done, underlie it (the forces of nature, the material, the technological, the economic), these ways of thinking again and again handed over to the systematizing forms of social science a territory and a logic they would never so easily have been able to establish” (Mitchell 2002: 2).

Concurrently with social science, more “scientific” science also falls prey to the fallacy of objectivity as a motif of the colonizer. Despite science’s obsession with the scientific method, it is not difficult to conspicuously assemble any collection of scientific data into a self-serving and othering narrative. 

Most perniciously, the power-brokers in society have repeatedly developed arbitrary and convenient formulas, masked as scientific definitions, to characterize identity. According to Nazism’s best and brightest scientists, the width of a German nose is casually indicative of their ethnicity, a convenient proxy for ethnic cleansing (Skibba 2019). According to America’s most esteemed scholars of science (I’m being sarcastic here), the percentage of tribal blood should formulaically determine tribal affilitation and recognition status in the United States (Chow 2018). The intention is clear: arbitrary limitations to citizenship as a precursor to indigenous genocide, masked by the authoritarianism of objective, immutable “science” (Chow 2018).

Underlying these socially scientific and biologically scientific methodologies, however, is the language of mathematics and its “objectivity.” How can it be that mathematics can be co-opted to the language of colonialism, when mathematics exists as its own discrete set of rules, guided only by logic and not politics?

These are the refrains and talking points that right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson propagate, no better captured than by the response to Shraddha’s group: “2+2 = 4, but if the student says 5, you better not correct them, oppressor, because Seattle math is racist” (Rantz 2019).

Much of mathematics rests on objective axioms such as addition and subtraction, and so the example seems to refute the premise of math as a technology of rule. However, many more counting systems exist than the Europeanized system: for instance, the Amazon’s Arara tribe speak of numbers only as combinations of “1” and “2” rather than the 10 basic numbers that our westernized system utilizes (Macdonald 2017). Even as computers rely on the same binary system of computation, one of the most technologically advanced innovations of our times is never framed in terms of the contributions of indigenous and aboriginal counting systems. The marketplace of systems that led to the eventual “universal” counting systems that we refer to today have nothing to do with the validity of each system, but more so to do with the money, influence, and power that undergirds each one.

More importantly, a crucial component of mathematics, mathematical modeling, relies on the principle that making effective (and oftentimes, strong) assumptions about the world that we live in allows us to recharacterize said world in useful mathematical constructs. In other words, models make no claims about solving real-life problems, only their simplified counterparts. Yet the power-brokers of our times and times past abuse these models by granting them the power that they do not deserve.

Grading, a subject often mentioned in class, suffices as an example. Grades take the complicated, nuanced experience of learning in a classroom and reduces said experience to a one-dimensional measurement: a number between 0 and 100. As we have discussed, the model of grades is replete with faulty and strong assumptions about the aspects of learning that ought to be emphasized the most (eg. tests), ahead of arguably more generative modes of education, as well as de-emphasizing the effect of circumstances outside the classroom on in-classroom achievement (Jacob 2018). IQ tests and literacy tests for Black American are two especially pernicious examples of the grading model, as they are co-opted by the oppressor to push out marginalized communities under the fantasy of a complete meritocracy (Reddy 2008: 668).

As hinted before, mathematics becomes especially vulnerable is in its articulation and communication, especially in the context of the colonialisms whose creases remain as marks in the political systems of today. It is not hard to imagine that the politicians of the United States are, on the whole, not very statistically literate, and so such illiteracy, in concert with malicious intent, smears the set-in-stone assumptions that premise statistical results. Take a well-cited statistic in support of the Trump travel ban for Muslims: “70% of immigrants who are identified as terrorists are from predominantly Muslim countries” (Boven 2020). Such a statement cleverly frames away the reality that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are not terrorists, and so there exists no rational justification to look at the entire pool of Muslim immigrants when screening for terrorists (Boven 2020).

In essense, not only are the “truths” present in mathematics a product of power, influence, and money, but they are also misrepresented and mischaracterized by those with power in society to justify the age-old premise of colonial difference.

