Indigenous response to colonialism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_response_to_colonialism

Indigenous response to colonialism has varied depending on the Indigenous group, historical period, territory, and colonial state(s) they have interacted with. Indigenous peoples have had agency in their response to colonialism. They have employed armed resistance, diplomacy, and legal procedures. Others have fled to inhospitable, undesirable or remote territories to avoid conflict. Nevertheless, some Indigenous peoples were forced to move to reservations or reductions, and work in mines, plantations, construction, and domestic tasks. They have detribalized and culturally assimilated into colonial societies. On occasion, Indigenous peoples have formed alliances with one or more Indigenous or non-Indigenous nations. Overall, the response of Indigenous peoples to colonialism during this period has been diverse and varied in its effectiveness. Indigenous resistance has a centuries-long history that is complex and carries on into contemporary times.

The Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho signed three successive treaties with the United States government, 1867.

Background

Indigenous peoples are the earliest known inhabitants of a territory that was or remains colonized by a dominant group. Before the age of colonialism, there were hundreds of nations and tribes throughout the territories that would be colonized, with diverse languages, religions and cultures. The peoples that would come to be known as Indigenous had large cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. These societies had varying degrees of knowledge of the arts, agriculture, engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, irrigation, geology, mining, weather forecasting, navigation, metallurgy and more. Their population would experience a significant collapse due to the effects of colonization. Most Indigenous groups in the world today have been displaced from some or all of their ancestral lands. Indigenous peoples have existed in a context of colonialism, as they are not "Indigenous" without experiencing the practice of colonialism, that is, when their sovereignty and self-determination are realized.

In recent decades, non-Indigenous historiography has paid increased attention to Indigenous agency. Before, Indigenous peoples were studied as passive objects of colonial policy and administration, but now the growing areas of borderland studies and Indigenous agency have emerged.

As European colonialism has spread throughout the world, settlers have become dominant through conquest, occupation, or invasion. In this process, there has been and continues to be conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples. For hundreds of years in recent history, Indigenous groups have been the target of a number of atrocity crimes including multiple genocides that have destroyed entire nations. In spite of this, Indigenous peoples survive and some are thriving. They account for a population of 476 million, residing in 90 countries around the world and speaking over 5000 languages from several language families, even though hundreds of Indigenous groups are extinct. Some examples of important surviving Indigenous languages include Aymara, Guaraní, Quechua and Mapuche in South America; Lakota and Navajo in North America; Maya and Nahua in Central America; Inuit in the circumpolar region; Sámi in northwest Eurasia; and Torres Strait Islanders and Māori in Oceania. For comparison, at the time of contact in 1492, there were 40 to 70 languages spoken in Europe, mostly from the Indo-European language family.

Indigenous peoples continue to struggle as they suffer discrimination in most countries where they coexist with non-Indigenous peoples. The majority of the world's Indigenous peoples are among the poorest groups within the states where they live, and they amount to 19% of the world's poor.

Contact and conquest

Aztec warriors led by an eagle knight, each holding a macuahuitl club. Florentine Codex, book IX, F, 5v. Manuscript written by Bernardino de Sahagún.

Before Europeans set out to discover what had been populated by others in their Age of Discovery and before the European colonization, Indigenous peoples resided in a large proportion of the world's territory. For example, in the Americas, there are estimates of a population of up to 100 million people. The Indigenous response to colonization has been varied and also changed over time as each group chose to flee, fight, submit, support or seek diplomatic solutions. One example of an Indigenous group that fled is the Beothuk in Newfoundland, which is now practically extinct. The Charrúa were massacred in what is now Uruguay and were completely destroyed. In contrast, the Nenets have accommodated the Russian state.

Malinche translating for Hernán Cortés

For a long time, scholars have explained that the large fatality rates of Indigenous peoples upon contact with settlers have been caused by new infectious diseases brought to Indigenous territories from overseas. Recent scholarship has shifted to explore the nature of the difficult conditions of life imposed on Indigenous peoples due to colonization itself, which made Indigenous peoples more vulnerable to any disease, including new diseases. In other words, causes of death such as forced labor combined with hunger that converged during the colonization process made Indigenous peoples weaker and less resistant to disease. For example, scholars maintain that smallpox probably killed a third of the population in colonial Mexico but admit that there is no evidence to quantify the impact with certainty.

