Amniotic stem cells are the mixture of stem cells that can be obtained from the amniotic fluid as well as the amniotic membrane. They can develop into various tissue types including skin, cartilage, cardiac tissue, nerves, muscle, and bone. The cells also have potential medical applications, especially in organ regeneration.
The stem cells are usually extracted from the amniotic sac by amniocentesis
which occurs without harming the embryos. The use of amniotic fluid
stem cells is therefore generally considered to lack the ethical
problems associated with the use of cells from embryos.
History
The presence of embryonic and foetal cells from all germ layers
in the amniotic fluid was gradually determined since the 1980s.
Haematopoietic progenitor cells were first reported to be present in the
amniotic fluid in 1993, specifically up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
It was suggested that these originated from the yolk sac.
In 1996, a study indicated that non-haematopoietic progenitor
cells were also present in the amniotic fluid. This was later confirmed
as mesenchymal stem cells were obtained. In addition, evidence indicated that embryonic stem cells are part of the fluid, although in very small quantities.
At around the same time, it was determined that stem cells from the amniotic membrane also have multipotent potential. AS their differentiation into neural and glial cells as well as hepatocyte precursors was observed.
Properties
The
majority of stem cells present in the amniotic fluid share many
characteristics, which suggests they may have a common origin.
In 2007, it was confirmed that the amniotic fluid contains a
heterogeneous mixture of multipotent cells after it was demonstrated
that they were able to differentiate into cells from all three germ
layers but they could not form teratomas following implantation into immunodeficient mice. This characteristic differentiates them from embryonic stem cells but indicates similarities with adult stem cells.
However, foetal stem cells attained from the amniotic fluid are more
stable and more plastic than their adult counterparts making it easier
for them to be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state.
A variety of techniques has been developed for the isolation and
culturing of amniotic stem cells. One of the more common isolation
methods involves the removal of amniotic fluid by amniocentesis. The
cells are then extracted from the fluid based on the presence of c-Kit.
Several variations of this method exist. There is some debate whether
c-Kit is a suitable marker to distinguish amniotic stem cells from other
cell types because cells lacking c-Kit also display differentiation
potential. Culture conditions may also be adjusted to promote the growth
of a particular cell type.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Mesenchymal
stem cells (MSCs) are highly abundant in the amniotic fluid and several
techniques have been described for their isolation. They usually
involve the removal of amniotic fluid by amniocentesis and their
distinction from other cells may be based on their morphology or other characteristics.
Human leukocyte antigen
testing has been utilised to confirm that the MSCs stem from the fetus
and not from the mother. Originally it was proposed that the MSCs were
discarded from the embryo at the end of their life cycle but since the
cells remained viable in the amniotic fluid and were able to proliferate
in culture this hypothesis was overturned. However, it remains unclear
whether the cells originate from the fetus itself, the placenta or
possibly the inner cell mass of the blastocyst.
Comparison of amniotic fluid-derived MSCs to bone-marrow-derived
ones showed that the former has a higher expansion potential in culture.
However, the cultured amniotic fluid-derived MSCs have a similar
phenotype to both adult bone-marrow-derived MSCs and MSCs originating
from second trimester fetal tissue.
In animals, the MSCs seem to have a unique immunological profile which was observed after their isolation and in vitro culturing.
Embryonic-like stem cells
As
opposed to mesenchymal stem cells, embryonic-like stem cells are not
abundant in the amniotic fluid, making up less than 1% of amniocentesis
samples. Embryonic-like stem cells were originally identified using
markers common to embryonic stem cells such as nuclear Oct4, CD34, vimentin, alkaline phosphatase, stem cell factor
and c-Kit. However, these markers were not necessarily concomitantly
expressed. In addition, all of these markers can occur on their own or
in some combination in other types of cells.
The pluripotency
of these embryonic-like stem cells remains to be fully established.
Although those cells which expressed the markers were able to
differentiate into muscle, adipogenic, osteogenic, nephrogenic, neural and endothelial cells, this did not necessarily occur from a homogenous population of undifferentiated cells.
Evidence in favour of their embryonic stem cell nature is the cells' ability to produce clones.
Clinical applications
The
use of amniotic stem cells instead of embryonic stem cells may be
advantageous in some cases for various reasons including that the former
do not form teratomas. Their enhanced stability and plasticity compared to adult stem cells may also be an advantage. Stem cells from both the amniotic fluid and membrane are utilised for therapeutic approaches.
Foetal tissue engineering
Possible applications include the use of amniotic stem cells for foetal tissue engineering to reconstruct birth defects in infants.
This would circumvent the complications that are often associated with
harvesting stem cells from foetal tissue. A small amount of amniotic
fluid provides a large enough quantity of cells for the tissue
engineering process and could help correct a number of defects including
diaphragmatic hernia
and possibly repair premature membrane rupture during pregnancy. If
frozen and banked, the cells may also be used for similar purpose later
in life.
Cardiovascular tissue engineering
Several
studies have been carried out to investigate the potential of amniotic
stem cells to differentiate into cardiac cells. Although c-Kit sorted
cells express some genes common in cardiac cells, success in this area
is still limited.
Co-culturing, i.e. mixing cells and plating them together, of human amniotic stem cells with neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVM) caused the cells to form functional gap junctions with each other, an indicator for cardiac-like cells.
