When Your Ancestors Were the Colonizers: Reckoning with Heritage

BY NICOLE LAU

If you're of European descent, your ancestors were likely colonizers. They participated in genocide, slavery, land theft, and cultural destruction. This is historical fact, not accusation. And while you didn't personally commit these acts, you inherit their legacy—the privilege, the wealth, the power built on stolen land and stolen lives. You also inherit the responsibility to reckon with this history and work toward justice.

This article is for people whose ancestors were colonizers. It's about facing uncomfortable truths, doing the work of reckoning without centering your feelings, understanding what you've inherited, and taking responsibility for repair. Because acknowledging your ancestral legacy isn't about guilt—it's about accountability. And accountability requires action, not just feelings.

Facing the Truth

What Your Ancestors Likely Did

If you're of European descent, your ancestors likely:

• Colonized Indigenous lands in Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia
• Participated in or benefited from slavery
• Committed or enabled genocide
• Stole land, resources, and labor
• Destroyed cultures, languages, and spiritual practices
• Built wealth on exploitation and violence

This isn't speculation—it's history:

• European colonization killed millions of Indigenous people
• Transatlantic slave trade enslaved millions of Africans
• Colonial empires extracted wealth from colonized peoples
• Cultural genocide attempted to destroy Indigenous and colonized cultures
• This happened. Your ancestors were part of it.

What You've Inherited

Material inheritance:

• Wealth built on stolen land and labor
• Property and resources taken from others
• Economic advantages from historical exploitation
• Generational wealth denied to colonized peoples

Social inheritance:

• Whiteness as default/normal
• Access to opportunities denied to others
• Freedom from discrimination your ancestors imposed on others
• Institutional power and privilege

Cultural inheritance:

• Languages that suppressed others
• Religions that were forced on colonized peoples
• Cultural dominance built on erasure of others
• The "right" to appropriate from cultures your ancestors tried to destroy

The Reckoning Process

How to Face This Legacy

1. Acknowledge the truth

• Your ancestors were colonizers
• They caused immense harm
• You benefit from that harm today
• This is fact, not attack

2. Feel appropriate grief

• Grief for what your ancestors did
• Grief for ongoing harm
• Grief for what was destroyed
• But: Don't center your feelings

3. Resist defensiveness

• Don't say "not all white people"
• Don't say "my ancestors were poor too"
• Don't say "I didn't do it"
• Don't make it about your feelings

4. Take responsibility

• You didn't cause it, but you benefit from it
• You inherit both privilege and responsibility
• Responsibility means action, not just acknowledgment

5. Do the work

• Educate yourself about colonial history
• Listen to colonized peoples
• Support decolonization efforts
• Make reparations in action

Common Defensive Reactions (And Why They're Harmful)

What Not to Do

1. "Not all white people"

• Derails the conversation
• Centers your feelings over historical truth
• Misses the point about structural systems
• Prioritizes your comfort over justice

2. "My ancestors were poor/oppressed too"

• Class oppression and racial colonialism are different
• Poor white people still benefited from whiteness
• This deflects from taking responsibility
• Oppression Olympics helps no one

3. "I didn't do it"

• No one said you did
• But you benefit from it
• And you have responsibility to repair
• This is about inheritance, not personal guilt

4. "That was a long time ago"

• Colonialism is ongoing, not past
• You still benefit from historical harm
• Colonized peoples still suffer consequences
• Time doesn't erase responsibility

5. "I'm 1/16th Native/Irish/etc."

• Distant ancestry doesn't erase colonizer heritage
• You were raised with colonizer privilege
• This is deflection, not accountability

6. "But I'm a good person"

• This isn't about individual goodness
• It's about structural systems and historical harm
• Good people can still benefit from injustice
• Good people take responsibility

White Fragility vs. Genuine Reckoning

The Difference

White fragility:

• Getting defensive when confronted with racism/colonialism
• Centering your feelings over others' experiences
• Demanding comfort and reassurance
• Avoiding accountability through emotional reactions
• Making it about you

Genuine reckoning:

• Sitting with discomfort without deflecting
• Centering colonized peoples' experiences
• Not demanding emotional labor from those harmed
• Taking responsibility without making it about your feelings
• Doing the work

How to Move from Fragility to Accountability

1. Notice your defensiveness
   • When you feel defensive, pause
   • Ask: Why am I reacting this way?
   • Recognize it's discomfort, not attack
2. Sit with discomfort
   • Don't immediately defend or explain
   • Let yourself feel uncomfortable
   • Discomfort is part of growth
3. Listen without centering yourself
   • Hear what's being said
   • Don't make it about your feelings
   • Resist urge to explain or justify
4. Take responsibility
   • Acknowledge your role in systems
   • Commit to doing better
   • Take action, not just feel bad

Exploring Your Own Heritage

Reclaiming Without Appropriating

The question:

• "If I can't appropriate from other cultures, what can I practice?"
• "What's my spiritual heritage?"

