A journey of self decolonization through design
Posted on November 19, 2019
I sat on a plastic chair at a busy cafe in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, and checked my dusty watch over and over again, then scanned the busy road for the vans that were supposed to pick us up for the long drive to orphanages in other districts. We were late for what felt like the hundredth time.
After living in the United States for nearly fourteen years, I returned to my home country to combat illiteracy through the FasProject. My team and I planned our three-week trip in detail, hoping to accomplish as much as possible within a short time. However, over and over again, I became frustrated. People who were supposed to drive us arrived hours late because they took detours I could not understand.
I wished things could be like they were in America. Why weren’t people on time? Why couldn’t I just use WiFi while I waited? Why couldn’t we negotiate and plan in the same ways I had in America? Wouldn’t the insane traffic of Freetown be better with more stoplights?
Though the FasProject, and other travel in Sierra Leone, I reconnected with my family and cultural history. Without knowing it, I was on a personal journey of decolonization. I had lost my indigenous languages and replaced them with Southern California English; now I returned and reinforced my connections to family and cultural history.
However, in moments of frustration like the one I have described, I also began to realize how much my thinking had been shaped by my Western education and the cultural influences I experienced in California. In trying to do good work, and help the people around me, I wanted to leverage modern, Western systems. I sometimes wanted my fellow Africans to think in Western ways. Even as children my peers and I idealized Western values passed on to us through MTV and rap music.
This has led me to consider what it means for me to be decolonized as a designer. How can I, as an immigrant designer, de-colonize my work? How can I and others like me be involved in the global process of de-colonizing?
The truth is that, through colonization, Western ideas are considered “universal.” As T. Schultz et al.write in “Design and Culture,” Westernized universities all over the world teach Western ideas as if they are “commonsensical,” correct-by-default ideas. Worldwide, art history classes often focus on a canon primarily made up of European artists — representing 12% of the world’s population. This is the effect of colonialism.
When I return to Sierra Leone, I notice the growing influence of Western design. Adidas and Nike shoes and hats have become more and more widespread, and so do their knockoffs. This is just “fashion,” not “Western fashion.” African, Asian, and South American nations are judged by their conformity to Western systems in lifestyle, architecture, design, etc.
I and other immigrant designers can tend to think in the same way. After immigrating to the West, we return, and subconsciously attempt to influence others to think in Western ways. We approach with a mindset of “fixing” We fall into the trap of what Danah Abdullah calls the “Helping Movement:” identifying problems in non-Western places and attempting to fix them by making them more Western (Shultz et. al 89).
Very easily, even indigenous designers like me, who have immigrated to the West, can accept the eurocentric way as the default. We can ignore the reality that, across the world, many “normals” exist. More than that, we can believe we are “helping” indigenous ideas and values to spread when in fact, we are still entering our old communities with colonial values.
As an immigrant designer, I can actually spread colonial, Western thinking more easily than those who are obviously Western. My ideas and my education are Westernized, but I have “cultural capital:” I am African, and I am an indigenous person. Therefore, first of all, I can deceive myself by believing that my non-Western identity is something I can easily step in and out of when in fact it is something deeply internalized. I can also more easily influence others to think in colonial ways since, as an African immigrant, I do not obviously appear “Western” and even those wary of colonial ideas may not have their guard up when speaking with me. Worst of all, I can spread colonialist thought through my anti-colonial intentions.
Because I have deeply internalized Western values and eurocentric colonial thinking that privileges it, I need to decolonize myself. Otherwise, even when trying to design alongside Indigenous communities, and even exploring alternative approaches, I will still be spreading colonialist thought that is thought of as the “norm” in modern times. As Frantz Fanon writes, “To think beyond modernity from within modernity is no easy task” (Shultz et al. 2017).
When designing alongside indigenous communities, the framework “for whom, by whom” is also essential. This framework considers who the design is being created to help. What are the values of the community? Who does the community belong to? What ideas, traditions, and solutions might emerge from that community? And what does that community believe it needs?
I learned much about this “for whom, by whom” framework through the FasProject. Part of the project involved teaching skate lessons to local kids in Sierra Leone. We discovered that many of the kids had never seen a skateboard before, and many have likely never seen one since. Many of the roads were too rough to use for skateboarding, and the country has few sidewalks. Through this experience, I learned the importance of consulting the audience. What do they need to have addressed? What do they believe is important?