However, these results may be due to the specific features of the NRVM
or fusion of the cells rather than the amniotic stem cell's own
potential to differentiate into cardiac cells. In general, these types
of techniques are considered to be potentially significant but further
investigations are required.
Another area of interest is the use of these cells for improvement of cardiac tissue following a myocardial infarction.
Several strategies have been tested in rats including the injection of
dissociated amniotic stem cells into the infarct region, which yielded
conflicting results from several research groups.
In contrast, injection of amniotic stem cell aggregates seems to
improve the function of the tissue significantly by reducing the size of
the infarct area and improving the function of the left ventricle. In addition, vasculature density has been shown to increase.
Injection of cells immediately following the infarct is particularly
beneficial as the cells protect the cardiac tissue from further damage.
Moreover, other findings have brought the proof of concept that secretome of amniotic stem cell could act as an effective paracrine agent against Doxorubicin induced cardiotoxicity, confirming the potential importance of this cellular population in the field of cardiological research.
Kidney injury repair
Following
the discovery that amniotic stem cells are able to differentiate into
renal cells, this was further explored in several studies. These showed that in vitro the cells were able to contribute to early kidney structures as well as being able to integrate into early kidney structures ex vivo and continue their development into mature nephrons. Results obtained for the use of amniotic stem cells in the postnatal
kidney were far less encouraging as the cell's contribution to the
tissue was very small. However, the cells were able to exert a
protective effect on tubular cells in mice with acute tubular necrosis.
Amniotic stem cells can also be used to treat chronic damage. This was shown in mouse models for Alport syndrome, where the cells prolonged survival of the animals by slowing down the progression of the disease. The same effect was observed in mouse models where human amniotic stem cells were used to treat uretral obstruction.
Ethical Considerations
The use of fetal cells has been highly controversial because the tissue is usually obtained from the fetus following induced abortion. In contrast, fetal stem cells in the amniotic fluid can be obtained through routine prenatal testing without the need for abortion or fetal biopsy.
The destruction of Native American peoples, cultures, and languages has been characterized as genocide. Debates are ongoing as to whether the entire process or only specific periods or events meet the definitions of genocide. Many of these definitions focus on intent, while others focus on outcomes.[6]Raphael Lemkin,
who coined the term "genocide", considered the displacement of Native
Americans by European settlers as a historical example of genocide.
Others, like historian Gary Anderson, contend that genocide does not
accurately characterize any aspect of American history, suggesting
instead that ethnic cleansing is a more appropriate term.
Historians have long debated the pre-European population of the Americas. In 2023, historian Ned Blackhawk
suggested that North America's population had halved from 1492 to 1776
from about 8 million people (all Native American in 1492) to under 4
million (predominantly white in 1776). Russell Thornton
estimated that by 1800, some 600,000 Native Americans lived in the
regions that would become the modern United States and declined to an
estimated 250,000 by 1890 before rebounding.
The virgin soil thesis (VST), coined by historian Alfred W. Crosby,
proposes that the population decline among Native Americans after 1492
is due to Native populations being immunologically unprepared for Old
World diseases. While this theory received support in popular
imagination and academia for years, recently, scholars such as
historians Tai S. Edwards and Paul Kelton argue that Native Americans
"'died because U.S. colonization, removal policies, reservation
confinement, and assimilation programs severely and continuously
undermined physical and spiritual health. Disease was the secondary
killer.'"
According to these scholars, certain Native populations did not
necessarily plummet after initial contact with Europeans, but only after
violent interactions with colonizers, and at times such violence and
colonial removal exacerbated disease's effects.
The population decline among Native Americans after 1492 is attributed to various factors, mostly Eurasian diseases like influenza, pneumonic plagues, cholera, and smallpox.
Additionally, conflicts, massacres, forced removal, enslavement,
imprisonment, and warfare with European settlers contributed to the
reduction in populations and the disruption of traditional societies. Historian Jeffrey Ostler emphasizes the importance of considering the American Indian Wars, campaigns by the U.S. Army to subdue Native American nations in the American West starting in the 1860s, as genocide. Scholars increasingly refer to these events as massacres
or "genocidal massacres", defined as the annihilation of a portion of a
larger group, sometimes intended to send a message to the larger group.
Native American peoples have been subject to both historical and contemporary massacres and acts of cultural genocide
as their traditional ways of life were threatened by settlers. Colonial
massacres and acts of ethnic cleansing explicitly sought to reduce
Native populations and confine them to reservations. Cultural genocide was also deployed, in the form of displacement
and appropriation of Indigenous knowledge, to weaken Native
sovereignty. Native American peoples still face challenges stemming from
colonialism, including settler occupation of their traditional
homelands, police brutality, hate crimes, vulnerability to climate
change, and mental health issues. Despite this, Native American resistance to colonialism and genocide has persisted both in the past and the present.
The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast
were of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive
cultural and political identities, but they shared certain beliefs,
traditions, and practices, such as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual symbol. Their gift-giving feast, potlatch, is a highly complex event where people gather to commemorate special events. These events include the raising of a totem pole
or the appointment or election of a new chief. The most famous artistic
feature of the culture is the totem pole, with carvings of animals and
other characters to commemorate cultural beliefs, legends, and notable
events.
