Criteria for something to be a colony?

[nebo113]

I live in an area of the US that some folks characterize as a "colony."  I am not a historian so am unfamiliar with the literature on the notion of colonization.  Might someone suggest sources?

Thanks.

[kaysixteen]

I suppose you could tell us where you live, but in any case, on what basis is your area called a 'colony', including, of course, who has 'colonized' it?

[clean]

Are you Colonials exploiting the resources of the area to send back to the Motherland?
Are you superior in any way at all to the natives that first inhabited the area?
Are you Colonials escaping persecution in your native lands, or were you convicted and sentenced to a live in this area?
Do you have some disease that warrants you be segregated from those you may infect?   

[apl68]

Does the territory in question not have representation in the U.S. Congress, or the right to vote in Presidential elections?  Or is this a state or portion of a state where many people feel alienated from Washington D.C. and the mainstream of American society and government (Whatever "mainstream" even means anymore)?

[downer]

If we colonize Mars or another planet, should that be called a colony?
Maybe there are different kinds of colony.

[Parasaurolophus]

I reserve the term for places under the political control of some other state (i.e. places without self-government rights, as the political theorists put it). In the US, that would mean places like Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Guam. These are nominally "territories", but I consider that to be a rather inapt term (especially compared to Canada's three territories!). Puerto Rico's case, in particular, is just nuts.

Also for aggregations of lepers, nudists, and perhaps some hippies.

[Hibush]

It is a good question that has ambiguous answers these days.

Puerto Rico is a good example of ambiguity (or dissonance between nomenclature and practice).

Another aspect, what does it mean to "decolonialize the curriculum" in Massachusetts? The colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritans, whose views are not reflected in the current curriculum. (They were thrown out of Europe for being intolerant pains in the butt.) The state population is mostly made up of descendants of post-colonial immigrants.