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decolonization
Moving From Colonial to Liberation Medicine in a Time of Genocide
This transformative work requires reimagining medicine’s structures, moving people with racist beliefs out of positions of power, and creating systems for the most marginalized to lead.
Jan 26, 2025
Ignoring a genocide or pretending it is not happening is not a "difference of opinion." It is a racist ideology. This ideology does not belong in medicine. Decolonizing medicine requires understanding that we will not have health equity as long as racism is baked into the very structures of medicine. Decolonizing medicine is not about tweaking who is at the top of the pecking order or playing into liberal identitarianism, which, as Dr. King accurately diagnosed, “is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” Decolonizing medicine requires reimagining the order altogether, because the one that exists was created in a time of subjugating women, queer, Indigenous, chronically ill, Black/brown, immigrant and other people deemed “deplorables” by European colonial standards.
The "Other" in medicine—whether between doctor and patient or doctor and structure—this phenomenon is about power, who has it and who is denied it. Power differentials create health inequities, and the differences that exist today were established in a time of colonial conquest. The United States and all of the Global South were colonized by militaries, missionaries, and medics. If we want health equity, we have to transform these outdated and harmful structures of power. We must compost them and create the conditions for something more healing to grow.
To do that we must understand the history and context of how these power structures evolved, who is occupying the seats of power today, and why. People in power in medicine today will tell you that we do not want to mix politics in medicine. But medicine is politics practiced on the human body. To pretend it is any other way is to ignore the actual realities that are causing harm on marginalized people in a system that was not built to serve us. Those in power prefer to distract us with superficial adjustments rather than structural ones. They tell us we are “unprofessional” when we push for change that will close the gaps on disparities. We can no longer play their game of delay.
Yesterday, my colleague Dr. Yipeng Ge suggested we change our oath, from the Hippocratic oath to an oath crafted by the doctors in Gaza, one that uplifts that level of commitment to serve the people.
History and context are critical to understand so we can stop having people who kill and justify killing inside medicine. Having a genocidal war criminal for a physician is bad for patient outcomes. We do not have to study it. We can just look at physician Howard Maibach, a devout Zionist who injected 2,600 imprisoned people (Black/brown) with pathogens and poisons without their informed consent, reminiscent of the Nazi medical experiments. Before I was slated to speak at the American Medical Association’s first Grand Rounds for Health Equity where we discussed Maibach’s medical racialized violence, Maibach’s lawyer—also “Israel’s lawyer”—Alan Dershowitz pressured my university to prevent me from talking. Dershowitz is now representing Israel in the International Criminal Court hearings calling for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
Now while Maibach is not a war criminal, he harbors deep-seated racist ideologies. The harm he did and the fact that he remains employed by the University of California reveal the university’s power structure. Maibach’s family donates heavily to the Friends of the IDF, providing material support for the genocide in Gaza. This is a problem. We need doctors who are fully committed to healing and health for all, not killing some because it happens to be in alignment with their political agendas. And we require doctors who allow for discourse, not silencing because “it’s complicated” when people of European ancestry decide it is time to kill again for colonial conquest.
To decolonize medicine is to remove those obstructions to our voices so we can advocate for the health for all, as it is our moral and professional obligation. Since October 2023, medical students from around the country have texted me horrific, violent, and even murderous things that pro-Israeli professors have said about Palestinian patients in their presence. Once these students find their courage to speak up, the world is not ready for what they have to share. This is why there is such active repression of medical students and their voices, as Israeli doctors called for the destruction of the entire healthcare system in Gaza and the powers that be in Western medical institutions repress those of us who do speak up. The silence of healthcare workers across the West is a part of Israel’s genocide, and a recent submission to the United Nations documents exactly how.
In spite of the forces against us, I hope medical students will find their courage and recognize that building a medicine that will serve all will require that courage in order to compost a colonial system. This work requires the daylight of truth. In that daylight, there are incredible doctors ready to build a liberation medicine, one that will be able to address the needs of all the people we serve, not just an elite few—everyone.
I am grateful to medical students like Umaymah Mohammad, whose courage shines as she shares her horror that a professor at Emory went to serve a combat unit during the genocide and came back as if everything was perfectly normal. It is not. Genocide is the most intense expression of racism. Dr. Josh Winer at Emory University is not fit for teaching medical students in a pluralistic society, especially not ones whose family is currently being annihilated by Israel. Umaymah was suspended for speaking up about this violation of her safety and civil rights. Her stance is a moral one—and a missing one—in a colonial medical system that supports genocidal physicians and silences ones who speak up to stop a genocide. The agenda could not be clearer. Please support Umaymah here.