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American civilization archaeologists date from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages (suburbs) linked together by a loose trading network, the largest city being Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center. The civilization flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States.
Numerous pre-Columbian societies were urbanized, such as the Pueblo peoples, Mandan, and Hidatsa. The Iroquois
League of Nations or "People of the Long House" was a politically
advanced, democratic society, which is thought by some historians to
have influenced the United States Constitution,with the Senate passing a resolution to this effect in 1988.
Other historians have contested this interpretation and believe the
impact was minimal, or did not exist, pointing to numerous differences
between the two systems and the ample precedents for the constitution in
European political thought.
Many Indigenous nations shared the belief of collective
continuance and systems of responsibility with other humans and the
non-human world. According to Citizen Potawatomi philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte,
collective continuance refers to a society's ability to adapt to
conditions to ensure community survival. Collective continuance begets
the creation of systems of responsibility, in which individuals have a
moral reciprocal relationship with the non-human world. The Oceti Sakowin
belief of Mni Wiconi (water is life), for instance, describes a
relationship in which the Missouri River nourishes their community, and
they have a responsibility to protect it. The idea of collective continuance and systems of responsibility also extend into social structures. For example, for the Anishinaabe, gender was not binary, and women had more leadership roles that included responsibilities to others beyond their marriages.
A 1743 copy of the Treaty of Hartford of 1638, through which English colonists sought to eradicate the Pequot cultural identity by prohibiting Pequot survivors of the war from returning to their lands, speaking their tribal language, or referring to themselves as Pequots.
The war concluded with the decisive defeat of the Pequots. The colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts offered bounties for the heads of killed hostile Indians, and later for just their scalps, during the Pequot War in the 1630s; Connecticut specifically reimbursed Mohegans for slaying the Pequot in 1637. At the end, about 700 Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity.
The English colonists imposed a harshly punitive treaty on the estimated 2,500 Pequots who survived the war; the Treaty of Hartford
of 1638 sought to eradicate the Pequot cultural identity—with terms
prohibiting the Pequots from returning to their lands, speaking their
tribal language, or even referring to themselves as Pequots—and
effectively dissolved the Pequot Nation, with many survivors executed or
enslaved and sold away. Hundreds of prisoners were sold into slavery to the West Indies;
other survivors were dispersed as captives to the victorious tribes.
The result was the elimination of the Pequot tribe as a viable polity in
Southern New England,
the colonial authorities classifying them as extinct. However, members
of the Pequot tribe still live today as a federally recognized tribe.
The Great Swamp Massacre was committed during King Philip's War by colonial militia of New England on the Narragansett people in December 1675. On December 15 of that year, Narraganset warriors attacked the Jireh Bull Blockhouse and killed at least 15 people. Four days later, the militias from the English colonies of Plymouth, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay
were led to the main Narragansett town in South Kingstown, Rhode
Island. The settlement was burned, its inhabitants (including women and
children) killed or evicted, and most of the tribe's winter stores
destroyed. It is believed that at least 97 Narragansett warriors and 300
to 1,000 non-combatants were killed, though exact figures are unknown. The massacre was a critical blow to the Narragansett tribe during the period directly following the massacre. However, much like the Pequot, the Narragansett people continue to live today as a federally recognized tribe.
On June 12, 1755, during the French and Indian War, Massachusetts governor William Shirley issued a bounty of £40 for a male Indian scalp, and £20 for scalps of Indian females or of children under 12 years old. In 1756, Pennsylvania lieutenant-governor Robert Hunter Morris, in his declaration of war against the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) people, offered "130 Pieces of Eight,
for the Scalp of Every Male Indian Enemy, above the Age of Twelve
Years", and "50 Pieces of Eight for the Scalp of Every Indian Woman,
produced as evidence of their being killed." During Pontiac's War, Colonel Henry Bouquet conspired with his superior, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to infect hostile Native Americans through biological warfare with smallpox blankets.
Near the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the British Army and
Native American allies staged attacks on frontier towns in the Mohawk
Valley region of New York. To resolve this issue, George Washington
ordered the Continental Army, under the command of John Sullivan and James Clinton, to conduct a series of scorched earth campaigns against the four British-allied nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Washington's orders followed an initial assault against the Haudenosaunee
where Colonel Van Schaik burned two Onondaga villages. In May 1779,
Washington wrote, "The expedition you are appointed to command is to be
directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with
their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total
destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as
many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to
ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more."
Sullivan and Clinton's troops reportedly burned over forty
settlements and hundreds of acres of crops, as well as an estimated
160,000 bushels of corn. Despite this, Sullivan failed to capture a
sizable number of prisoners, and did not achieve the original goal of
invading the British base at Fort Niagara. The Continental Army also
failed to completely dispel threats from the Haudenosaunee. In fact,
attacks against frontier towns increased after the expedition, as the
Haudenosaunee pursued revenge. Historian Joseph R. Fischer has called
the expedition a "well-executed failure."
Although the expedition's goal of eliminating Native populations was
not met, the Haudenosaunee still faced hardship as many lost their
livelihoods and were displaced from their homes.