Cuitláhuac, Aztec Tlatoani who led to victory in battle

During the colonization of New Spain from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the focus of the colonizers was to practice agriculture, farming, mining, and infrastructure construction while exploiting Indigenous labor. Slavery was one of the main factors that decimated the Indigenous population of North America. Indigenous slavery predated and outlasted the African slave trade until the 20th century. The Spanish crown allowed slavery of Indigenous peoples captured in "just wars", which included Indigenous resistance to colonialism, such as religious conversion or forced labor. Indigenous forced labor took place in repartimientos, encomiendas, Spanish missions and haciendas. Indigenous women and children were forced to do domestic work. Even after slavery was outlawed by the Spanish Empire, and then ex-colonies such as the Mexican and United States governments, those that benefitted from slavery used legal frameworks to avoid enforcement such as vagrancy laws, convict leasing, and debt peonage.

Francisco Tenamaztle, Indigenous leader in the Mixtón War, statue on the main square of Nochistlán de Mejía, Zacatecas

Indigenous nations sought diplomacy or military alliances to survive, seeking allies in other nations, including neighbouring Indigenous nations and other colonizing powers, as in the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. In Central America, Miskito people allied with the English to resist Spanish colonialism. Indigenous peoples have sought alliances if the alliance has improved their chances of survival or worked to their advantage. Some Indigenous nations attempted to show their allegiance to the colonizing power by becoming a military ally in the attacks of other Indigenous nations, as in the case of the Tlaxcalans in the central valley of Mexico. Other times, they would ally themselves with escaped African slaves, as in the case of the Seminoles.

On rare occasions, Indigenous peoples would be successful in battle against European armies. Examples include the Battle of Curalaba, La Noche Triste, Chichimeca War and the Battle of Big Horn. The Mapuche in Chile, the Māori in New Zealand, the Yaquis in Mexico, and the Seminoles in Florida resisted for decades or even centuries. However, in many parts of the world, Indigenous peoples moved away from fertile, resource-rich territories to inaccessible and inhospitable territories such as swamps, deserts and jungles. They were displaced from fertile places in Argentina, Brazil, the Philippines and temperate Africa. Some examples include small Indigenous groups moving to parts of the Amazon basin, Australia, Central America, the Arctic and Siberia. Others came into conflict with other Indigenous groups as they were forcefully displaced and occupied territory that was inhabited by other Indigenous groups. On occasions, the reaction of Indigenous peoples to attacks resulted in their transformation into warrior horse cultures that used European fire guns to resist further invasion of their territories. Even today, the stereotypical Native American depicted in Indian Wars is riding on a horse. For example, the people of the Great Plains and Mapuche adopted the horse into their everyday cultures.

Lautaro and Guacolda

Indigenous peoples also adopted newly introduced domestic animals in their diet as Europeans introduced chicken, cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep in the Columbian exchange. Indigenous peoples have hunted their territory for centuries or millennia, and many times killed the animals belonging to settlers, and this has been the cause of much conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples were not always conquered militarily, as in the case of treaties made between Great Britain and France with Indigenous peoples. The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi of the Maori, and the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo of the Navajo are two examples of treaties that remain important today.

Colonization

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala

Modern colonialism that started in the 15th century, along with European transatlantic navigation, resulted in the expansion of European empires and the associated settler colonialism that occurred in the Americas, Oceania, South Africa and beyond.

According to historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, the fact that Indigenous peoples survive today against genocidal attacks is proof of resistance:

Native nations and communities, while struggling to maintain fundamental values and collectivity, have from the beginning resisted modern colonialism using both defensive and offensive techniques, including the modern forms of armed resistance of national liberation movements and what now is called terrorism. In every instance they have fought for survival as peoples.

Charrua and soldier.

Dunbar-Ortiz sets examples of resistance in North America in the cases of the Pueblo Revolt, the Pequot War, King Philip's War, and the Seminole Wars.

Geronimo, Apache leader

Statue of Lempira, Plaza Central de Tambla

Historical Indigenous resistance leaders throughout the world include Cajemé, Caupolican, Dundalli, Geronimo, Lautaro, Lempira, Mangas Coloradas, Manco Inca, Tupac Amaru II, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa.

At times, Indigenous peoples used violent resistance, at times successfully or at times involving two or more Indigenous allies. Examples include the Mixton rebellion, the Zapatista uprising, the Caste War of Yucatán, Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II, the Tzeltal Rebellion of 1712, Pontiac's War and the North-West Rebellion. Academic Benjamin Madley said that throughout the world, groups targeted for annihilation resist, often violently. He details the case of the Modoc War comparing the casualties of the conflict. Furthermore, he says that "The Modoc genocide is hardly the only genocide against Indigenous people that has been sanitized as war." According to Frank Chalk, in the 19th century United States, the federal government policy toward Native Americans was ethnocide, but when they resisted, the result sometimes was genocidal. Historically, victims of genocide have resisted, and this resistance has been criminalized to justify massacres.

