A Prayer for the Coloniser

Franz Fanon said that the first victim of colonial violence is the colonial mind itself. For it must first excise itself of its most precious gifts of humanity: compassion, empathy, and love beyond oneself – in order to dehumanise others.

I thought about him a lot as I drove through the French countryside, approaching the Alps. I went there, on my way to Geneva, to connect with their taiao – because in my experience, if you really want to understand a people, you go to their taiao.  As the townships and farmlands gave way to rocky cliffs, marked with cascading water falling from great heights, it reminded me of Piopiotahi, and another conversation from my past came to the forefront of my consciousness.

Some years ago I was meeting with Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, and Spiritual Leader of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Oyate, known as the Great Sioux Nation. I was interviewing him about the Doctrine of Discovery in his loungeroom. I had a conundrum to place before him.

“We want a peaceful resolution to all of this, right?”

“Mhmm”

“At the same time, power doesn’t cede itself, does it?”

“No”

“How do we reconcile that?”

His response was solemn, but calm and resolute:

“We must pray for the colonizer”

I nodded, but inside, I recoiled. How could I carry what I know about colonialism and what it has done and still does to our peoples, to all Indigenous peoples, and to our Ātua, and to our planet, and find it within myself to offer a prayer for them?

I left with immense respect for his own spiritual strength. I knew he meant it with his whole heart but I clocked it up to something I could never do, and that I would leave for them, with their grace and spiritual fortitude, to do for us all.

That was before Trump, before Covid, before QAnon and the March 15^th  attacks. Before the Coalition of Chaos and the attack upon our Treaty.

Before the world went into colonial hyperdrive.

These days I teach about the Doctrine of Discovery, and in all workshops I center the theme of sacredness. I speak to the importance of denying sacredness in order to turn land, water and people into commodities. I speak to the importance of restoring Indigenous sacredness as a response to the harm of the Doctrine. I speak to the Great Killing of the Americas, where so many sources of CO2 were taken from the Earth eco-system over a short period that it caused a climate disruption, a mini ice-age in northern Europe, which was mistaken as witchcraft in many villages, and led to women healers and midwives, those who retained the remaining vestiges of the sacred connection to nature in northern Europe, being killed en-masse.

And so now in 2025 I found myself driving through the European countryside, seeing the ancient walls of rock, the ice, the waterfalls. I thought of a talk I had with my Nan a long time ago about waterfalls… she’d said that one thing about waterfalls is that if you sit by them when you’re angry, no matter how angry you are, they will continue to just do what they have always done – flow. They will outlast your rage, calm you, and they will simply keep falling long after you’ve stopped being upset.

There was a permanence in that sharing, at that time. Except today – today – water is starting to dry up, and its no longer a given that the water will fall. I don’t think she ever thought that day would come. I don’t think I ever thought it would either, but here we are, and now the waterfall also needs us to pray.

I knew at that moment that when we arrived to our destination in the Alps, I would say a prayer. At the very least, from my mountain to theirs. From my ancestors to theirs. If not for the colonial brutes, then at the very least, for the healers, the midwives, those who held sacredness in relationship to nature. Before Nicaea, before Constantine, before the Vatican, before sacredness became attached to a vestige of a European man adorned in riches extracted from Papatuanuku.

We ascended the Alps, above Chamonix, and the view of the township gave way to frosted forests, which gave way to stunning blue sky and snowy mountain peaks, which gave way to even more snowy clouds, and huge rocky outcrops and we arrived on the upper slopes of Aiguille-du-Midi.

There was zero visibility, and that’s ok, I wasn’t there for the view. I was there to meet with their Ātua taiao. There, on the heights of Aiguilles-du-Midi, on the Mont Blanc range of the French Alps, I welcomed the snow, the wind, all of the elements. I acknowledged the ancient power of that place, the forces of nature which still held ultimate dominance even though it had been built upon and commodified by man. I knew that even if all that remains is a smouldering ember of a connection to sacred taiao, then it can again be restored. If that sacredness was still there, it was still in their mokopuna as well. It gave me hope, for them.