The Sullivan Expedition has been memorialized by American
settlers in what historical anthropologist A. Lynn Smith calls the
"Sullivan commemorative complex." Smith refers to monuments, markers,
and places bearing the name of the expedition as a celebration of
colonialism and domination, and she argues that they affect how local
residents relate to their past. Smith shows that Haudenosaunee
populations are harmed by this commemorative complex that pinpoints the
sites of destruction on their ancestral lands and seeks to replace
Native memory. Many people, both Native and non-Native, disapprove of
these commemorative markers, and various activists and organizations
seek to get markers removed and reveal the reality of the Expedition.
Early Native American tribal territories color-coded by linguistic groupGraphic depicting Native land loss
Manifest destiny
had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental
expansion implicitly meant the occupation and annexation of Native
American land, sometimes to expand slavery. This ultimately led to
confrontations and wars with several groups of native peoples via Indian removal. The United States continued the European practice of recognizing only limited land rights of Indigenous peoples. In a policy formulated largely by Henry Knox, Secretary of War
in the Washington administration, the U.S. government sought to expand
into the west through the purchase of Native American land in treaties.
The United States justified manifest destiny with the Doctrine of Discovery,
a fifteenth century international law developed by the Catholic Church.
Three landmark Supreme Court cases, the Marshall Trilogy, invoked the
Doctrine of Discovery to declare that Native Americans were domestic
dependent Nations and only had limited sovereignty on their own land.
Only the federal government could purchase Indian lands, and this
was done through treaties with tribal leaders. Whether a tribe actually
had a decision-making structure capable of making a treaty was a
controversial issue. The national policy was for the Indians to join
American society and become "civilized", which meant no more wars with
neighboring tribes or raids on white settlers or travelers, and a shift
from hunting to farming and ranching. Advocates of civilization programs
believed that the process of settling native tribes would greatly
reduce the amount of land needed by the Native Americans, making more
land available for homesteading by white Americans. Thomas Jefferson
believed that the Indigenous people of America had to assimilate and
live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them.
Once Jefferson believed that assimilation was no longer possible, he
advocated for the extermination or displacement of Indigenous people.
Following the forced removal of many Indigenous peoples, Americans
increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would eventually
disappear as the United States expanded. Humanitarian advocates of removal believed that American Indians would be better off moving away from whites.
As historian Reginald Horsman argued in his influential study Race and Manifest Destiny,
racial rhetoric increased during the era of manifest destiny. Americans
increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would "fade
away" as the United States expanded. As an example, this idea was
reflected in the work of one of America's first great historians, Francis Parkman, whose landmark book The Conspiracy of Pontiac was published in 1851. Parkman wrote that after the French defeat in the French and Indian War,
Indians were "destined to melt and vanish before the advancing waves of
Anglo-American power, which now rolled westward unchecked and
unopposed". Parkman emphasized that the collapse of Indian power in the
late 18th century had been swift and was a past event.
While some literary works, like those of James Fenimore Cooper, portrayed Native Americans positively, others did not: Mark Twain,
for example, was overwhelmingly negative in his characterizations, and
seeking to counter the trope of the "Noble Aborigine" in 1870
went so far as to write that the "Noble Red Man" was "[...] nothing
but a poor filthy, naked scurvy vagabond, whom to exterminate were a
charity to the Creator's worthier insects and reptiles which he
oppresses".
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.
The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation
while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands, made
vulnerable by removal, died from disease before reaching their
destinations or shortly after. Some historians have said that the event constituted a genocide, although this label remains a matter of debate.
Chalk and Jonassohn assert that the deportation of the Cherokee tribe along the Trail of Tears would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today. The Indian Removal Act
of 1830 led to the exodus. About 17,000 Cherokees, along with
approximately 2,000 Cherokee-owned black slaves, were removed from their
homes. Historians such as David Stannard and Barbara Mann
have noted that the army deliberately routed the march of the Cherokee
to pass through areas of a known cholera epidemic, such as Vicksburg.
Stannard estimates that during the forced removal from their homelands,
following the Indian Removal Act signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, 8,000 Cherokee died, about half the total population.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, several Native American groups such as the Potawatomi and Miami were expelled from their homelands in Indiana under the Indian Removal Act. The Potawatomi Trail of Death alone led to the deaths of over 40 individuals.
In 1886, many of the Yavapai ethnic group joined in campaigns by the US Army, as scouts, against Geronimo and other Chiricahua Apache. The wars ended with the Yavapai's and the Tonto's removal from the Camp Verde Reservation to San Carlos on February 27, 1875, now known as Exodus Day.
1,400 where relocated in these travels and over the course the
relocation the Yavapai received no wagons or rest stops. Yavapai were
beaten with whips through rivers of melted snow in which many drowned,
any Yavapai who lagged behind was left behind or shot. The march lead to
375 deaths.
Indian removal policies led to the current day reservation system
which allocated territories to individual tribes. According to scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker,
"the treaties also created reservations that would confine Native
people into smaller territories far smaller than they had for millenia
been accustomed to, diminishing their ability to feed themselves."
According to author and scholar David Rich Lewis, these reservations
had much higher population densities than indigenous homelands. As a
result, "the consolidation of native peoples in the 19th century allowed
epidemic diseases to rage through their communities."
In addition to this "a result of changing subsistence patterns and
environments-contributed to an explosion of dietary-related illness like
diabetes, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, cirrhosis, obesity,
gallbladder disease, hypertension, and heart disease".