1622 Jamestown massacre. The image is largely considered conjecture.

According to Ken Coates, sexual relations between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men took place to some extent in New Zealand, New Spain, the Metis in Canada, whereas they generally did not take place in other places such as Australia and British North America. People of mixed settler-Indigenous ancestry have been discriminated against. The mixing blurred the lines between Indigenous and newcomer populations, and most learned the language of the colony, which was a European language. Some scholars have argued that the concept of mestizaje, the process of transcultural mixing, has been used to promote assimitionalism and monoculturalism in Latin America.

Maori soldiers, 1915

In North America, where the British made treaties with Indigenous peoples, they learned that these treaties could be broken and would not protect their communities. Faced with the risk that their people would be destroyed, leaders of Indian resistance agreed to treaties requiring land cessions, and the redefinition of borders in the hope that the settlers would not encroach further on Indigenous territory. One of such examples is the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, a federally recognized Indian Nation, which was led by Potawatomi leader Leopold Pokagon. Other times, treaties were signed under coercion or right after Indigenous groups suffered massacres, such as in the case of the Treaty of Hartford of 1638. Colonial powers also sought control of new territories by appropriating the Indigenous elite through bribery and assimilation.

In North America, the United States and Canada established residential schools, removing Indigenous children from their families for years while prohibiting the use of their Indigenous language and cultural practices. Australia focused on children with mixed ethnicity and removed children to be placed in residential schools or to be adopted by non-Indigenous families. Canada and the United States have assimilated Indigenous peoples via Indian termination policies, in which incentives are offered for Indigenous peoples to renounce Indigenous rights in exchange for benefits such as citizenship rights. Furthermore, Canada removed Indigenous rights if an Indigenous woman married a non-Indigenous person, an Indigenous person graduated from university, or joined the military.

The Cherokee Nation is one of the federally recognized tribes within the United States. It is now located in Oklahoma after being forcefully removed in the Trail of Tears along with other Indigenous groups. Indigenous groups in North America were assigned to small reservations, typically on remote and economically marginal territories that would not support crops, fishing or hunting. Some of the reservations were then dismantled through an allotment process such as the Dawes act in North America, but some Indigenous peoples refused to sign.

Cree Indian sun dancers, ca 1893

A 2009 United Nations report stated that Indigenous peoples have "...documented histories of resistance, interface or cooperation with states...Indigenous peoples were often recognized as sovereign peoples by states, as witnessed by the hundreds of treaties concluded between Indigenous peoples and the governments of the United States, Canada, New Zealand and others".

Contemporary response

Strategies

Indigenous strategies continue to pursue Indigenous rights and freedom and seek to rebuild their nations and cultures to maintain national groups with distinct cultural identities. Indigenous nations continue to pursue self-determination and sovereignty.

Protesters toppled a statue of Diego de Mazariegos, a Spanish conquistador. 1992.

Contemporary Indigenous strategies have included negotiations, mediation, arbitration, political statements, blockades, legal challenges, activism, political demonstrations and civil disobedience. A few have worked on the removal from public spaces of symbols of Indigenous oppression, such as monuments to Christopher Columbus, John A. Macdonald, and Junipero Serra. Much resistance has also been used to bring Indigenous issues to public attention.

Indigenous peoples commemorate historical events and processes on an annual or periodic basis. Examples include Unthanksgiving Day and Indigenous Peoples Day. Activists have also protested what they consider controversial colonial holidays, such as Australia Day, and Columbus Day and its quincentenary celebration.

Erich Steinman has compiled a record of Native American resistance processes and responses that he says are not well studied by American sociology.

In New Zealand and Ecuador, Indigenous peoples have formed political parties, Te Pāti Māori and Pachakutik respectively. Bolivia has had an Indigenous president, Evo Morales.

Indigenous nations and peoples have managed to survive despite sustained long-term attacks to their survival as Indigenous nations, cultures or as members of an Indigenous group. Hall argues that Indigenous peoples challenge the idea that the state is the basic form of political organization. He argues that the Indigenous fight for self-determination today is part of a cycle of centuries of resistance to colonialism.

Views on ongoing colonialism

Elaine Coburn and historian Lorenzo Veracini say that colonialism is present in contemporary settler colonial states, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Michael Grewcock has argued that in Australia, there are Indigenous peoples "who still resist the colonization of country that was never ceded".

Native American anthropologist Audra Simpson argues that the colonial project is ongoing, as the case of the Mohawks of Kahnawake, a self-governing territory of the Mohawk Nation within the borders of Canada.

