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.[1][2] 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.[3]

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,[8] and in this process, atrocities have been committed against Indigenous nations.[12] 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.[22]

Non-Indigenous scholars are now increasingly examining the impact of settler colonialism and internal colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous peoples.[27]

  1. ^ Hitchcock, Robert K. (2023). "Denial of Genocide of Indigenous People in the United States". In Der Matossian, Bedross (ed.). Denial of genocides in the twenty-first century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-1-4962-3554-1. Genocide scholars Susan Chavez Cameron and Loan T. Phan see American Indians as having gone through the ten stages of genocide identified by Stanton. Failure to acknowledge genocide has harmful social and psychological impacts on the victims of genocide, and it leaves the perpetrators in positions of power vis-a-vis others in their societies. As Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala points out, denial or negation relating to mass crimes consists of denying scientifically proven historical facts by deliberately concealing them and spreading false and misleading information. She goes on to say that the consequences of negationism are of ethical, legal, social, and political character.
  2. ^ a b Fontaine, Theodore (2014). Woolford, Andrew; Benvenuto, Jeff; Hinton, Alexander Laban (eds.). Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Duke University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv11sn770. ISBN 978-0-8223-5763-6. JSTOR j.ctv11sn770. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023. Retrieved 24 December 2023. "From Lemarchand's volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor's version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been "hidden" politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power". (p2) ...the U.S. government, for most of its existence, stated openly and frequently that its policy was to destroy Native American ways of life through forced integration, forced removal, and death. An 1881 report of the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs on the "Indian question" is indicative of the decades- long policy: "There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place, to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die." (p3) "As such it is important for the peoples of the United States and Canada to recognize their shared legacies of genocide, which have too often been hidden, ignored, forgotten, or outright denied." (p3) "After all, much of North America was swindled from Indigenous peoples through the mythical but still powerful Doctrine of Discovery, the perceived right of conquest, and deceitful treaties. Restitution for colonial genocide would thus entail returning stolen territories". (p9) "Thankfully a new generation of genocide scholarship is moving beyond these timeworn and irreconcilable divisions." (p11)"Variations of the Modoc ordeal occurred elsewhere during the conquest and colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Indigenous civilizations repeatedly resisted invaders seeking to physically annihilate them in whole or in part. Many of these catastrophes are known as wars. Yet by carefully examining the intentions and actions of colonizers and their advocates it is possible to reinterpret some of these cataclysms as both genocides and wars of resistance. The Modoc case is one of them" (p120). "Memory, remembering, forgetting, and denial are inseparable and critical junctures in the study and examination of genocide. Absence or suppression of memories is not merely a lack of acknowledgment of individual or collective experiences but can also be considered denial of a genocidal crime (p150). Erasure of historical memory and modification of historical narrative influence the perception of genocide. If it is possible to avoid conceptually blocking colonial genocides for a moment, we can consider denial in a colonial context. Perpetrators initiate and perpetuate denial" (p160).
  3. ^ Evans, Gareth (2008). The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All. Brookings Institution Press. pp. 11–13. ISBN 978-0-8157-2504-6. JSTOR 10.7864/j.ctt4cg7fp.
  4. ^ Jones, Adam (2010). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge. pp. 208, 230, 791–793. ISBN 978-1-136-93797-2.
  5. ^ "Indian Tribes and Resources for Native Americans". United States Government. Archived from the original on 30 March 2023. Retrieved 29 March 2023. The U.S. government officially recognizes 574 Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 states and Alaska.
  6. ^ Totten, Samuel; Hitchcock, Robert K. (2011). Genocide of Indigenous Peoples: A Critical Bibliographic Review. Transaction Publishers. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4128-4455-0. In Asia, for example, only one country, the Philippines, has officially adopted the term "Indigenous peoples," and established a law specifically to protect Indigenous peoples' rights. Only two countries in Africa, Burundi and Cameroon, have statements about the rights of Indigenous peoples in their constitutions.
  7. ^ Sengar, Bina; Adjoumani, A. Mia Elise (7 March 2023). Indigenous Societies in the Post-colonial World: Responses and Resilience Through Global Perspectives. Springer Nature. p. 318. ISBN 978-981-19-8722-9. Archived from the original on 20 December 2023. Retrieved 12 December 2023. Indigenous populations are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created and current borders defined. They generally maintain cultural and social identities, and social, economic, cultural and political institutions, separate from the mainstream or dominant society or culture.