Once their territories were incorporated into the United States,
surviving Native Americans were denied equality before the law and often
treated as wards of the state.
Many Native Americans were moved to reservations—constituting 4% of
U.S. territory. In a number of cases, treaties signed with Native
Americans were violated. Tens of thousands of American Indians and
Alaska Natives were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white-settler American values, culture, and economy.
Oceti Sakowin historian Nick Estes has called reservations "prisoner of war camps," citing forced removal and confinement.
Reservations have historically had negative ecological effects on
Native communities. The reservation system "offset the flourishing moral
relationships that supported" Indigenous communities' resilience to
changing environmental conditions. For instance, Whyte
explains that being confined to a reservation jeopardizes Native
communities' relationships with plants and animals located outside the
scope of the reservation. Reservations also limit space for ceremonial
practices and harvesting, and disrupt traditional seasonal rounds, which
allowed Indigenous people to adapt to their environments.
Despite being forced onto reservations, Native Americans' right
to that land and historical territory is not secured. Governments and
private companies often take control of Indigenous land, or they use the
reservation system to justify the control of Indigenous land that does
not fall within the reservation. The Dakota Access Pipeline,
for instance, cuts through ancestral Oceti Sakowin land, but historical
dispossession then makes it seem to settlers that the pipeline today
does not require Indigenous consent since it is off reservation.
The Army Corps of Engineers has also taken Native land in Minnesota to
construct a power plant, while waste sites are often placed close to
reservations. House Concurrent Resolution 108,
passed in 1953, attempted to withdraw federal protection of tribal
lands and dissolve reservations. Many Native Americans were then
relocated to cities. According to Kyle Powys Whyte,
since the creation of the reservation system, "settlers eventually
'filled in' treaty areas and reservation areas with their own private
property and government lands, which limit where and when Indigenous
peoples can harvest, monitor, store and honor animals and plants...
settler discourses cast Indigenous harvesters and gatherers as violating
the 'law,' among many other types of stigmatizations." In June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta
that Oklahoma has jurisdiction over Native reservations when a
non-Native commits a crime against a Native. This contemporary decision
further weakened Native control over their own reservation lands.
Stacie Martin states that the United States has not been legally
admonished by the international community for genocidal acts against its
Indigenous population, but many historians and academics describe
events such as the Mystic massacre, the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek massacre and the Mendocino War as genocidal in nature.
The non-Native historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz states that U.S. history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma,
cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United
States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period
through the founding of the United States and continuing in the
twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse,
massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous
peoples from their ancestral territories via Indian removal policies, forced removal of Native American children to boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.
The letters exchanged between Bouquet and Amherst during the Pontiac War
show Amherst writing to Bouquet that the indigenous people needed to be
exterminated: "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by
means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve
to extirpate this execrable race." Historians regard this as evidence of
a genocidal intent by Amherst, as well as part of a broader genocidal
attitude frequently displayed against Native Americans during the colonization of the Americas. When smallpox swept the northern plains of the U.S. in 1837, the U.S. Secretary of War Lewis Cass ordered that no Mandan (along with the Arikara, the Cree, and the Blackfeet) be given smallpox vaccinations, which were provided to other tribes in other areas.
Historian Jeffrey Ostler describes the Colorado territorial militia's slaughter of Cheyennes at Sand Creek (1864) and the army's slaughter of Shoshones at Bear River (1863), Blackfeet on the Marias River (1870), and Lakotas at Wounded Knee (1890) as "genocidal massacres".
The U.S. colonization of California started in earnest in 1846, with the Mexican–American War. With the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it gave the United States authority over 525,000 square miles of new territory. Following the Gold Rush,
there were a number of killings and state-subsidized massacres by
settlers against Native Americans in the territory, causing several
ethnic groups to be nearly wiped out. In one such series of conflicts,
the so-called Mendocino War and the subsequent Round Valley War, the entirety of the Yuki people
was brought to the brink of extinction. From a previous population of
some 6,800 people, fewer than 300 members of the Yuki tribe were left.
The pre-Columbian population of California was around 300,000. By
1849, due to epidemics, the number had decreased to 100,000. But from
1849 to 1870 the indigenous population of California had fallen to
35,000 because of killings and displacement.
At least 4,500 California Indians were killed between 1849 and 1870,
while many more were weakened and perished due to disease and
starvation. 10,000 Indians were also kidnapped and sold as slaves. In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom
apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That's what it was, a
genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be
described in the history books."
Whites hunted down adult Indians in the mountains, kidnapped their children, and sold them as apprentices for as little as $50.
Indians could not complain in court because of a California statute
that stated that 'no Indian or Black or Mulatto person was permitted to
give evidence in favor of or against a white person'.
One contemporary wrote, "The miners are sometimes guilty of the most
brutal acts with the Indians... such incidents have fallen under my
notice that would make humanity weep and men disown their race". The towns of Marysville and Honey Lake paid bounties for Indian scalps. Shasta City authorities offered $5 for every Indian head brought to them.