Pablo G. Casanova has said that in Mexico there has been a practice of internal colonialism. According to sociologist Anibal Quijano, Bolivia and Mexico have undergone limited decolonialization through a revolutionary process. In Mexico, the case of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) denotes resistance in many areas, including education, territorial, epistemological, political and economic terms. EZLN is viewed as a continuation of the struggle against more than 500 years of oppression of Indigenous peoples.

According to Ken Coates, liberal democracies do not like being called up on internal human rights abuses "when these same governments are often prominent in criticizing other nations for abuses of human and civil rights". Furthermore, post-independence era countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia have been dismissive of Indigenous rights as much as colonial empires.

Indigenous storytelling

Oral storytelling is important to Indigenous culture, but it has been underepresented. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has said that when Howard Zinn wrote his United States' history book, he did not include the history of the Indigenous peoples, so he said that she could write what would become such a book: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Rigoberta Menchu published an essay about her life with personal experiences directly related to the Guatemalan genocide and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Truth commissions

There are Truth Commissions that have investigated and reported on Indigenous atrocities. Some of them include the Guatemala Historical Clarification Commission, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Norway.

Museums

In Latin America, there are only a few museums whose central theme is that of colonization and history of Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples and others have protested against museum´s exhibitions. Notable examples of Indigenous museums are Museu do Índio (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil), Royal Museum for Central Africa (Brussels, Belgium), Musée du Quai Branly (Paris, France), National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City), Museum of the Tropics (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Museo Nacional de Antropología and Museo de América (Madrid, Spain), American Indian Genocide Museum (Houston, USA), George Gustav Heye Center (New York City, USA), and National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C., USA).

Many smaller European colonial museums have closed after the end of European colonization. According to Pascal Blanchard, the political climate in France has not allowed the emergence of a museum about French colonialism. In Bristol, England, the only museum dedicated to colonialism, British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, has been closed after operating for just 6 years.

In North America, American Museum of Natural History in New York, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and Cleveland Museum of Art have begun to close exhibits with Indigenous themes to comply with federal regulations that mandate tribal consent and repatriation of human remains.

Indigenous media

There are a number of Indigenous broadcasting organizations from countries serving Indigenous themes, including APTN, First Nations Experience, NITV, NRK Sami and Whakaata Māori.

Language

Some movements, such as the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, have sought to promote the use of Indigenous languages in educational programs. In recent years, there has been a revival in the use of Māori language in New Zealand, where it is an official language and taught in 350 schools. New technologies are making access to educational language programs accessible to the general public. Furthermore, there are examples of Indigenous schools that move away from Eurocentric curriculums while considering the graduates' future prospects within a non-Indigenous majority state. In Paraguay, Guaraní is the official language and is spoken by 6.5 million people in the region. Quechua and Aymara are official languages in Peru and Bolivia and are spoken by 8 and 2.5 million people, respectively. Nationalism has promoted the use of local languages in most of Eurasia, but in the rest of the world, European languages remain dominant in mass media, education and the internet.

Culture

Today, Indigenous peoples can react to cultural processes in various ways, including acculturation, transculturation, assimilation, and cultural loss, while some remain separated from the dominant culture or marginalized from any group, including their own. In Hispanic America, Indigenous peoples have adopted Spanish religion, institutions, language, and literature, as well as non-endemic domestic animals and crops.

Some scholars and Indigenous peoples argue that renaming geographical entities should be part of a reclaiming process of Indigenous cultures.

International law

In the area of international law, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations participated directly in the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and worked on the development of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989. Indigenous scholar Jeff Corntassel said that article 46 of UNDRIP may be detrimental to some Indigenous rights: "...the restoration of their land-based and water-based cultural relationships and practices is often portrayed as a threat to the territorial integrity of the country(ies) in which they reside, and thus, a threat to state sovereignty".

For decades, Indigenous peoples had demanded that the Catholic Church rescinded the Doctrine of Discovery theories that justified the seizure of Indigenous land and supported a legal basis.

Colonialism and genocide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism_and_genocide 

Memorial in Berlin-Neukölln to the Victims of the Herero and Namaqua genocide perpetrated by the German Empire against the Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia

Tibetan people in protest against their treatment by China

The connection between colonialism and genocide has been explored in academic research. According to historian Patrick Wolfe, "[t]he question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism." Historians have commented that although colonialism does not necessarily directly involve genocide, research suggests that the two share a connection.

