Restitution of material objects and indigenous ontology: towards coloniality of dispossession/theft in Africa

Indigenous African people had mastery and ownership of material objects and land more broadly before colonialism and enslavement. Without indigenous people mastery and ownership over their material objects, indigenous progress, liberation, development, and emancipation would be elusive. This paper contends that decolonization/decoloniality is a function of abating dispossession/theft of indigenous material objects by imperialists through restitution and repossession. In fact, to forestall claims for restitution and reparations require mastery and ownership of their material objects to enable those that are colonized to assume sovereignty and autonomy. This paper theorizes coloniality as theft/dispossession as its critical framework. The underlying argument here is that theorizing coloniality as theft/dispossession makes it possible to conceive of the limitations of theories that define coloniality simplistically in terms of hierarchies, binaries, and dominance. Based on this assemblage, I frame the coloniality of theft/dispossession along the Asante (the people of Ghana) dispossessed material objects in the eras of colonialism and enslavement. The paper concludes that decolonizing ontologies by way of restitution is a necessary component of the process of reversing colonial/imperial theft/dispossession of objects for which they should be compensated as part of the process of decolonization rather than erroneous conceptualization of decolonization in terms of hierarchy, oppression, and binaries.