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In a well-oiled democracy, blatant misuse and abuse of mathematics is theoretically suspect to the checks of the journalistic and the legal system, as well as the public more broadly. However, public resistance is dependent on public knowledge. As such, mathematics has been gatekept as a subject to abuse in all the ways that I just described.

Arturo Escobar comments on a similar logic inherent to other technologies of rule, yet leaves out mathematics as one of those technologies: “Many technologies or “tools” based on specialized knowledge . . surpassed their thresholds sometime in the early to mid-twentieth century. Once these thresholds were passed, the technologies became . . profoundly destructive in material and cultural terms . . . The  concentration of power, energy, and technical knowledge in bureaucracies (the State) resulted in the institutionalization of these tools and enabled a tight system of control over production and destruction” (Escobar 2018: 8).

To extrapolate from the machinery of Escobar’s argument, mathematics education assumes that mathematics exists as disembodied knowledge (eg. “I am not a math person”) — that it is a set of axioms, propositions, and theorems that can be memorized by anyone. Framing mathematics in such a manner sounds familiar to anyone who has taken a mathematics course on the K-12 level, with an emphasis on memorization and formulas. 

That mathematics exists relationally and accessibly to any student as embodied knowledge, regardless of their perceived mathematical ability, seems radical, yet it is the center of new waves of research and innovation in the pedagogy of mathematics. Active environmental interaction helps students learn mathematics more sustainably, which serves as the basic inspiration for Tracy’s proposed math museum (Alberto 2022: 2). In addition, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in mathematics departments across the country have identified that more conscious teachers assist in everyone’s learning (Shifrer 2023). In math classrooms just as in any classroom, more internal diversity creates a collective upward achievement effect (Wells 2016).

When phrased innocuously as a matter of “accessibility,” mathematics education reform seems more palatable (as it certainly did to me, hearing from Tracy) because it feels lsess threatening to the powers-that-be. As soon as such reform adopts the frames of “equity” and “liberation,” as they did in the case of the Seattle public school district, the reaction becomes much more severe. Shraddha and one of the other folks I ate with that night brought one of their male friends to dinner, revealing to me by its conclusion that they did so as a form of protection. They were fearful to discuss their knowledge and agenda for liberation with a stranger because of the countless death threats they have received, not to mention their ousting from seats of power from within the district. 

Knowledge and literacy of mathematics and statistics for the colonized and oppressed in particular is upsetting to the colonizer force because it empowers these communities to pull the levers of democracy and credibly call BS to mathematical abuse as justification for colonization. Even more dangerous is the explicit teaching of the system of mathematics as oppression at work, which differentiates Tracy and her math museum and Shraddha and her ethnic studies curriculum, prompting the disparate public reaction they’ve received in Seattle — Tracy with positivity and celebration, and Shraddha with doxxing and death threats.

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Take a piece of paper and crease it. Your best efforts will not erase the mark that crease leaves behind. It can, however, lesson that mark over time, with intentionality and purpose.

Some of the creases of my positionality I want to do away with. I sense that a plurality of my Asian friends in math classes have no interest in talking about politics and liberation and critique, and they would rather live in the simple, beautiful world that math has created for them to inhabit. And I don’t blame them.

As colonialism folds and unfolds and reconfigures itself into different phenomena of oppression and power and influence, mathematics by no means has been left unmarked. It is the subaltern who speak on this matter, for whom these marks appear as scars on their spirit, and for whom the stories behind the statistics of liberation are especially raw.

I will never live their experience, but the slow and steady work of uncreasing liberates me as it liberates them.

Bibliography

Alberto, Rosa, Anna Shvarts, Paul Drijvers, and Arthur Bakker. “Action-based embodied design for mathematics learning: A decade of variations on a theme.” International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 32 (June 2022): 1-23. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221286892100101X#:~:text=Abstract,embodied%20technologies%20for%20mathematics%20learning.

Boven, Leaf Van, Ronit Montal-Rosenberg, and David Sherman. “Liberals and conservatives both misuse facts. But there are ways to stop that impulse.” LA Times, January 22, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-22/statistics-politics-liberals-statistics.