Colonialism has been reinforced during various periods in history, even during progressive eras such as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, a period in the history of 17th and 18th Century Europe which was marked by dedication to progressive reform, natural social hierarchies were reinforced, Europeans who were educated, white, and native-born were considered high-class and less-educated, non-European people were considered low-class. These natural hierarchies were reinforced by progressives such as Marquis de Condorcet, a French mathematician, who believed that slaves were savages due to their lack of modern practices, despite the fact that he advocated the abolition of slavery.  First, the colonization process usually works to attack the homes of those who are being targeted. Typically, the people who are subjected to colonizing practices are portrayed as lacking modernity, because they and the colonialists do not have the same level of education or technology.

The term genocide was coined in the 20th century by Raphael Lemkin to describe the Armenian genocide, although genocides have been committed since ancient times. Years later, the term was unanimously accepted by the United Nations and it was defined as an internationally illegal practice as a part of Resolution 96 in 1946. Various definitions of genocide exist. However, the Convention of Genocide has defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It is important to note that all definitions of genocide involve ethnicity, race, or religion as a motivational factor. Genocide scholar Israel Charny has proposed a definition of genocide in the course of colonization.

The example of Tasmania is cited, where white settlers wiped out indigenous Tasmanians, an event which is genocide by definition as well as an event which is a result of settler colonialism. Additionally, instances of colonialism and genocide in California and Hispaniola are cited below. The instance in California references the colonization and genocide of indigenous tribes by euro-Americans during the gold rush period. The example in Hispaniola discusses the island's colonization by Columbus and other Spaniards and the genocide inflicted on the native Taino people.

Researched examples of genocide linked to colonialism

• Another example of colonialism and Genocide is the genocide which was committed against the Taino tribe on Hispaniola after the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other Spanish colonizers. Columbus and his crew arrived on the island of Haiti in December 1492. Initially leaving 39 Spaniards behind, Columbus left and a year later, he returned with more Spaniards in order to complete his conquest of the Dominican Republic. There are no exact tallies of how many Taino people inhabited Hispaniola when Columbus arrived on it. However, it is estimated that the number of Taino people who lived on Hispaniola was at least hundreds of thousands and it may have been up to a million or more. However, during the 25 years when the Spanish colonized the islands of Hispaniola, the Taino people were murdered, subjected to slavery, and by the year 1514, only 32,000 Taino people remained alive. 
• Black War of Tasmania, 1820s–1832. This was a guerrilla war fought between European settlers and Aboriginal Tasmanians, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 900 Aboriginal locals and the near extinction of the island's Aboriginal population.
• According to Jack Norton, a Hupa and Cherokee scholar, the colonization of California was attributed to Manifest Destiny, and the success of European colonizers in the West was attributed to the genocide of indigenous peoples. In a government-sponsored move to California, European colonizers emigrated west to further colonize the north American continent due to the discovery of gold in California. Upon arriving, Brendan Lindsay, an American behavioral scientist, notes that the euro-American group encountered nearly 150,000 indigenous tribes, and colonizers worked to drive them away, murder them, or have them collected by militiamen or vigilante forces. As the gold rush ended and as euro-American colonizers began to cultivate the land and create democracy in California, the treatment of indigenous tribes became much worse. The first California Governor, Peter H. Burnett, declared that a “war of extermination” should be waged against Indians, the war was recounted by numerous newspapers which were published at that time.
• According to the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGIE), during the early years of the rule of the Chinese administration in Tibet, an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans died between 1951 and 1984. Tibet expert Barry Sautman considers this number highly "inaccurate," because there is "no credible evidence of ongoing mass killing, physically enforced birth control, or forced intermarriage in Tibet." Sautman also challenges the notion that Chinese practices in Tibet can be considered genocidal or colonial, stating that "Tibet's non-colonial nature can be derived from the nature of modern colonialism" and citing the political and legal equality of Tibetans under the current administration.
• In Belgium, the atrocities in the Congo Free State are not in the public discourse, and the topic is not entirely addressed in education. The archive of the colony was destroyed. In 1999, Adam Hochschild published King Leopold's Ghost, an award-winning book (and a documentary) about the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State. The American Historical Association has awarded the book and claimed that Belgium has come to terms with this history because of the book.

Settler colonialism and genocide

Mystic Massacre 1637

There is a number of international scholars whose work established a relation between settler colonialism and genocide, as seen below. Settler colonialism is different from immigration because immigrants often assimilate into an existing society, not to destroy it to replace it. Ann Curthoys is an Australian historian and academic who wrote about the view of genocide scholar Leo Kuper: "Nevertheless, the course of colonization of North and South America, the West Indies, and Australia and Tasmania, [Leo] Kuper observes, has certainly been marked all too often by genocide." Noam Chomsky has considered settler colonialism to be the most vicious form of imperialism, and describes the lack of self-awareness of the genocide by some Americans.