The answer:

• Explore your own ancestral traditions
• European cultures have rich spiritual histories
• Reclaim what's yours without taking what's not

European spiritual traditions to explore:

• Celtic practices (if you have Celtic ancestry)
• Norse/Germanic traditions (if you have that ancestry)
• Slavic practices (if you have Slavic ancestry)
• Mediterranean traditions (Greek, Roman, Italian, etc.)
• Folk magic from your specific heritage

How to do this respectfully:

• Research your actual ancestry
• Learn from legitimate sources
• Don't romanticize or appropriate from other European cultures you're not from
• Acknowledge your ancestors were also colonizers
• Don't use ancestral practice to avoid accountability

The Work of Repair

What Accountability Looks Like

1. Educate yourself

• Learn colonial history
• Read books by colonized peoples
• Understand ongoing colonialism
• Don't expect colonized people to educate you

2. Amplify marginalized voices

• Share their work
• Give them platforms
• Listen without speaking over
• Center their experiences

3. Support decolonization

• Land back movements
• Reparations efforts
• Indigenous sovereignty
• Abolition work

4. Make financial reparations

• Donate to Indigenous-led organizations
• Support Black-led causes
• Pay colonized people for their labor and knowledge
• Redistribute wealth you inherited from colonialism

5. Use your privilege for justice

• Speak up in white spaces
• Challenge other white people
• Use your access to advocate
• Don't expect praise for basic decency

6. Respect boundaries

• Don't appropriate closed practices
• Honor when told something is not for you
• Accept that some spaces aren't for you
• Support from outside, don't center yourself

Crystals for Accountability Work

Grounding in Truth

Facing reality:

• Obsidian: Seeing uncomfortable truths, facing shadow
• Smoky quartz: Grounding in reality, transmuting defensiveness
• Black tourmaline: Protection from denial, strong boundaries

Accountability and Action

• Hematite: Grounding, staying accountable
• Sodalite: Truth, honest self-assessment
• Clear quartz: Clarity about responsibility

How to Use

• Hold during difficult reckoning work
• Meditate with to face ancestral legacy
• Use to stay grounded in accountability
• Keep as reminder of ongoing responsibility

For White Parents

Raising Accountable Children

What to teach:

• Honest history, not sanitized version
• Their privilege and where it comes from
• Responsibility to work for justice
• Respect for other cultures without appropriation

What not to do:

• Raise "colorblind" children (ignores racism)
• Teach "everyone's equal" (ignores structural inequality)
• Avoid discussing race (perpetuates ignorance)
• Appropriate from other cultures "for diversity"

The Ongoing Work

This Isn't One-Time

Reckoning is continuous:

• Not a one-time acknowledgment
• Ongoing education and action
• Lifelong commitment to justice
• Constant examination of privilege

You will make mistakes:

• Acknowledge them
• Apologize without centering yourself
• Learn and do better
• Don't give up because it's hard

This is your work to do:

• Not colonized peoples' job to fix
• Not their job to make you feel better
• Your responsibility to educate yourself
• Your work to dismantle what your ancestors built

Integration: Inheritance and Responsibility

If your ancestors were colonizers, you inherit both privilege and responsibility. You didn't choose this inheritance, but you benefit from it. And with that benefit comes the obligation to work for repair.

This isn't about guilt—guilt is a feeling that centers you. This is about accountability—action that centers justice. Feel your feelings, but don't stop there. Do the work. Make reparations. Use your privilege to dismantle the systems that give you privilege.

Your ancestors were colonizers. You can't change that. But you can choose what you do with that legacy. You can choose accountability over defensiveness. Action over guilt. Justice over comfort.

The work is hard. Do it anyway. You owe it to the people your ancestors harmed. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the future.

Next in this series: Building Your Own Practice: Eclectic Without Appropriation