The Decolonial Philosophies Collaboratory is a transdisciplinary research group at the University of Oregon (UO). We began in the Summer of 2020. Our group is devoted to the study and struggle of decolonial, postcolonial, anti-colonial, anti-imperial, feminist, and Indigenous scholarship and movements. Our aim is to facilitate conversations between these fields that will help us to reimagine pathways for decolonization and liberation across different geopolitical spaces. 

 

As a research group, our space has been a generative platform for UO graduate students and professors to share ongoing work and research, provide mentorship and feedback opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and engage in work with local and international groups and organizations to advance critical discussions on decoloniality, transnational feminism, the environment, and global justice. For example, in the Spring of 2023, our group organized an international conference, Feminist Afterlives of Colonialism, where we engaged with varied analyses on decolonial, postcolonial, and anti-colonial feminist themes on issues such as gender, sexuality, class, caste, race, ethnicity, and anti-blackness. The Feminist Afterlives of Colonialism conference received integral sponsorship and mentorship from UO College of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Association, Oregon Humanities Center, Williams Foundation Grant, New Junior Faculty Award Funding, Graduate Studies (DEI), Center for the Study of Women in Society, School of Global Studies and Languages, Philosophy Department, Romance Languages Department, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Department of Geography, Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies Department. 

​

Our upcoming conference, Decolonization & Global Justice, has been enthusiastically sponsored and mentored by the UO Global Justice Program, the UO Center for the Study of Women and Society,  the Oregon State University Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, the UO Department of Philosophy, the Schnitzer School of Global Studies & Languages, the Radical Organizing and Activism Resource Center, the Department of Romance Languages, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of History, the Department of Indigenous, Race, & Ethnic Studies, the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, the National Lawyers Guild Review, and Common Notions Press.  

​

​

Expression of Solidarity: 

​​

The University of Oregon is on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional homeland of the Kalapuya people. We recognize sovereignty and support the pursuit of justice for Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes—the Burns Paiute Tribe; the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians; the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde; the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians; the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; the Coquille Indian Tribe; the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians; and the Klamath Tribes—as well as the many Indigenous nations with ancestral ties to this territory, including the Chinook Indian Nation and the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes. On campus, the Many Nations Longhouse and Native American Student Union support Indigenous students in building community, maintaining cultural values, and pursuing their educational goals.

​

We acknowledge that this land was stolen through colonization, genocide, and broken treaties, and that the colonial project is ongoing—carried forward through prisons, policing, environmental destruction, and capitalism. We must work to disrupt these systems and practice solidarity with Indigenous Nations and their struggles for sovereignty, land, and self-determination.

We recognize that our university and country’s development were also built upon the stolen labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants; the forced exploitation of Indigenous peoples; the exploited labor of Chinese railroad workers, Japanese Americans dispossessed through wartime incarceration, and migrant workers from the Philippines, Mexico, and Central and South America; and the ongoing exploitation of incarcerated workers today. We understand that the theft of labor is the theft of generational progress.

​

We recognize that the fights against colonialism, racism, and capitalism are inseparable, especially within struggles for power at the UO. Join us in committing not just to words of acknowledgment, but to concrete action: becoming accomplices, organizing against exploitation, and creating a future rooted in indigenous sovereignty, liberation, and justice. Learning what transformation has been held here - both to the land and people - is one of many places to begin.