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Bernard Baylin has said that the Dutch and English conquests were just as brutal as those of the Spanish and Portuguese, in certain places and in certain times "genocidal". He says that this history, for example the Pequot War, is not erased but conveniently forgotten. The different European colonizing powers were all similarly cruel in their dealings with Indigenous peoples.

David Stannard historian and professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii analyzed the genocidal process in two cases of colonization. He said that the British did not need massive labor as the Spanish, but land: "And therein lies the central difference between the genocide committed by the Spanish and that of the Anglo-Americans: in British America extermination was the primary goal." Thus, in British America they would clear the land of Indigenous peoples, and put the few survivors in reserves.

Gregory D. Smithers, a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Aberdeen, has weighed in as well: "Ward Churchill refers to settler colonialism in North America as 'the American holocaust', and David Stannard similarly portrayed the European colonization of the Americas as an example of 'human incineration and carnage'."

Mark Levene, a historian at University of Southampton, linked colonialism and genocide: "In this, of course, we come back to the fatal nexus between the Anglo-American drive to rapid state-building and genocide." Levene has said that the authorities are silent about genocide in the case of the colonization of Australia, even though the press reports described the events.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an American historian, professor at California State University, describes settler colonialism as inherently genocidal from the perspective of the terms of the Genocide Convention. She pointed out that genocide does not have to be total to be genocide, as the most famous genocide (the Holocaust) of all was not total.

Stephen Howe, professor in the History and Cultures of Colonialism at the University of Bristol, UK, relates colonialism with genocide and says the case for colonialism causing genocide is very strong.

Martin Shaw has argued that in a colonial context: "each side shattered the opposing civilian population while pursuing military goals."

Historian Jacques Depelchin has said that the crimes of colonization have always been denied.

Christian P. Sherrer has argued that almost all European colonial powers used genocide as part of the colonization process. According to Elyse Semerdjian, settler colonial warfare is a slow genocidal process.

Denial of genocides of Indigenous peoples

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_genocides_of_Indigenous_peoples

Spanish abuse at Encomienda depicted in Codex Kingsborough, 16th century

Denial of genocides of Indigenous peoples consists of a claim that has denied any of the multiple genocides and atrocity crimes, which have been committed against Indigenous peoples. The denialism claim contradicts the academic consensus, which acknowledges that genocide was committed. The claim is a form of denialism, genocide denial, historical negationism and historical revisionism. The atrocity crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

During European colonization, many empires have colonized territories inhabited by what would be known today as Indigenous peoples. Many new colonies have surviving Indigenous peoples within their new political borders, and in this process, atrocities have been committed against Indigenous nations. The atrocities against Indigenous peoples have related to forced displacement, exile, introduction of new diseases, forced containment in reservations, forced assimilation, forced labour, criminalization, dispossession, land theft, compulsory sterilization, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, separating children from their families, enslavement, captivity, massacres, forced religious conversion, cultural genocide, and reduction of means of subsistence and subsequent starvation and disease.

Non-Indigenous scholars are now increasingly examining the impact of settler colonialism and internal colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous peoples.

Background

Defining genocide

An 1888 drawing of a massacre by Queensland's police at Skull Hole, Mistake Creek, near Winton, Australia.

In 1948, the Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Additional scholarly definitions have been used to examine the diverse history of genocide, including those that include cultural and ethnic genocide as per Raphael Lemkin.

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have argued that definitions of key terms, as well as the attention a society provides to a specific issue, such as genocide, is the product of mass media, as they mention in Manufacturing Consent: "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy". Thus, Chomsky views the term genocide as one that is used by those in positions of political power and media prominence against their rivals, but people in positions of power will avoid using the term to describe their own actions, past and present.

Bradley Campbell has proposed a theory of genocide as a function of minority status, social segregation, low population size, and lack of visibility. Further factors include marginalization, the lack of political representation, and lower economic or social status.

In the latter part of the 20th century, the genocide of Indigenous peoples attracted more attention from the international community, including scholars and human rights organizations.

Rationalization

American academic and activist Gregory Stanton has described ten stages of genocide, in which the ninth stage is extermination and the tenth is denial. During this final stage, Stanton argues that individuals and government may "deny that these crimes meet the definition of genocide", "question whether intent to destroy a group can be proven", and "often blame what happened on the victims". The concept of denial as the final stage of genocide has been discussed in more detail in the 2021 textbook Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide? Stanton also indicates that stages often co-occur; the first eight stages include classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, and persecution. Early denial of genocide often occurred through these stages. For instance, American historian David Stannard explained that European colonizers "purposefully and systematically dehumaniz[ed] the people they were exterminating".