Chow, Kat. “So What Exactly Is ‘Blood Quantum’?” NPR, February 9, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum.

Drum, Kevin. “Social Science is Hard.” Mother Jones, July 24, 2012. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/social-science-hard/.

Escobar, Arturo. Introduction to Designs for the Pluriverse, 1-21. Duke University Press, 2018. PDF.

Jacob, Brian A., and Joseph Ryan. How life outside of a school affects student performance in school. March 22, 2018. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-life-outside-of-a-school-affects-student-performance-in-school/.

Macdonald, Alan. “Binary, Counting Horses, Indigenous Tribes… Oh my!” Education ePortfolio (blog). Entry posted October 19, 2017. https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/ajmeportfolio/2017/10/19/binary-counting-horses-indigenous-tribes-oh-my/.

“Math is Racist in Seattle.” Video, 3:23. Facebook. Posted by Jason Rantz, October 8, 2019. https://www.facebook.com/JasonRantzShow/videos/919177741802092/.

Mitchell, Timothy. Introduction to Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, 1-12. University of California Press, 2002. PDF.

Reddy, Ajitha. “The Eugenic Origins of IQ Testing: Implications for Post-Atkins Litigation Litigation.” DePaul Law Review 57, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 667-78. PDF.

Shifrer, Dara. “Think you’re good at math? Study shows it may be because you had equitable math teachers.” ScienceDaily, March 3, 2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230303105248.htm.

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by Abby Winterich-Knox

One understudied consequence of colonialism is its effect on Indigenous gender and sexuality. There is vast evidence of third genders and non-heterosexual relationships among Indigenous people before and after colonization, but the framing of these individuals is now often confined through the Western lens (O’Sullivan 2021: 8). Viewing Indigenous experiences of gender and sexuality solely through a Western colonist mindset has impacted the modern understanding of Indigenous Americans and contributed to the erasure of Indigenous culture. The imposition of Western norms on Indigenous people is a continuing effect of colonialism that exists into the present. It is necessary to attempt an understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems outside of the Western lens to reflect a truthful understanding of Indigenous gender and sexuality. Furthermore, the limited Western understanding of the gender binary as male or female could grow from understanding Indigenous perspectives and approaches to gender and sexuality (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 256). When non-Indigenous people can accept that they can learn and expand their knowledge of gender from Indigenous people, then true decolonization is possible; there must be a joint effort between non-native and Indigenous people.

An important part of studying pre-colonial history is that there is often a lack of primary sources on Indigenous gender structures and experiences (Dozono 2017: 426). This means that it is very important to center contemporary Indigenous scholars and authors in research. A key part of colonization is that Indigenous people are viewed as inferior in the eyes of the white settlers, who justify their actions by stating that they are helping to advance Indigenous civilization (O’Sullivan 2021: 1). Using this as a justification means that colonists can rationalize colonization, including genocide, in an extremely dangerous way. White colonists in the Americas have historically weaponized Indigenous experiences of gender and sexuality. Fox and Wu state that colonists use Indigenous understanding of multiple genders as a reason to see them as inferior (2023: 12). White settlers initiated genocide, land theft, and cultural erasure and used Indigenous gender and sexuality as justifications (Fox and Wu 2023: 12). Morgensen argues that part of this demolition of Indigenous culture was because of the sexualizing mindset that the white colonists had. They viewed Indigenous people as subordinates and people they were able to take advantage of (Morgensen 2012: 4). This is important to articulate, as white settlers assumed that they could push their sexuality on Indigenous people while rejecting the entire systems of Native gender and sexuality structures is a key part of colonizing gender and sexuality. O’Sullivan writes that one of the ways European settlers did this was by enforcing Western family structures on Indigenous peoples (2021: 1). Colonists forced a mimicking of European family structures: a female mother and a male father with a child who is either male or female. The passing down of gender roles from the parent to the child is a necessary part of maintaining the European gender binary and was a direct intention of the colonial project (O’Sullivan 2021:1).

