Exactly this. You can be "anti-imperialist" while being profoundly colonialist.
So many Western anti-imperialists are opposed to empire not because they think our lives, as natives, are worth anything. They're opposed to empire because of their own domestic political fights, or economic interests, or ideologies, or worldviews
You can be opposed to empire while still carrying a colonial attitude. You can be opposed to foreign intervention while still treating natives as interchangeable pawns for your own domestic politics. You can be opposed to empire while still not giving a flying fuck about us.
I refuse to be colonized. I refuse to center the colonizer. I refuse to make this all about *you*, with us written out of the story, as if our lives don't matter. All while you're being all progressive and liberal and supportive of civil rights at home.
We were living in a neocolonial world order that disguised itself as a "liberal world order" for far too long. The alternative presented by so-called "progressives" is just as neocolonial, just with cleaner hands and better domestic politics. That's not good enough for us.
The very idea that there's a hierarchy of human lives, some important and some less important, needs to be uprooted. It needs to be uprooted from our souls, us, the natives, as well.
Never, ever, compromise on your dignity. Never accept to be talked about as if you don't matter. Never, ever engage in these debates as if all is well. Be disruptive if you have to. Be abusive if you have to. Be jarring. Get on their nerves. Never allow this to be normalized.
What's the worst they could do? Kill us? Snipe us? Bomb us? Put us in cages? Gas us to death? Drown us in the sea? Or cut up our bodies and burn them in ovens? What can they do to these bodies that hasn't already been done?
You should not be afraid of them. They should be afraid of you.
