The Metaphysics of Decolonization: Healing Historical Trauma and Indigenous Liberation Natalie Avalos Abstract: Decolonization is synonymous with liberation. It is invoked in multiple overlapping geopolitical projects that demand both the undoing of imperial-colonial structures and the amelioration of their efects. In his essay “Decolonizing Western Epistemology/ Building Decolonial Options,” Walter Mignolo describes decoloniality as a double-faced concept. Decolo- nization is a geopolitical project while decoloniality is an epistemological, political, and ethical process that enables decolonial futures (Mignolo 2011, 20). In this way, decoloniality is an analytical that critiques coloniality but also a generative utopian project that relies on decolonial epistemol- ogies to materialize these futures. Like setler colonialism, coloniality is a structure that exceeds colonization and capitalism, expressing itself as modernity. It is the epistemic and hermeneutical processes of decoloniality that reveal ways of living and being—what Mignolo calls “living in har- mony and reciprocity”—that ultimately build a nonimperial, noncapitalist world (Mignolo 2011, 25). In this article I put decolonial theory in conver- sation with Indigenous articulations of decolonization and religious life to illustrate what Indigenous decolonial futures may look like. I argue that reclamations of Indigenous metaphysical life regenerate Indigenous ontol- ogies (intersubjective personhood) in ways that not only secure decolonial futures but also heal historical trauma, which can be understood as onto- logical dispossession. Keywords: decolonization, healing historical trauma, Indigenous religious traditions, metaphysics, decolonial futures Intro–Decolonizaton D ecolonization is synonymous with liberation. It is invoked in multi- ple overlapping geopolitical projects that demand both the undoing THE CLR JAMES JOURNAL 27:1–2, Fall 2021 81–99 doi: 10.5840/clrjames2021111584 ©  THE CLR JAMES JOURNAL. ISSN 2167-4256