When discussing concepts that can feel intangible, such as decolonization and pre-colonial gender, it is useful to look at case studies of Indigenous people who live outside the Western gender binary. It is important to remember that the Indigenous experience exists outside of contemporary Western ideas of gender and sexuality. One must understand the specific Indigenous knowledge and culture to contextualize how third genders might manifest (Dozono 2017: 444). It is not a concept that can be understood through a European or American lens. Each culture must be examined and analyzed as an independent people with sovereign identities and values, outside of the colonial project (Dozono 2017: 443).

Two specific places to look are the muxes in Mexico (Mirandé 2016: 385) and māhū in Hawaii (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 262). Muxes are third gender individuals who are a part of the Zapotec culture of Oaxaca, Mexico. They are people who are assigned male at birth, and then act and identify with qualities that are typically associated with femininity or women (Mirandé 2016: 385). An important note here is that muxes do not identify as transgender, which is most likely the category that a Western lens would put them in. There is no desire or intention to change gender identities or become a woman, but instead, they are identified as a gender outside of man or woman (Mirandé 2016: 385). Mirandé writes that it is important to not conflate the muxes’ experiences with LGBTQ+ experiences in Western culture. There needs to be a distinct understanding of Zapotec and muxe culture to contextualize their experiences, as there is simply no equivalent of this third gender category in the Western understanding of gender and sexuality (Mirandé 2016: 385).

A second case study of the māhū in Hawaii is useful when analyzing genders outside of the Western colonist lens. The story of Kapaemahu is about four stones that serve as a tribute to four māhū, who were healers (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 262). Gender was a very important part of the identity of the māhū, even more so than the healing itself. Māhū individuals are often misrepresented as being intersex; they are third gender, with both masculine and feminine qualities (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 263). Similar to the muxes, the third gender of māhū typically manifests as individuals who are male-assigned at birth that adopt feminine dress and behaviors (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 264). As colonization spread through Hawaii, with the annexation in 1898 and becoming a state in 1959, so did the white, colonist heteronormativity. White Americans pushed for a law that became known as Act 175, which made it illegal to dress as “the opposite sex” (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022: 264). Under the guise of protecting māhū from facing discrimination, this law allowed arresting and charging these individuals for how they presented their gender. It became so commonplace for people who operated outside of the gender binary to face such strong discrimination that the word māhū itself became a slur and derogatory. As Hamer and Wong-Kalu write, the colonial project was successful in destroying gender and sexuality expression by making it such an impossible environment to exist in safely (2022: 280). Instead of explaining the history of māhū and their significance, colonialism made it dangerous for gender-fluid people to explain anything about their experiences.

Both of these case studies show how important specificity is in studying third genders or gender identities that operate outside of the Western gender binary of male and female. European colonist language does not accurately reflect the gender and sexuality manifestations of other cultures (Fox and Wu 2023: 1). It is useless to apply only European and American understandings of gender to Indigenous peoples, as this is counterproductive in understanding the actual experiences of people. Trying to fit Indigenous gender and sexuality concepts into a Western lens leads to further Indigenous erasure, which is a direct byproduct of colonialism (Morgensen 2012: 10).

Coulthard addresses the problems of dismissing Indigenous cultural specificities in his book, “Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition.” He focuses on the Canadian government’s recognition of First Nation peoples in Canada (2014: 2). Coulthard cites that there have been increases in political recognition of Indigenous cultures and communities all across the world (2014: 2). As recognition increases, it is important to account for how Indigenous groups are being portrayed and protected by the government. For example, he states that past activists and scholars have not recognized how big a role patriarchy plays in the relationship between power and colonialism (2014: 14). Using a feminist approach, Coulthard argues that instead of just political recognition, there needs to be attention on the cultural practices that are specific to Indigenous cultures (2014: 16). Using this lens to address gender and sexuality moving forward can be useful. It is helpful to remember that it is not enough to just address the gender and sexuality diversity among Native people, but instead to maintain the specific culture and language of these individuals and communities. Coulthard’s arguments help contextualize the importance of both government recognition and direct action.