A mass grave being dug for frozen bodies from the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, in which the U.S. Army killed 150 Lakota people, marking the end of the American Indian Wars
During the Indian Wars,
the American Army carried out a number of massacres and forced
relocations of Indigenous peoples that are sometimes considered
genocide. Jeffrey Ostler, the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon, stated the American Indian War "was genocidal war". Xabier Irujo, professor of genocide studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, stated, "the toll on human lives in the wars against the native nations between 1848 and 1881 was horrific." Notable conflicts in this period include the Dakota War, Great Sioux War, Comanche campaign, Snake War and Colorado War.
These conflicts occurred in the United States from the time of the
earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the
19th century. The wars resulted from several factors, the most common
being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands.
The 1864 Sand Creek massacre, which caused outrage in its own time, has been regarded as a genocide. Colonel John Chivington led a 700-man force of Colorado Territorymilitia in a massacre of 70–163 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho, about two-thirds of whom were women, children, and infants. Chivington and his men took scalps and other body parts as trophies, including human fetuses and male and female genitalia.
Chivington stated, "Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I
have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use
any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all,
big and little; nits make lice."
In reference to colonialism in the United States, Raphael Lemkin stated that the "colonial enslavement of American Indians was a cultural genocide." He also stated that colonialism in the United States
comprised an "effective and thorough method of destroying a culture and
de-socializing human beings". Lemkin drew a distinction between
"cultural change and cultural genocide".
He defined the former as a slow and gradual process of transition to
new situations, and he saw the latter as the result of a radical and
violent change that necessitated "the pre-meditated goal of those
committing cultural genocide". Lemkin believed that cultural genocide
occurs only when there are "surgical operations on cultures and
deliberate assassinations of civilizations".
Historian Patrick Wolfe coined the term "logic of elimination" to describe the "relationship between genocide and the settler-colonial tendency." He points to the racialization of Native Americans and the proliferation of blood quantum laws
as a means to reduce Native populations and further the logic of
elimination. Wolfe also describes the non-physical nature of the logic
of elimination and the way it is carried out, claiming that "officially
encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into
alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction,
religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as
missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural
assimilations" all facilitated colonial settlement.
According to Vincent Schilling, many people are aware of
historical atrocities that were committed against his people, but there
is an "extensive amount of misunderstanding about Native American and First Nations
people's history." He added that Native Americans have also suffered a
"cultural genocide" because of colonization's residual effects.
The American-Indian
experience in North America is defined as comprising physical and
cultural disintegration. That fact becomes clear when one examines how
law and colonialism were used as tools of genocide, both physically and culturally. According to Luana Ross
the assumption that law (a Euro-American construct) and its
administration are prejudiced against particular groups of individuals
is critical for understanding Native American criminality and the
experiences of Natives imprisoned. For instance, in Georgia,
the 1789 act permitted indiscriminate massacre of Creek Indians by
proclaiming them to be outside the state's protection. Apart from
physical annihilation, the State promoted acculturation by introducing
legislation limiting land entitlements to Indians who had abandoned
tribal citizenship.
Throughout the writing of the Genocide Convention,
the United States was adamantly opposed to the addition of cultural
genocide, even threatening to block the treaty's approval if cultural
genocide was included in the final text.
Young woman and young man standing at a church altar with a priest
The Native American boarding school system
was a 150-year program and federal policy that separated Indigenous
children from their families and sought to assimilate them into white
society. It began in the early 19th century, coinciding with the start
of Indian Removal policies.
A Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report was
published on May 11, 2022, which officially acknowledged the federal
government's role in creating and perpetuating this system.
According to the report, the U.S. federal government operated or funded
more than 408 boarding institutions in 37 states between 1819 and 1969.
431 boarding schools were identified in total, many of which were run
by religious institutions.
The report described the system as part of a federal policy aimed
at eradicating the identity of Indigenous communities and confiscating
their lands. Abuse was widespread at the schools, as was overcrowding,
malnutrition, disease and lack of adequate healthcare, all of which
worsened the effect of disease. The report documented over 500 child deaths at 19 schools, although it
is estimated the total number could rise to thousands, and possibly even
tens of thousands.
Marked or unmarked burial sites were discovered at 53 schools. The school system has been described as a cultural genocide and a racist dehumanization.
Displacement
The
ecological effects of displacement and relocation have threatened
Native Americans' ability to perform traditional cultural practices. For
instance, at the turn of the 20th century, "one strategy of settler
colonialism was to consolidate mobile family groups to sedentary
villages with central nodes, such as a post office, government school
and a mission." Various Indigenous nations are historically ecologically mobile, and according to Kyle Powys Whyte,
they have "adaptive cultural and political systems and institutions
that are tightly coupled with certain ecological conditions."
Settler efforts to contain Natives not only removed them from these
culturally significant environmental contexts, but also increased their
vulnerability to climate change by impeding their ability to adapt to
its impacts. For nations that were not historically mobile, displacement
and relocation presented challenges as well, as introduction to
unfamiliar land "compromised the mental, physical, and community health
of Indigenous peoples, thus escalating mortality rates."
The destruction of land and relocation to new land also undermined
"Indigenous knowledge systems and Indigenous peoples' capacity to
cultivate landscapes and adjust to environmental change," or, what Whyte
calls collective continuance.Collective continuance depends on a community's ability to carry out
interdepend relationships and systems of responsibilities with all life
forms. Colonial ecological violence, known as "a unique form of violence
perpetrated by the settler-colonial state, private industry, and
settler-colonial culture as a whole," harmed ecosystems, threatened
Indigenous self-determination, and prevented these communities from
living as they had for millennia.