The following week was spent in Geneva at the Human Rights Council, and as is always the case, I listened to case, after case, after case of extreme human rights abuses against men, women, children. Against health practitioners, storytellers, human rights protectors. I watched power and rage contort itself into righteousness, as member states defended themselves… and I thought about another thought leader, and consciousness-diver, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who more recently reflected on the way in which harm begets harm, and how a disregard for human life can create more disregard for human life.

I really want you to watch this, because he says it so powerfully – in the interview, Ta-Nehisi Coates challenges us all to consider at what point do we give ourselves permission to strip someone else of their sacredness, and carry out harm.

For weeks, I have pondered over this point. At what point, in the dehumanisation, the degradation, the unrelenting harm, do we permit ourselves to visit that harm upon others, in the pursuit of our liberation. I sat in the United Nations and watched, for yet another year, as organisations, peoples, communities, and member states traded stories of righteousness, entitlement, condemnation and harm. I watched, yet again, as rights defenders like me tried to navigate our own trauma, our own wounds of distrust, and wondered… At what point do we undermine even our own because we have lost faith in each other as humans, or even as brothers and sisters in the same fight? At what point do we hoard power, because we think we know best?

At what point do we allow ourselves to become colonisers?

I want to be clear here, I include myself in this query. Like everyone I was observing, I have my people I trust, and those I don’t. I’m keenly aware that we need to be discerning, and strategic, but I’m also aware that this, too, can tip over into harm, and that we can sometimes, in the snowstorm, we can lose visibility of our humanity.

My mind again returned to Pāpā Arvol’s words: we need to pray for the coloniser. It took me nearly ten years to gain visibility, but I could finally see it. I didn’t have to hug them, I didn’t have to condone their behaviour, but I did need to dig deep, and pray for the end of colonialism, everywhere, in every heart and mind– and that meant praying for the coloniser. In that moment, up on their maunga, I also knew which prayer I would invoke. A karakia composed by Nuki Tākao that would invoke a re-weaving of the sacredness of each individual.

On the Thursday, we gathered as Indigenous mokopuna, all of us, to pray. We stood in a circle on the grounds of the United Nations, that belly of imperial powers, and smudged together, and offered our prayers. We were led by Aunty Charmaine White Face, spokesperson for the 1894 Sioux Nation Treaty Council.

I removed my shoes so I could feel the soil beneath my feet, and thought of that sacred place atop their mountains, and connect my prayer to that prayer.

I prayed for the coloniser

to weave themselves back into the sacredness of their own taiao

to restore the sacredness of their own humanity

and in doing so, once again uplift the sacredness

of all people

and skies

and lands

and waters

I prayed for the ember of sacredness,

still embedded in the heights of their mountains

to come alight, once more

in every colonial consciousness.

I prayed for the withered, dried colonial heart

To receive sacred glacial water once more

Before they run out

To soften, to grow plump,

and pulse, full of life and love once more.

I prayed for colonial walls to come down

Both walls around people

And walls around hearts and minds

I prayed for colonisers

To find their way home once more

To their ukaipō

The breast that feeds them in the night

To their kurawaka

The sacred soils that forged their ancestors

I prayed for the coloniser to recover their sacredness

And hold tight to it, hold tight like it was their last connection to life, and everything good

Because it is.

I prayed for the coloniser in them,

And in doing so, I prayed for the coloniser in myself.

Ko te whiri, ko te whatu, ko te whakairo

Nau mai e Hine haramai e Hine ki te whare pōrā

Ko te whenua, ko te whakatipu, ko te whānautanga mai

Nau mai e Hine haramai e Hine ki te whare tangata

Whakawaioratia te manawa kōpiri

Whakahokia mai te tapu o Ueuenuku o Ueuerangi

o ngā wai whakaheke, o ngā wai koopu

o ngā mokopuna, o ngā tuhi māreikura

o ngā tiriti kua takea mai i Kurawaka

Kia toitū ai te whenua

Kia toitū ai te moana

Kia toitū ai te mana motuhake o ngā iwi taketake o te ao

Kia whiri, whiria kia tina, tina

Haumi e, hui e, taiki e.