"... With this arrival, this conquest, one idea reigns supreme. You are a numbers person. You believe in possession through measuring the thing. The land is this many metres, the elevation is this high off the ground. Where a traveller may have seen the land, been curious about what 50 names say about the tree, already your mind was quartering, the stake hammered right in..."

"Possession—the numbers game—requires brute strength and the willingness to eradicate the speakers too."

- Yumna Kassab, The Conquest of Land and Dream

#land #biodiversity #life #quality #diversity #dispossession #commodification #quantifiability #ratability #scalability #values #language #naming #LanguagePolicies #SettlerSociety #EuropeanColonisation #IndigenousPeoples #writers

https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-conquest-of-land-and-dream/