Physicians and other healthcare workers who have been repressed in the West are finding each other, and we are working to teach our colleagues how to cultivate their courage to embark on this transformative work together. We recently held a webinar to launch our peer to peer curriculum—Cultivating Courage—which is a six-week course to learn and unlearn together as we map out what is needed to build a liberation medicine.
As people across the West wake up and realize that physicians who supported, endorsed, and even participated in genocide continue on in their careers as those who stood to make noise about a genocide were defamed, suspended, and even fired, they will start to ask themselves questions about their personal safety in the hospital. Physicians who are deeply racist provide poor care to the people they hate. This has been shown over and over again. And the issue is not simply a healthcare issue. It is a matter of civil rights.
People of color have the right to be served by physicians who do not hate them. Arabs and Palestinians have a right to be served by physicians who do not want to see them annihilated. In a pluralistic society, holding deeply racist beliefs should be enough to show that a person does not have the basic competency required to be a physician. Changing one’s belief is not simply a matter of showing up for a DEI workshop or implicit bias training. This work cannot be led by liberals who opened the door to the right-wing exploitation of civil rights laws to silence people of color across the Global North as the West started its bloody campaign in Gaza. This transformative work requires reimagining medicine’s structures, moving people with racist beliefs out of positions of power. It requires creating systems for the most marginalized people who uplift the health of all in practice, not just in speech, to lead.
The decolonization of medicine is happening right now, led by the doctors in Gaza. With moral courage and leverage, they “absorb what is useful” from Western medicine and “discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own,” in the words of martial artist Bruce Lee. That is the path ahead for physicians of conscience. It is the future of medicine. Yesterday, my colleague Dr. Yipeng Ge suggested we change our oath, from the Hippocratic oath to an oath crafted by the doctors in Gaza, one that uplifts that level of commitment to serve the people. Because in the times that are upon us—social upheaval and climate collapse, fascism and food systems deterioration—we will need a different kind of physician and a different kind of medical system. The time to start laying those seeds is now.
This piece was originally published on Marya’s Substack Deep Medicine.
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Human Rights Defenders Decry 'Cynical' Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration Amid Gaza Genocide
"Gotta love America—celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day today while arming, funding, and supporting the occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the Indigenous Palestinian people abroad," said one critic.
Oct 14, 2024
Human rights defenders on Monday underscored the links between the decolonization struggles of Native Americans and Palestinians—and the hypocrisy of celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day while the United States provides military aid and diplomatic support for Israel as it wages a war on Gaza for which it is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"Several years ago Native activists successfully rallied their city councils to replace Columbus Day, the day that honors the Italian explorer who was a destroyer of Native worlds, with Indigenous Peoples Day, a holiday that celebrates the Natives who have resisted colonial oppression for over 500 years, since the arrival of Christopher Columbus," Jewish American scholar Benay Blend wrote for The Palestine Chronicle.
"It is also a good time to highlight Indigenous solidarity within the Americas as well as with other Indigenous people, including the Palestinians," Blend said. "Indeed, both people share a similar story of resistance to colonization, while the colonizers—the United States and Israel—share similar origin stories and tactics used to sever the Native people from their land."
Citing Steven Salaita—the Palestinian American professor of American Indian studies whose offer of a tenured position at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana was rescinded in 2014 over his criticism of Israeli bombing of Gaza—Blend noted that "both Israel and North America share similar rhetoric that justifies their origins."
"Infused with biblical references to 'salvation, redemption, and destiny,' settlers in both countries believed that they had reached the Promised Land, where God commanded them to eliminate the Indigenous populations to make way for more fertile land that had previously been 'underused and unappreciated by the natives,'" she added.
In a social media post that included video footage of Israel's bombing on Monday of a displaced people's encampment on the grounds of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Uahikea Maile—a Native Hawaiian professor of race, diaspora, and indigenity at the University of Chicago—said on social media that "Indigenous Peoples Day is about commemorating our survival and endurance despite settler colonialism—resisting annihilation as distinct people."
"If your celebration doesn't condemn Israel's wanton destruction of Palestinian life, then it recklessly shores up settler colonization," he added.
Samoan poet and educator Terisa Siagatonu stressed that "Palestinians are an Indigenous people" and "a free Palestine is an Indigenous struggle."
"I'm saying this over and over again as clear as I can because I don't believe people are contending with this enough, and you need to," she added.
Nick Estes, a Lakota community organizer and University of Minnesota historian, asserted that "the cynical 'celebration' of Indigenous Peoples Day by a settler state backing another settler state's genocide against Palestinians and Lebanese shows us nothing is sacred, not even our own survival, until we bury colonialism once and for all."