One of the key lessons the FasProject taught me was to bring indigenous people to the table and form solutions drawn from the people themselves. What changes do people want to see for their own communities? What are their ideas? How can we collaborate together? What knowledge has that community produced?
Of course, many non-Western communities have already adopted colonialist approaches. I myself did not need to leave Sierra Leone to develop Western thinking: I could have learned it in a Westernized University in my home country. As I wrote already, I was learning it as a boy when I watched Hollywood movies and MTV music videos. I saw Western clothing proliferating Sierra Leone, and even as a kid I chose graphic T-s printed with American music artists.
I have come to realize that decolonization does not mean returning to a “pre-colonial” past. Even if that were desirable, for those touched by colonization, it is not possible.
When I returned to Sierra Leone for the first time as a college student, I was searching for resolution with my identity. Something felt like it was missing. I no longer felt “African,” and some part of me also wondered if I was wholly American. What was my identity, exactly? I returned to my childhood homes in Freetown and the African town of Dendeyadu where I spent my early childhood. I reconnected with several family members and visited my grandmother’s grave. However, I could never undo my immigration and education in the West.
We cannot ignore history. Colonialism has affected communities and will continue. Returning to a “pre-colonized” or a new, completely “un-colonized” state may be impossible: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Fisher 1). De-colonialization must begin in the present.
When I reflected on my own journey, I realized that I could not go backward in time and undo my immigration and my education. As a naturalized American, I am African and I am American. In fact, I as an individual am greater than either of those two identities. My identity is more complex; indeed, it is more fluid, constantly changing and adding more. I am constantly exposed to new ideas and take on new roles.
In the same way, the decolonizing process is fluid. We must design while also “staying with the trouble:” living in the contradiction between past and present, colonized and not colonized. Pedro Oliviera says, “Decolonizing design does not aim to create an opposition between ‘decolonized’ and ‘colonized’ designers or design practices. Rather, it promotes the ontological changes that will allow us to design more time for ourselves in this world. It is a project of incompleteness, of persistently unlearning and relearning to see the world” (Shultz et al. 94). Communities and identities are more complex than binaries such as “decolonized vs. colonized.”
Instead of rooting our attempts to de-colonize in the past, we can root them in present places. Tristan Shultz tells about a Koombmerri Aboriginal Elder who “speaks of Aboriginal relationality. (Shultz et al 86). She is located somewhere; therefore, she can relate to her surroundings, her community, and others. “There are multiple Places so are multiple Dreamings, so there are multiple Laws that equal multiple Logics that equal multiple Truths” (Shultz et al 86). Shultz’s point is that, rather than looking for some universal truth, or a single canon, there are multiple valid ideas and ways of approaching challenges.
The process of design, therefore, begins with the stakeholders and their communities. Designers hoping to decolonize begin there: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” Those with the greatest degree of relationality to a challenge are best equipped to understand it. When designing with a community, we must involve them in the process: we must use “a knowledge produced with and from rather than about” (Shultz et al 86).
My undergraduate capstone project explored “human-centered design.” Like the FasProject before it, it taught me many things. My team and I wanted to find design challenges by consulting a community in Sierra Leone. We identified stakeholders to meet within the community: leaders, elders, etc. Through participatory co-design workshops, we delivered an MVP Solar panel lantern. The final product was heavily influenced by the stakeholders within the community (Lebbie).
Ultimately, this article is an attempt to understand, “How can I be a better design facilitator?” Though I strive to engage in the process of decolonizing myself and my design practices, I have failed many times. I have again realized how much of my design thinking is influenced by colonialism. I understand more and more that decolonization is a complex process of which I continually strive towards every day in my practice as a designer.
Works Cited
Anderson, Reynaldo. “Afrofuturism 2.0 & The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Notes on a
Manifesto.” Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 42, no. 1-2, 2016, p. 228+ Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
Fisher, Mark (2010). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.
Lebbie, Fas. “Human-Centered Design.” Fascreatives.com,
https://fascreatives.com/cases/human-centered-design/.
Tristan Schultz, Danah Abdulla, Ahmed Ansari, Ece Canlı, Mahmoud Keshavarz,
Matthew Kiem, Luiza Prado de O. Martins & Pedro J.S. Vieira de Oliveira (2018) What Is at Stake with Decolonizing Design? A Roundtable, Design, and Culture, 10:1, 81-101, DOI: 10.1080/17547075.2018.1434368