Further, South African sociologist Leo Kuper has described denial as a routine defense, referring to it as a consequence of the Genocide Convention. He argues that denial has become more prevalent because genocide is considered "an international crime with potentially significant sanctions by way of punishment, claims for reparation, and restitution of territorial rights".

Denial examples

According to Robert K. Hitchcock, editor of Modern Genocide, "the destruction of Indigenous peoples and their cultures has been a policy of many of the world's governments, although most government spokespersons argue that the disappearance or disruption of Indigenous societies was not purposeful but rather occurred inadvertently." Despite this, in 2013, Colin Leach et al. found that perpetrator groups denied their group's responsibility, showed low levels of collective guilt, and had low support for reparation policies.

North America

According to a survey conducted between 2016 and 2018, "36% of Americans almost certainly believe that the United States is guilty of committing genocide against Native Americans." Indigenous author Michelle A. Stanley writes that "Indigenous genocide is largely denied, erased, relegated to the distant past, or presented as inevitable". She writes that Indigenous genocide is depicted broadly, without touching on the pattern of a series of separate genocides against multiple distinct tribal nations. Seneca scholar Melissa Michal Slocum said that Native American genocide has been denied by the United States.

Sand Creek Massacre, 1864

According to North American Genocides, edited by Clarke et al., many American scholars deny Indigenous genocide in the Americas, despite agreement from international scholars that it occurred. American historian Ned Blackhawk said that nationalist historiographies have been forms of denial that erase the history of destruction of European colonial expansion. Blackhawk said that near consensus has emerged that genocide against some Indigenous peoples took place in North America following colonization.

Some historians do not consider that genocide of Indigenous peoples took place in North America, including James Axtell, Robert Utley, William Rubinstein, Guenter Lewy and Gary Anderson, although some call the atrocities another name such as ethnic cleansing. Other scholars, including Elazar Barkan and Walter L. Hixson agree with the sentiment that those in the Americas deny the genocide of the regions' Indigenous populations.

On the Columbus Quincentenary, American historian David Stannard highlighted the numerous celebrations and festivities surrounding Columbus alongside "American and European denials of culpability for the most thoroughgoing genocide in the history of the world have assumed a new guise." A similar issue arose when Lynne Cheney, then chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, rejected a television project celebrating the anniversary, highlighted the proposal's use of the word "genocide". Cheney stated, "We might be interested in funding a film that debated that issue, but we are not about to fund a film that asserts it. Columbus was guilty of many sins, but he was not Hitler."

This particular issue, the comparison to The Holocaust, has been raised by others, as well, with American historian David Stannard pointing to The Holocaust's prominent position in the public eye compared to the global ignorance of atrocities in the Americas.

Indigenous prisoners of Red River War, 1875.

Howard Zinn, Susan Cameron, and Kirsten Dyck have claimed that in American history textbooks, America's history of abuse against Indigenous peoples is mostly ignored or presented from the state's point of view.

In The Other Slavery, American historian Andrés Reséndez compares the thousands of books written about the slavery of Africans to the couple dozen books about Indigenous slavery and argues that the latter has "almost completely erased from our historical memory". He argues that African slavery is more widely accepted because it was legalized and therefore recorded, whereas Indigenous slavery was largely illegal; further, because African slaves needed to be transported, settlers kept record of ship manifests.

Canadian political scientist Adam Jones has said that the historical revisionism has been so thorough that in some cases, the Americas have been depicted as unpopulated before European colonization.

Other claims against the genocide of Indigenous people of the Americas deal with the natural superiority of the European colonizers. For instance, Stannard has argued that British journalist Christopher Hitchens's 1992 essay, "Minority Report", supported social Darwinism.

California

J. Ross Browne, "Protecting the Settlers". 1861. This image accompanied an article by Browne in which he described the killing of Yuki people at Round Valley, California.

Robert K. Hitchcock says that during the California genocide, "California state legislators, administrators, Indian agents, and townspeople denied that a genocide was happening."

Continuing into the 21st century, Benjamin Madley has stated that the California genocide has "too often concealed, denied, or suppressed". This can be evidenced via social science and history textbooks approved by the California Department of Education that ignore the history of this genocide.

In 2015, English writer and political activist George Monbiot argued that when the Catholic Church canonized 18th-century Christian missionary Junípero Serra, who "founded the system of labour camps that expedited California's cultural genocide", they were, in effect, denying the genocide.

Canada

Canada has received many criticisms regarding its denial of participation in Indigenous genocide, particularly in relation to the Canadian Indian residential school system, and the long-term effects of both residential schooling and colonization more generally.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) received criticism upon its opening in 2014 because it did not use the term genocide to describe the history of colonialism in Canada. Two years after its opening, Rita K. Dhamoon critiqued the museum's focus on the Holocaust, frame of residential schools as assimilationist and not genocidal, and denial of the genocidal nature of settler colonialism. In 2019, the museum reversed its policy and officially recognizes genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada in its content.