Responding to an Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation by U.S. President Joe Biden "respecting tribal sovereignty and self-determination," labor historian, author, and Empire State University professor Jeff Schuhrke took a swipe at those "commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day while simultaneously facilitating the real-time colonial extermination of Palestine's Indigenous people."
The U.S. direct action group Jewish Voice for Peace chose Indigenous Peoples Day to stage a protest at which more than 200 activists were arrested while demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian American spokesperson for the event and member of Adalah Justice Project, toldThe Indypendent that "the fact that the United States claims to stand with and honor Indigenous people... while they're actively funding and financially backing the ethnic cleansing of an Indigenous population in Palestine is contradictory to their statements."
Rick Tabenunaka, a member of the Comanche Nation and leftist organizer who hosts the "Decolonized Buffalo" podcast, said on social media, "I find it ironic that settlers will claim that Indigenous peoples on the North 'American' continent aren't doing enough to fight against settler colonialism."
"Yet," he lamented, "these same settlers spent a whole year watching their colonial government support genocide in Palestine and did nothing."
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Chagossians 'Deplore' Deal Allowing US-UK to Keep Diego Garcia Air Base
"We remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland," one diaspora Chagossian said in response to the agreement.
Oct 03, 2024
Activists on Thursday decried a deal under which the United Kingdom will cede sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius with the exception of Diego Garcia, an island from which the Indigenous Chagossian people were forcibly expelled over half a century ago to make way for one of the world's largest and most important U.S. military bases.
The agreement—which was announced Thursday by the U.K. and Mauritius governments—grants the latter full sovereignty over the remote Indian Ocean archipelago, while allowing the United States and Britain to keep the joint base on Diego Garcia for the next 99 years. Under the deal, Mauritius authorities will facilitate Chagossians' eventual resettlement of the archipelago, with the apparent glaring exception of Diego Garcia.
"Following two years of negotiation, this is a seminal moment in our relationship and a demonstration of our enduring commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rule of law," a joint statement published by the U.K. and Mauritius governments states. "Negotiations have been conducted in a constructive and respectful manner, as equal sovereign states, on the basis of international law, and with the intention of resolving all outstanding issues between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos Archipelago, including those relating to its former inhabitants."
"The treaty will address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians," the statement adds. "Mauritius will now be free to implement a program of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, other than Diego Garcia, and the U.K. will capitalize a new trust fund, as well as separately provide other support, for the benefit of Chagossians."
U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed what he called the "historic agreement," which he said represents a "clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes."
Some Chagossians also welcomed the deal. Isabelle Charlot, chair of the Chagos Islanders Movement, told BBC Radio 4 that the agreement gave her hope that her family could return to "a place that we can call home, where we will be free."
Other Chagossians decried the deal. The advocacy group Chagossian Voices—which is based in Crawley in West Sussex, England—said in a statement:
Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland. The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.
"We remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland," Chagossian Voices founding member Frankie Bontemps told the BBC.
Diego Garcia was once home to around 1,500 Creole-speaking Chagossians and their beloved dogs. However, in the 1960s the U.S. convinced Britain to grant it full control there and subsequently began to "sweep" and "sanitize" the atoll of its Indigenous population, in the words of one American official.
"We must surely be very tough about this," one British official privately wrote, adding that "there will be no Indigenous population except seagulls."
Many Chagossians were tricked or terrorized into leaving. U.S. Marines told them they'd be bombed if they didn't evacuate, and Chagossians' dogs were gassed to death with fumes from military vehicles. The islanders were permitted to take just one suitcase with them. Most were shipped to Mauritius, where they were treated as second-class citizens and where many ended up living in poverty and heartbreak in the slums of the capital, Port Louis.
Meanwhile—and without any apparent sense of irony—the U.S. military dubbed the new Halliburton-built base on Diego Garcia Camp Justice. In addition to launching an unknown number of attacks on countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq from Diego Garcia during the ongoing so-called War on Terror, the U.S. military also dumped large amounts of human sewage into a protected coral lagoon on the atoll, belying British claims of commitment to ecological stewardship.
The forced displacement of the Chagossians was largely hidden from the U.S. and British public. However, the Chagossians never stopped fighting for justice. Britain's High Court of Justice twice ruled that their removal was illegal. In 2010, WikiLeaks published a secret U.S. diplomatic cable exposing nefarious intentions—denying Chagossians their right of return—behind the establishment of a marine reserve around the atoll.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion that the U.K. was exercising "illegal" sovereignty over Diego Garcia and urged the British government to "decolonize" the atoll by handing sovereignty to Mauritius, whose government long contended it was forced to cede control in order to secure its own independence from Britain.
Responding to the new agreement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday that while the deal will "address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past," it "looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future."
"It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are allowed to rebuild their future," HRW senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin said in a statement.
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