The reading that most stood out to me was the introduction from Tuhikawai Smith, Eve Tuck and Yang. I am from the Czech Republic and Indigenous people are a concept that is not very used in my culture the only time when I probably learned about Indigenous peoples was when I was learning how Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. Hence this text provided me with a completely different perspective on scholar writing and Indigenous people in general. Yes, I was one of the people who focused on writing only from the Western perspective but I never considered there could be more then just what I know. It is now that I understand a bit clearer how blinded I was. This article opened my eyes. I never imagined there could be such a thing as decolonizing texts…why? But now I understand how valuable this can be for our future. Even as it is mentioned in the lecture: the world started getting inspired by Indigenous peoples and their holistic approach to nature. Why not be open to it all then?

One particular quote from the text got my attention „land and waters are polluted everywhere, and so to treat some waters as “pure” and sacred and others as impure is against Indigenous callings for defending the water”(Smith, Tuck, Yang 22). This quote can be amazingly applied to what is happening in our scholarly writing and in our society. From the Western perspective we treat Indigenous peoples as impure, yet we forget that all waters and lands are impure, which sets all people on the same ground. We can use this quote as a gentle reminder to help us see that it does not matter if the water is pure or impure it is still water.

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