A reader sent me a video clip. In it, Winona LaDuke opens a talk on colonization by reaching for the dictionary, and the first thing she says is wrong. LaDuke is Anishinaabe, from White Earth in northern Minnesota. She trained as an economist, ran twice for vice president on the Green Party ticket, wrote All Our Relations, and has spent four decades on wild rice, pipelines, and land recovery. Rooms fill when she speaks. So when she tells an audience that colonization “has the same root as the word colon” and that the root “means to digest,” that line travels. It is vivid, it is anatomical, it is easy to repeat, and it is the sentence people carry home. It is also folklore. This is a claim about the history of a word; no lexicon supports it, and it collapses the moment anyone opens a Greek dictionary. The rest of her argument is largely sound and in places understated. That is exactly why the false root matters. An argument this strong should not be walking around with a demolition charge strapped to its opening line.

Continue reading → The Farmer’s Word: Winona LaDuke, a False Etymology, and the True Root of “Colonization”