A Decolonial Perspective on Knowledge and Expertise
With permission from the author : Tania Shoukair, Decolonized Mind-body Coach, Writer & Poet, Embodied Expert in Cooking!
Colonialism was never just about land and resources. It has always been about knowledge, because knowledge is power. Western colonial powers have historically maintained their dominance by determining which forms of knowledge are ”valuable” and which are expendable, using the narrow metrics of European Understanding.
From active destruction (e.g. The destruction of libraries in the Americas1), and deliberate erasure (e.g. Macaulay’s educational policy in lndia2). To suppression (e.g. Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1895 in Southern Africa3), and policing (e.g. The Obeah Act of 1760 in Jamaica4). History is full of deliberate acts of destruction, theft, and erasure, all in the name of Western ”civility”.
For centuries, Western colonial powers have been positioning their scientific, written, and quantifiable systems of knowledge as universal. Labeling Eastern, Southern, Indigenous, and embodied forms of knowing as “primitive,” “superstitious,” or “irrational”, while stealing or “borrowing” knowledge from these very sources without crediting their origin.
There’s a reason, for example, why few people know that smallpox inoculation was practiced in Asia centuries before Edward Jenner was credited with “inventing” vaccination in England5.
This would shatter the common perception that Europe is the center of scientific research and discovery.
Knowledge informs narrative.
To control this narrative, oral traditions of the colonized were replaced by written documentation. Community-based apprenticeships were replaced by formal schooling. And children were sent to boarding schools or schools where the colonizer’s language and customs were prioritized.
Knowledge held in bodies, through rhythm, taste, movement, ritual, or intuition, was replaced by knowledge held in Western textbooks and institutions, and guarded by European, mostly male, ”experts”. Expertise was locked behind elitist academic institutions, and kept out of reach for women, indigenous, and BIPOC folk.
And because colonialism is inherently patriarchal and racist, embodied expertise wasn’t just dismissed, it was also feminized and racialized. Colonialism replaced the midwife with the male doctor, the herbalist with the pharmacist, the village elder with the missionary, the craftsperson with the factory.
It recast care, intuition, and embodied experience as inferior traits associated with women, colonized people, and the ”uncivilized.”
The erasure of the embodied expert, who had an important, long standing, and respected position in their community, meant the erasure of entire knowledge systems connected to the Earth, the senses, and the cyclical.
Seeding fear and doubt around their legitimacy, discontinued lines of experts who were living breathing encyclopedias.
This also fractured the experts and their descendants from within-making them doubt their lineage, gifts, intuition, and calling, and abandoning them in favor of more “socially” and ” culturally” acceptable paths.
This severance from inner knowing and embodied knowledge is deliberate. Colonialism thrives on disembodiment: to maintain a culture of dominance and extraction, it separates the mind from the body, and the body from nature and community.
Embodied expertise requires participation, presence, sensory knowing, co-regulation with environment, and mutual respect. An embodied expert is less likely to exploit, dominate, or extract from its subjects and objects of learning and collaboration.
By contrast, a colonial “expert” is someone who can objectively observe and measure, detached from what or who they’re studying or engaging with. This detachment makes extraction and exploitation inevitable.
This can be seen through historical Western atrocities committed in the name of science and economic growth. Example: J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century gynecologist – often referred to as the father of gynecology- who experimented on enslaved Black women6. Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the American nuclear program (aka The Manhattan Project)7. The testing of weapons and defense technology on Palestinian civilians8.
Colonial expertise makes anything permissible in the name of scientific objectivity.
Disembodiment is a tool of subjugation and domination.
You can’t extract or exploit a planet you honor and feel connected to. You can’t easily control people who trust their inner authority and bodily wisdom. You can’t sustain colonial hierarchies if everyone’s lived experience is respected and seen as valid knowledge.
Erasing embodied expertise and experts was a way of sterilizing learning and knowledge, and breaking our trust with ourselves and our environmental symbiosis that was developed and perfected for thousands of years.
We continue to witness this erasure and unequal exchange.
“Professionalism” still means suppressing emotion, and being “objective” and impartial.
“Expertise” still privileges degrees over lived experience and intuition.
“Health and Wellness” still loots indigenous embodied knowledge, stripping it of its cultural roots and political meaning, and re-introducing it as tools for personal and economic growth via Western channels (ikaugi, yoga, tantra, mindfulness).
To this day, when colonial powers set their eyes on a land and its resources, in addition to erasing its general population and their centers and hubs of knowledge (90% of school and university buildings in Gaza were destroyed by Israel9), they also systemically target the experts.
Land-workers, farmers, poets, researchers, archivists, healers (incl. doctors), story-letters (incl. journalists), builders (incl. engineers).
By erasing and destroying embodied experts-people who are deeply rooted in their community, land, and inner knowing-colonial powers are sending a strong implicit message:
It is dangerous to be an embodied expert, to use knowledge as a conduit for connection, community, and care, instead of a conduit for capital, control, and destruction.
At the same time, we are also witnessing a re-emergence of the embodied expert.
Through decolonial theory, crowdsourced knowledge hubs and platforms, community farming, storytelling …
Many of us are seeking to restore the body as a site of knowledge and resistance. To realign our expertise with collective needs and struggles.
We all come from lineages of embodied experts: cooks, healers, musicians, land-workers, herbalists …
Our bodies are full of untapped wisdom, knowledge, and gifts, passed down through generations -through trial and error, natural selection, and epigenetics.
The return to embodied expertise, not just expertise labeled and ordained
by official institutions-is also a return to care and connection.
It’s replacing disembodied work, labor in favor of capital and its masters, with embodied work, work in favor of community and planet.
Stepping into embodied expertise is part of our collective healing journey. But it also requires resources: somatic (regulation, presence, nervous system capacity), communal, and material.
Sources:
1.Niccolo Leo Caldararo, “The Lost Libraries of the Americas” (1994), Library History. Accessed via ResearchGate.
2. “Macaulayism,” Wikipedia, last edited October 5, 2025
3. Witchcraft Suppression Act, 1957 (Act No. 3 of 1957), Government of South Africa. PDF accessed via gov.za
4.1760 Jamaica Obeah Law,” Obeah Histories, accessed October 27, 2025, https://obeahhistories.org/1760-jamaica-law
5. Cary P. Gross and Kent A. Sepkowitz, “The Myth of the Medical Breakthrough: Smallpox Vaccination and Jenner Reconsidered” (1998), International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 3(1), 54- 60. Accessed via ResearchGate
6.How Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha Became Foremothers of Gynecology,” Harvard Gazette, March 2023
7. The Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb,” Khan Academy
8. The Palestine Laboratory: H,ow Israel Uses Genocide to Test & Sell Weapons,” /US Scientists, October 3, 2025
9. Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Territory,” OHCHR, June 2025
