variants:
also British decolonise
decolonized; decolonizing; decolonizes
Definition of decolonize
1
: to free (a people or area) from colonial status : to relinquish control of (a subjugated people or area)
the year the country was decolonized The country faces international pressure to decolonize the territory.
2
: to free from the dominating influence of a colonizing power
especially
: to identify, challenge, and revise or replace assumptions, ideas, values, and practices that reflect a colonizer's dominating influence and especially a Eurocentric dominating influence
To decolonise and not just diversify curriculums is to recognise that knowledge is inevitably marked by power relations. … A decolonised curriculum would bring questions of class, caste, race, gender, ability and sexuality into dialogue with each other, instead of pretending that there is some kind of generic identity we all share. — Priyamvada Gopal Per a statement, staff [at the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum] have removed a total of 120 human remains from display, moving them to storage as part of a museum-wide effort to decolonize the Pitt Rivers' collections. — Nora McGreevy Decolonizing science will also involve encouraging Western institutions that hold imperial scientific collections to reflect more on the violent political contexts of war and colonization in which these items were acquired. An obvious step forward would be to discuss repatriating scientific specimens to former colonies, as botanists working on plants originally from Angola but held primarily in Europe have done. — Rohan Deb Roy Decolonizing my mind has been a continual process of rethinking the values that guide my actions. It's emotional, intellectual and spiritual labor that involves centering myself as an African-American woman and not allowing my entire existence to be a performance tailored for the white, cisgender male gaze … — JerVae (Jae Anthony)
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
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Time Traveler for decolonize
The first known use of decolonize was in 1851
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