Appropriation of knowledge
Indigenous
systems of knowledge and science have historically been undervalued by
Western science. In recent decades as awareness of the climate crisis
rises, this knowledge has been appropriated by settlers. Scholar
Jaskiran Dhillon argues that while the state has traditionally
disregarded Indigenous scientists, there is now "state-driven
'discovery' of Indigenous knowledge."
This co-optation extracts only certain information from Indigenous
knowledge systems to aid climate adaptation for settler societies.
According to Dhillon, non-Native environmental scholars often advocate
the integration of Indigenous environmental knowledge into mainstream
science, but do not adopt an environmental justice approach. Despite
extracting from Indigenous knowledge, the state does not center
decolonization and Indigenous identity, resulting in the appropriation
of Native American science.
Environmental sociologist J.M. Bacon states that "the bulk of the
dominant culture's knowledge about Native peoples comes from sources
that are not Native-made."
These narratives about Indigenous knowledge draw on Native stories and
imagery to perpetuate the noble savage concept and "obscure both the
historic events related to colonization and the ongoing occupation of
Native lands."
Dhillon agrees, claiming that epistemology that truly integrates
Indigenous knowledge will "challenge dominant, colonial, and Eurocentric
knowledge systems. According to Deborah McGregor, an Anishinaabe
scholar, the dominant Eurocentric approach to traditional Indigenous
knowledge does not reflect Indigenous concepts of moral relationships,
but instead sustains colonial views of Natives.
The appropriation of Indigenous knowledge fails to recognize the
validity of Native American science and perpetuates the colonial system
that continues to oppress Native peoples.
According to the 2024 United States National Climate Assessment,
Indigenous peoples face a "loss of traditional knowledge in the face of
rapidly changing ecological conditions, increased food
insecurity...changing water availability, Arctic Sea ice loss,
permafrost thaw, and relocation from historic homeland."
Whyte highlights the compound vulnerability theory in which there are
three areas that Indigenous peoples and those in the Global South are
more vulnerable to climate change: geography, economy, and lack of
historical responsibility. Whyte maintains that this popular approach
does not account for colonialism, which is key factor of environmental
justice and cause of climate change. According to Whyte, increased
vulnerability to climate change for Indigenous peoples "results from
colonial strategies that sought to missionise, educate, and render
sedentary Indigenous peoples...replacing the Indigenous institutions
with settler ones."
Many climate change policies that do not address colonialism harm
Native Americans and Indigenous populations; for instance, U.S clean
energy bills exclude funding for Indigenous nations for their support of
clean energy, and lack of respect for treaty rights results in
greenhouse reductions rates that are too slow to protect Native
resources.
In her 2019 book As Long as Grass Grows, Colville Confederated Tribes scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker supports Kyle Powys Whyte's
argument that settler colonialism is a form of environmental injustice
"that wrongfully interferes with and erases the socioecological contexts
required for Indigenous populations to experience the world as a place
infused with responsibilities to humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems."
According to Gilio-Whitaker, largescale dam projects in the 20th and
21st centuries are major sources of environmental injustice for Native
communities. Flooding caused by dams displace Native Americans from
their ancestral homelands, and it also destroys historical fishing
sites. For example, the 1944 Pick Sloan Act was a state-sponsored dam project in Oceti Sakowin
territory that reportedly displaced over a thousand Indigenous
families. The land was also destroyed, as 90% of commercial timber was
destroyed, thousands of acres of subsistence farms were flooded, and 75%
of endemic flora and fauna were destroyed. Native American communities fought against the construction of many dams, but there were no mass protests.
Mental health
Land
loss and historical violence reportedly contributes to elevated rates
of mental illness, suicide, and addiction among Lakota men. According to
sociologist J.M. Bacon, the prevalence of mental illness is not only
due to the "loss of traditional ways of life, but because such a
loss is perceived as a failure to uphold the sacred responsibility
Lakota people have to the land."
Bacon claims that the opposition that arises when Native Americans try
to execute their responsibilities to the non-human world also results
in mental health issues. A 2022 study revealed that Native American
college students experienced the greatest increase of depression and
anxiety between 2013 and 2021 out of all ethnic and racial groups.
According to a 2023 study, a strong sense of ethnic identity can
reduce the negative emotional impact of historical loss on Native
American college students.
Dakota Access Pipeline
The 2016 construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline
(DAPL) through unceded Oceti Sakowin territory presented a major threat
against the community's water source. During the #NoDAPL protests, the
National Guard and Emergency Management Assistant Compact were deployed
to suppress resistance, and they often resorted to violence. A private
security firm hired by DAPL compared the protestors to jihadists.
Similarly, several FBI informants, working with Energy Transfer
Partners, infiltrated the camp to collect intel and impede protests.
According to Estes, the Army Corps encouraged the pipeline's
benefactors to publish studies containing disinformation about the
effects of the pipeline. Despite the protests, the pipeline was completed in 2017.
Within six months of its completion, the pipeline leaked five times.
Two major incidents in 2017 and 2019 resulted in a total spillage of
800,000 gallons.
In the United States, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic. One in three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her life,
and 67% of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Native perpetrators.
