This note is a treatise on how naivety, historical amnesia, and imported faiths enable the enslavement of indigenous peoples.
APÒDÀ - this is a name for those among us who spit on ancestral wisdom while cuddling up to foreign powers. That was the term our ancestors used; an epithet for souls so naïve, so stripped of strategic sense, they become tools for their people’s destruction. In every generation, there are those who, whether out of fear, greed, or sheer stupidity, side with the oppressor against their own.
And the outcome is always the same: loss. Loss of land. Loss of memory. Loss of self.
Take Ilọrin, for instance. The very name comes from the Yoruba phrase Ìlú tí wọ́n ti n lọ irin - the city where iron tools were sharpened. Once a thriving Yoruba settlement, it was turned into a theocratic outpost by Fulani invaders, assisted by a local convert who betrayed his kin. That wasn’t a mere religious shift. It was conquest. Yorubaland didn’t fall to military superiority, it buckled under betrayal. And the sons and daughters of ÌSÈSE; keepers of the land, were pushed to the margins.
This is not unique to the Yoruba. It is a global story, and one that should make your blood boil if you still claim to be indigenous in mind or soul.
Look to South Africa. What happened when European settlers arrived? It wasn't just guns and greed, it was ideology. Doctrine. Imported gods that promised salvation while the land was being stolen under their feet. While local chiefs and elders held on for dear life, many native converts welcomed the “light” of foreign religion, thinking it would save them. It didn't. It reduced them to pariars in their ancestral space.
The Khoisan were nearly wiped out. Zulu resistance, despite its legendary ferocity, could not withstand the alliance of Christian doctrine and colonial guns. Today, the land question still festers, unresolved. Indigenous South Africans remain second-class citizens on ancestral soil.
Australia? The Aboriginal population was decimated. Not just killed, but broken. Children stolen. Cultures outlawed. A people turned into a footnote. Christian missions rebranded as saviors, all while erasing entire ways of life.
In Canada and the United States, the pattern was even more aggressive. Entire nations of native peoples were either exterminated or boxed into reservations - pushed to the fringes on lands so poor and small they could barely sustain life. All the while, churches sprang up like weeds, offering Jesus in one hand and cultural annihilation in the other.
So when you hear someone today, a Yoruba, Zulu, Māori, Apache, praising the Abrahamic gods of their colonizers while scorning the spiritual systems of their ancestors, know that you’re witnessing the APÒDÀ archetype in full bloom. A soul so alienated from itself, it will wear its chains like a badge.
History is not kind to indigenous peoples who let their guard down.
And the Abrahamic Gods, for all their promises, have never once stopped the soldiers bearing their names. Never stopped the crusaders. Never stopped the jihadis. Never stopped the missionaries from burning shrines or renaming mountains. They watched. Or worse, they were invoked.
Tell me: when the Portuguese came to the Bight of Benin, which God did they pray to? When the British razed Benin City, which hymns did they sing? When the Fulani stormed Yorubaland, who rode with them?
We chant Psalms while they wield rifles. We fast while they negotiate treaties over our bones. We teach our children to be polite and forgiving, even as their futures are mortgaged.
Keep playing. Keep being the polite, educated APÒDÀ - welcoming your own erasure with open arms and a choir song.
Or remember who you are.
Because Earth won't miss the ones who forget themselves.
Stand up for what you stand on.
Ire o 🌴
Well written articlesl