Effects of colonialism are seen everywhere, including in contemporary Indigenous gender and sexuality. The success of the colonial project on diminishing and erasing Indigenous culture has significant consequences for current Indigenous people. Fox and Wu write that in academia, Indigenous studies rarely are viewed as their knowledge system that has effects on other projects (2023: 1). Instead, they are typically grouped with colonial understandings, which is problematic as it erases the nuances and individuality of Indigenous culture. This is a continuation of the colonial project which attempted to erase Indigenous culture and peoples. Confining Indigenous knowledge systems and representation into the Western framework of gender and sexuality is evidence of the continued colonial control (O’Sullivan 2021: 8). The colonist narrative is not an accurate reflection of Indigenous gender and sexuality, but it can shape understandings. O’Sullivan cites museums as an example of this, writing that museums are “spaces that have collected, reduced and displayed our very bodies…where our past and our present are held” (2021: 8). Museums are just one tangible example of the colonial project reflecting gender in an unchanging and fixed way (O’Sullivan 2021: 8). This is important because controlling the narrative equates to controlling the culture’s identity, which is a long-lasting effect of the colonial project.

While Indigenous studies and truthful reflections of Indigenous culture are often left out of academia and modern understanding as a result of the colonial project, it is critical to listen to the Indigenous voices that are explaining how to change the narrative. It is essential to both have a historical understanding of Indigenous gender and sexuality and to account for how a colonist framework continues to erase or control the portrayal of Indigenous gender and sexuality today. A step beyond learning is to examine the intersection of contemporary Indigenous people and LGBTQ+ movements. There is space for inclusivity among the LGBTQ+ movement of Indigenous people without erasing the specific Indigenous experience that might differ from the more accepted, Western LGBTQ+ understandings (Dozono 2017: 428). For example, the concept of “Two-Spirit” was adopted by Indigenous organizers in North America to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ Indigenous individuals, or Indigenous people whose identities do not fall into the linguistic structure of Western gender and sexuality concepts. “Two-Spirit” refers to being of a third gender, and is distinct from LGBTQ+, as it reflects the Indigenous belief systems of spirituality. Individuals who are Two-Spirit are spiritually blessed, as they have both masculine and feminine qualities (Dozono 2017: 440). Because of globalization and the connecting world, it is important to recognize the overlap between Indigenous third genders and non-heteronormative structures and Western, queer individuals and perspectives. One way that these can support each other is by expanding academic research on gender and sexuality to include Indigenous perspectives and knowledge (Fox and Wu 2023: 14). When working to expand academia to be more inclusive, there must be a complete understanding of modern gender and sexuality in specified instead of universal language.

The rise in universally used language and homogeneity is directly linked to globalization, which as McMichael notes, is a very accepted phenomenon of the modern world (2011: 1). There are interesting connections to be made when looking at development and climate change, as McMichael examines, and the impact of colonialism on gender and sexuality. A similarity that can be useful is to look is how Western development negatively impacts Indigenous people. Climate change as a result of development and industrialization has the strongest negative effect on Indigenous populations (McMichael 2011: 3). Furthermore, while the “developed world” has industrialized through deforestation and development that is bad for the environment, it is now these “developed” countries that are telling the rest of the world they should not do the same thing (McMichael 2011: 4). This reminds me of how colonialism created the gender binary and imposed that on Indigenous groups, just as they created development and tried to enforce it. But now as Western norms become more inclusive, they are trying to include Indigenous people in LGBTQ+ spaces, just as they are trying to stop people from harming the environment. The parallel here is that the colonial project created problems that they passed on to Indigenous people, and now are blaming those people for the problems. Globalization runs into problems when it assumes that every culture has the same norms and values, and that is seen in both the experience of gender and development.