According to research from the National Institute of Justice, it was
found that American Indian women are 1.2 times as likely to experience
lifetime violence, 1.8 times as likely to be a victim of stalking, and
1.7 times as likely to be victims of violence in the past year compared
to the Non-Hispanic White population.
Lisa Brunner, executive director of Sacred Spirits First National
Coalition states, "What's happened through US Federal law and policy is
they created lands of impunity where this is like a playground for
serial rapists, batterers, killers, whoever and our children aren't
protected at all."
The Family Planning Services and Population Research Act was passed in 1970, which subsidized sterilizations for patients receiving healthcare through the Indian Health Service.
In the six years after the act was passed, an estimated 25% of
childbearing-aged Native American women were sterilized. Some of the
procedures were performed under coercion, or without understanding by
those sterilized. In 1977, Marie Sanchez, chief tribal judge of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation
told the United Nations Convention on Indigenous Rights in Geneva, that
Native American women suffered involuntary sterilization which she
equated with modern genocide.
Following Sanchez and other Native women's protests, the federal
government adopted regulations that protected against involuntary
sterilization, including sterilization consent forms. The efficacy of
these regulations is contested by researchers. There are instances of
Native women allegedly being tricked into signing consent forms. Since
the passage of the 1976 Indian Health Care Improvement Act, Indigenous
sovereignty has increased and sterilizations have declined.
Many Native American nations understood that contact with European
settlers led to disease outbreaks and took measures to protect
themselves. Historians argue that Indigenous populations were not
inherently vulnerable to Old World disease but were rather weakened by
colonial violence. According to Tai S. Edwards and Paul Kelton,
Southeastern Woodlands people "intentionally limited contact with
colonial settlements during outbreaks, used ritualized quarantine to
reduce the spread of disease, and relied on experienced healers to
provide physical and spiritual treatment."
With these practices, Native American populations were able to rebound
after disease in the absence of colonial-settler violence.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the grassroots Red Power Movement and
American Indian Movement (AIM) sought to address discrimination and
violence against Native Americans and to promote self-determination.
Indigenous members of AIM staged the occupation of Alcatraz and the
Trail of Broken Treaties. These movements catalyzed the 1974 International Indian Treaty Council and Women of All Red Nations (WARN). In 1974, Madonna Thunderhawk,
a prominent member of AIM and WARN, founded the We Will Remember
Survival School to teach Indigenous students about treaty rights and
Native culture.
Contemporary Indigenous resistance to genocide includes
rebuilding the systems of responsibility to each other and the non-human
world that are disrupted by colonialism and environmental degradation.
According to Whyte, the emerging field of Indigenous Environmental
Studies and Sciences (IEES) presents an opportunity to center Indigenous
systems of knowledge and foster resilience within environmental
movements. IEES allows Indigenous communities to restore moral and
reciprocal relationships with the non-human world to withstand the
negative effects of climate change. For instance, Anishinaabe groups
from the Great Lakes region are employing Indigenous science to recover
sturgeon populations, with which these nations have an ancestral
reciprocal relationship. Many of these tribes also hold ceremonies and
feasts, open to non-Natives, to highlight the environmental and
historical importance of sturgeon. The Haudenosaunee have addressed the
industrial pollution of the St. Lawrence River by utilizing
organizations such as the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment, the
Mothers for Milk Project, and Traditional Mohawk Nation Council of
Chiefs.
In 2016, the Oceti Sakowin groups and allies protested the
completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline that would threaten the
Missouri River, the Standing Rock Indian Reservation's water supply. The
protests led to the #NoDAPL movement. The youth-led movement raised
awareness across social media and garnered non-Native support for the
protests. The Keystone XL pipeline,
proposed in 2008, was also met with resistance by Indigenous leaders
and allies across Canada and the U.S.. These protests garnered national
attention and resulted in the Obama administration denying the
pipeline's cross-border permit. In 2021, the Biden administration again
revoked the permit after the Trump administration granted it,
representing a success for Native resistance efforts.
Patterns of Removal and Displacement
During
the French and Indian War (1754–1763), British colonial authorities in
the Hudson Valley implemented policies that sought to forcibly remove
Indigenous groups from their lands. This process combined military
violence with legal and administrative measures, gradually transforming
Native communities from allies into obstacles to colonial expansion. The
British framed these removals as necessary for security and territorial
development, marking an early instance of ethnic cleansing in North
America.
The United States has to date not undertaken any truth commission nor built a memorial for the genocide of Indigenous people.
It does not acknowledge nor compensate for the historical violence
against Native Americans that occurred during territorial expansion to
the West Coast. American museums such as the Smithsonian Institution do not dedicate a section to the genocide. In 2013, the National Congress of American Indians
passed a resolution to create a space for the National American Indian
Holocaust Museum inside the Smithsonian, but it was ignored by the
latter.
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.
In An American Genocide,
Benjamin Madley argues that Indigenous resistance to genocidal
campaigns has resulted in these campaigns as being inaccurately
described as war or battles, instead of genocidal massacres.
David Moshman, a professor at University of Nebraska–Lincoln,
highlighted the lack of awareness of the American public, stating, "The
nations of the Americas remain virtually oblivious to their emergence
from a series of genocides that were deliberately aimed at, and
succeeded in eliminating, hundreds of Indigenous cultures."
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