“… there’s a thick thread of narrative by well-meaning white Westerners that exalts the native populations in so many parts of the world for standing up to the occupiers, makes of their narrative a neat reflexive arc in which it was always understood, by the colonized and (this part implied) the descendants of the colonizer, that what happened was wrong.”

It’s a very insightful critique. Those beautiful anti-colonial stories (often goes like: ppl were oppressed → they bravely stood up → everyone eventually agreed it was wrong ) are so neat and morally wrapped-up that let the colonized be heroic in a very clean, noble way, and it lets the descendants of colonizers picture themselves as having long understood the moral lesson. It’s a story that lets Western audiences feel reflective without ever feeling implicated, while the anti-colonial resistance in real history involved fear, violence, disagreement, and desperation.

So these polished stories, even when they’re meant to honor the oppressed, always end up rewriting the past in a way that makes it easier for Western readers to digest and absorb. And the power to frame the story still sits with the West.