The beginnings of modern linguistics are European and coincide with the European colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands on the exploitation model (different from the settlement model in the Americas and Australia). The French clearly articulate their "mission civilisatrice" corresponding to the British's "White man's burden." They stipulate that their non-European subjects in the colonies are mentally primitive and their languages primitive and inferior to European languages. Missionaries and colonial administrators interested in those languages describe them from a European perspective. Although linguistics has evolved in important ways to date, the legacy of these beginnings can still be identified in various ways, calling especially on Native linguists to re-examine various analyses and the practice of the discipline itself. A reviewer of one of my grant proposals called me an "iconoclast," a badge I have accepted with pride.