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Was there a genocide committed against Native Americans?

Was there a genocide committed against Native Americans?

  • Yes, white people committed a genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas

    Votes: 55 91.7%

  • No, white people did not commit a genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas

    Votes: 5 8.3%
  • Total voters
    60
Lycanthrope said:
Is the argument here one of semantics - i.e. are we arguing over whether genocide or ethnic cleansing is the more appropriate terminology to classify the United States' actions toward the indigenous North American population?

Interesting article to consider:

historynewsnetwork.org

Yes, Native Americans Were the Victims of Genocide

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism.
historynewsnetwork.org historynewsnetwork.org

The term “genocide” was coined following the Shoah, or Holocaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations convention presented in 1948 and adopted in 1951: the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations since 1988, when the US Senate ratified it. The genocide convention is an essential tool for historical analysis of the effects of colonialism in any era, and particularly in US history.

In the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”:


Moreover:

Although clearly the Holocaust was the most extreme of all genocides, the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide. The title of the Genocide convention is the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” so the law is about preventing genocide by identifying the elements of government policy, rather than only punishment after the fact. Most importantly, genocide does not have to be complete to be considered genocide.

Finally:

Within the logic of settler-colonialism, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from its founding, but there are also specific documented policies of genocide on the part of US administrations that can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jacksonian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; during the Civil War and in the post Civil War era of the so-called Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period; additionally, there is the overlapping period of compulsory boarding schools, 1870s to 1960s. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."
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Eco’s weird mention of preservation is what really set me off.
 
bomberfox said:
They did. They didnt give a **** about preservation mate. Thats why they kept breaking treaties left and right.
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Policy must be to destroy. It never was.
 
My god do you really think the indian removal act was about preservation? The fuuuck?
 
bomberfox said:
You have yet to prove this.
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You are claiming policy was to destroy. You need to prove that. You cannot cite a single policy in which such an intent is stated.
 
ecofarm said:
There's no policy to destroy so there's no genocide.
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Where is policy mentioned in the definition of the word in question?
 
ecofarm said:
You are claiming policy was to destroy. You need to prove that. You cannot cite a single policy in which such an intent is stated.
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You just claimed we intended to preserve them. Thats downright idiotic. Sticking your fingers in your ears and going nuh uh isnt helping.
 
bomberfox said:
You just claimed we intended to preserve them. Thats downright idiotic.
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It may have been pathetic uneducated and bigoted attempts, but the attempts were made and that appears contrary an intent to destroy.
 
ecofarm said:
It may have been pathetic uneducated and bigoted attempts, but the attempts were made and that appears contrary an intent to destroy.
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It wasnt uneducated lol! They knew what they were doing just like they knew what they were doing when they enslaved black people. It wasnt an oopsie daisy.
 
bomberfox said:
It wasnt uneducated lol!
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I mean the attempts to preserve NA culture through reservations and such. Pathetic and horrible attempts to preserve a culture but attempts. Why would a policy to destroy include such attempts however misguided and terrible.
 
ecofarm said:
I mean the attempts to preserve NA culture through reservations and such. Pathetic and horrible attempts to preserve a culture but attempts. Why would a policy to destroy include such attempts however misguided and terrible.
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……. Wow….. okay dude…. Trail of tears and indian removal preservation lol!
 
ecofarm said:
Just accept the UN definition and stop equating the acts of Nazis and Americans.
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Lol! You dont understand America’s beginnings very much. The nazis studied from America’s example for many of their programs. America had to make drastic changes to not be an insufferably evil country.
 
bomberfox said:
Lol! You dont understand America’s beginnings very much. The nazis studied from America’s example for many of their programs.
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That's apology for Nazis and genocide.
 
ecofarm said:
I mean the attempts to preserve NA culture through reservations and such. Pathetic and horrible attempts to preserve a culture but attempts. Why would a policy to destroy include such attempts however misguided and terrible.
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Can you point to a policy that specifically states the United States government's intention when creating reservations was to "preserve Native American culture?"
 
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