  8. ^ [4][5][6][7]
  9. ^ Englert, Sai (November 2020). "Settlers, Workers, and the Logic of Accumulation by Dispossession". Antipode. 52 (6): 1647–1666. Bibcode:2020Antip..52.1647E. doi:10.1111/anti.12659. hdl:1887/3220822. S2CID 225643194.
  10. ^ Adhikari, Mohamed (2 January 2017). "Europe's First Settler Colonial Incursion into Africa: The Genocide of Aboriginal Canary Islanders". African Historical Review. 49 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1080/17532523.2017.1336863. ISSN 1753-2523. S2CID 165086773.
  11. ^ Adhikari, Mohamed (2022). Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. pp. 1–32. ISBN 978-1-64792-054-8.
  12. ^ [2][9][10][11]
  13. ^ Bartrop, Paul R. (2012). "Punitive Expeditions and Massacres: Gippsland, Colorado, and the Question of Genocide". In Moses, A. Dirk (ed.). Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. Vol. 6 (1 ed.). Berghahn Books. pp. 194–214. doi:10.2307/j.ctt9qdg7m. ISBN 978-1-57181-411-1. JSTOR j.ctt9qdg7m. S2CID 265474265. Archived from the original on 16 March 2023. Retrieved 24 December 2023. Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
  14. ^ Kanu, Hassan (18 May 2022). "U.S. confronts 'cultural genocide' in Native American boarding school probe". Reuters. Archived from the original on 20 November 2022. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  15. ^ Farrell, Justin; Burow, Paul Berne; McConnell, Kathryn; Bayham, Jude; Whyte, Kyle; Koss, Gal (29 October 2021). "Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America". Science. 374 (6567): eabe4943. doi:10.1126/science.abe4943. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 34709911. S2CID 240153327. Archived from the original on 15 May 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  16. ^ Maybury-Lewis, David (15 August 2002). "Genocide against Indigenous Peoples". In Alexander Laban, Alexander (ed.). Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. University of California Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-520-23029-3. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2023. Imperialist genocide against indigenous peoples was thus of two kinds. It was practiced in order to clear lands that invading settlers wished to occupy. It was also practiced as part of a strategy to seize and coerce labor that the settlers could not or would not obtain by less drastic means.
  17. ^ Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne (2014). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Beacon Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-8070-0041-0. Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the genocide convention. In the case of the British North American colonies and the United States, not only extermination and removal were practiced but also the disappearing of the prior existence of Indigenous peoples, and this continues to be perpetuated in local histories.
  18. ^ Ostler, Jeffrey (2 March 2015), "Genocide and American Indian History", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3, ISBN 978-0-19-932917-5, archived from the original on 4 February 2023, retrieved 25 November 2023
  19. ^ Comas, Juan (1971). "Historical reality and the detractors of Father Las Casas". In Friede, Juan; Keen, Benjamin (eds.). Bartolomé de las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and his Work. Collection spéciale: CER. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. pp. 487–539. ISBN 978-0-87580-025-7. OCLC 421424974.
  20. ^ Tinker, George E. (1993). Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-2576-4. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
  21. ^ Ginzberg, Eitan (4 September 2020). "Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14 (2): 122–152. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666. ISSN 1911-0359. Archived from the original on 8 December 2023. Retrieved 8 December 2023. The testimonies on which Raphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
  22. ^ [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]
  23. ^ Aranda, Dario (2010). Aboriginal Argentina: Genocide, Loot and Resistance (Argentina Originaria: Genocidios, Saqueos y Resistencias) (in Spanish) (1st ed.). IWGIA – International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. ISBN 978-987-21900-6-4. Archived from the original on 18 March 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
  24. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (March 2013). "The Shocking Savagery of America's Early History". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 15 April 2023. Retrieved 15 April 2023. It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide", the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal", the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.
  25. ^ Allard-Tremblay, Yann; Coburn, Elaine (May 2023). "The Flying Heads of Settler Colonialism; or the Ideological Erasures of Indigenous Peoples in Political Theorizing". Political Studies. 71 (2): 359–378. doi:10.1177/00323217211018127. ISSN 0032-3217. S2CID 236234578. Since the publication of Wolfe's (2006: 388) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, the idea that settler colonialism is 'a structure not an event' has taken root and is now foundational to scholarship in settler-colonial studies.
  26. ^ Gigoux, Carlos (2 January 2022). ""Condemned to Disappear": Indigenous Genocide in Tierra del Fuego". Journal of Genocide Research. 24 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1853359. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 230565181. Archived from the original on 2 October 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023. Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
  27. ^ [23][24][25][26]