Experts in Indigenous studies and anthropology, warn that first contact with aliens could lead to colonization and genocide if we don't learn from history. They argue that the current approach to searching for extraterrestrial life, led by SETI and NASA, is dominated by STEM scholars and lacks representation from social science and humanities fields. This narrow focus has not adequately considered the ethics of listening for alien life, and the authors suggest that listening without permission could be seen as a form of surveillance. Historically, contact between Western colonizers and Indigenous peoples has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement, and genocide. Examples such as Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas, where the preconceived notion that the "Indians" were less advanced due to their lack of writing led to decades of Indigenous servitude contact with aliens should be viewed as a long process, rather than a single event, and that we should consider the potential consequences of our actions.