When attempting to decolonize gender and separate Indigenous gender and sexuality experiences from the colonial framework, it is important to note that decolonization movements do not only support those who identify among the third genders but support every Indigenous person (Morgensen 2012: 4). It is key to focus on the intentionality of the colonial project. There is a purpose in erasing Indigenous individuality: to diminish their cultural importance. The colonial framework does not recognize Indigenous people as valued communities outside of the purpose that they serve for colonialism (O’Sullivan 2021: 2). It also homogenizes the vast diversity of Indigenous experiences that exist into one, abstract Native portrayal. This is an intentional, colonist push to make Indigenous people all appear as the same (O’Sullivan 2021: 1). It is necessary to point out the limited first-hand evidence of third genders and sexuality representation in Indigenous cultures since this serves as proof not of their nonexistence, but of colonial erasure. When bringing this back to contemporary gender and sexuality, it is necessary to examine how queer discourses often prioritize white progressiveness, and discount the Indigenous experiences that have existed long before current movements (O’Sullivan 2021: 3). There is a reductive narrative that queer Indigenous people followed the lead of white, LGBTQ+ individuals. The rise in LGBTQ+ identifying Indigenous people neither confirms nor disproves the historical and contemporary truthfulness of Indigenous gender and sexuality that falls outside of this Western understanding (O’Sullivan 2021: 1). There is more specificity needed when discussing the intersection of contemporary gender and sexuality experiences and Indigenous knowledge systems.

One helpful place to learn about the contemporary experience of Indigenous gender and sexuality is to analyze specific cases. Mandy Henningham writes an autoethnography about her experience as both queer and Indigenous (2021). She writes that Indigenous individuals who also identify as queer have to balance their cultural traditions with new, Western LGBTQ+ environments (2021: 7). Henningham states that there is power in writing an autoethnography from an Indigenous queer perspective, as this intersection of identities has interesting and unique knowledge to contribute. She writes that both Indigenous populations who have been colonized by white people and queer people who exist in a heteronormative world “are subjugated by the powers of white heteronormativity…this demonstrates the layered complexities of identity multiplicity” (2021: 9). There is extreme nuance in the intersectionality of identity, and in navigating multiple identities that are all affected by a white heteronormative worldview. Henningham compares queerness and her cultural experiences; she writes about how there are similarities in navigating her ethnic traditions and culture while existing in a Western, academic space, and accepting her queer identity as both a product of Western understandings of sexuality and her traditions. There are often misconceptions that come when trying to figure out someone else’s identity, which is an experience of both Indigenous and LGBTQ+ individuals (Henningham 2021: 13). This connection is valuable in understanding both the queer and Indigenous experience today.

Learning from individual experiences such as Henningham’s is valuable in familiarizing oneself with the actual lived experience of existing in the world today as an Indigenous, queer person. It is also helpful, however, to learn from scholars such as Coulthard who can help contextualize what it means to have actualized recognition of Indigenous communities. Having both an overarching and a personal view of the experience of gender and sexuality among Indigenous communities is a necessary step in protecting and validating Indigenous people who exist outside of the Western gender binary and norm.

Works Cited

Coulthard, Glen Sean. “Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition.” Minneapolis: Minnesota (2014): 1-24.

Dozono, Tadashi. “Teaching alternative and indigenous gender systems in world history: A queer approach.” The History Teacher 50, no. 3 (2017): 425-447.

Fox, Michael J., and Haorui Wu. “Terminology and Language Used in Indigenous-Specific

Gender and Sexuality Diversity Studies: A Systematic Review.” Social Sciences 12, no. 3 (2023): 145.

Hamer, Dean, and Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu. “Kapaemahu: Toward Story Sovereignty of a

Hawaiian Tradition of Healing and Gender Diversity.” The Contemporary Pacific 34, no. 2 (2022): 255-291.

Henningham, Mandy. “Blak, bi+ and borderlands: An autoethnography on multiplicities of

Indigenous queer identities using borderland theory.” Social Inclusion 9, no. 2 (2021): 7-17.

McMichael, Philip. “Development and Social Change.” London: Sage Publications (2011): 112-149.

Mirandé, Alfredo. “Hombres mujeres: An indigenous third gender.” Men and Masculinities 19, no. 4 (2016): 384-409.

Morgensen, Scott Lauria. “Theorising gender, sexuality and settler colonialism: An introduction.” settler colonial studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 2-22.

O’Sullivan, Sandy. “The colonial project of gender (and everything else).” Genealogy 5, no. 3 (2021): 67.