In 2021, Senator Lynn Beyak generated controversy and was accused of genocide denial in the Canadian Indian residential school system after she voiced disapproval of the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the school. Similarly, former Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole said that the residential school system educated Indigenous children, but then changed his view: "The system was intended to remove children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions, and cultures". Former newspaper publisher Conrad Black and others have also been accused of denial.

In 2022, Gregory Stanton, former president of International Association of Genocide Scholars, issued a report of Canada's genocide saying it is in denial. On National Truth and Reconciliation Day in 2023, Trudeau said that denialism was on the rise.

Response

In 2015, Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin said that Canada's historical treatment of Indigenous peoples was cultural genocide. In 2021, Canadian political scientist David Bruce MacDonald argued that the Canadian government should recognize various atrocities committed against the Indigenous peoples in Canada. Later the same month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in the context of the 2021 Canadian Indian residential schools gravesite discoveries.

In 2022, the Canadian government announced that it would pay C$31.5 billion to reform the foster care system and compensate Indigenous families for its deficiencies. The government has acknowledged the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the foster care system.

In 2023, politician Leah Gazan has stated that she wants to criminalize the denial of genocide in residential schools. Scouts Canada also issued an apology for "its role in the eradication of First Nation, Inuit and Metis people for more than a century".

South America

Atrocities against the Cinta Larga tribe in Brazil were exposed in the Figueiredo report of 1967. After shooting the head off her baby, the killers cut the mother in half.

According to Nadia Rubaii, the mass atrocities in Latin America have been less visible internationally for three reasons:

1. Victim groups have frequently been attacked for their ideological or political differences, leading the international community to consider such atrocities as domestic political issues.
2. Perpetrators who damage ecosystems and means of subsistence argue that they are seeking economic development for common benefit and deny the intention to inflict any harm.
3. If there is academic attention to the topic, it is documented in Spanish not in English.

Argentina

Julius Popper targeting Indigenous peoples. 1886. See Selk'nam Genocide.

In Argentina, the Conquest of the Desert had been interpreted in war terms, silencing the fact of Indigenous genocide. In the case of the Napalmi massacre, a judge concluded that the massacre took place in a context of genocide. According to Walter Delrio et al. in 2010, "The state still denies the existence of genocide and the existence of crimes against humanity with respect to Indigenous peoples."

Paraguay and Brazil

See also: Genocide of Indigenous peoples in Brazil and Genocide of Indigenous peoples in Paraguay

South African sociologist and genocide scholar Leo Kuper says that genocide has been denied in Paraguay and Brazil on the basis of alleged lack of intent to destroy. For instance, the case of the Ache in Paraguay has been legally determined to be a case of political persecution.

Central America

In Guatemala, debate has occurred over accusations of genocide. The Guatemalan Truth Commission has reported genocide during the 35 year civil war, but some Guatemalan politicians have referred to the conflict as a civil war.

Africa

The Herero genocide is described as the first genocide of the 20th century. In 2012, German politician Uwe Kekeritz said Germany needed to move away from "a culture of denial".

Prisoners from the Herero and Nama genocide, 1904-1907

Australia

See also: Genocide of indigenous peoples in Australia and History wars

The Indigenous Australian population experienced the Australian frontier wars, in which there was conflict over territory. Massacres and mass poisonings have also been carried out against Indigenous people.

According to Hannah Baldry, "The Australian Government appears to have long suffered a form of 'denialism' that has consistently deprived the country's Aboriginal population of acknowledgment of the crimes perpetrated against their ancestors." This includes ongoing debates about the interpretation of history, including calling Australia's national myth as an invasion or settlement.

Former Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologize in the Motion of Reconciliation, claiming that the program had no genocidal intent. Former Tasmanian Premier Ray Groom said that "there had been no killing in the island state".

Between 1838 and 1931, Aboriginal prisoners held on Rottnest Island, Australia were held in deplorable conditions and subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment.

The Australian literary and cultural journal Quadrant has been considered "a key locus of genocide denial". They included common arguments regarding the definitional status of genocide, including the idea "that 'half castes' could not claim Aboriginal status since they were half-European" and that Indigenous people were to blame for their fate due to "their own backwardness"; other articles argued that "frontier massacres were based on misinterpreted statistics and falsehoods".

Reactions

A number of states have chosen to take a firm stance against the denial of genocide by enacting laws to criminalize it. The extent of legal coverage varies from one state to another.