"The grim legacy of America's treatment of its native peoples is explored in detail in this documentary. Filmmakers Robin Davey and Yellow Thunder Woman take the perspective that if one is to define "genocide" as the a deliberate effort by a government to exterminate a people, then the United States is clearly guilty of the crime given their actions against America's indigenous population over the past 300 years. Davey and Thunder Woman back up their argument with footage detailing the economic marginalization of American Indians, the consistent violation of legal agreements reached with native tribes, the mismanagement and consistent neglect of Indian reservations, the brutalization of Native Americans as they were segregated onto flinty soil and forced to live under substandard conditions, and the refusal of the mass media to report stories of suicide and Columbine-style school shootings among reservation youth. The Canary Effect was screened in competition at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival." "Sorry to say, but I don't think there is a place on this beautiful Earth that historically has not been touched by death at the hands of the European." -- comment by a netizen named "godwell" The Canary Effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD7x6jryoSA
Oh please! I am not trying to minimize the widespread mistreatment that went on, but there were never really that many natives living in America in the first place. Consider this: In just the county of Los Angeles (California, USA) there are now more hispanics today than there ever were native americans living in the USA and Canada combined ! Will whites similarly be overwhelmed like the native americans? Seems like just one more reason to be cautious about large scale immigration — that is unless you hate the white race and want to see them all get "what they deserve". Okay, yes, the Spanish brutally subjected their conquered peoples. This has more to do with spanish values and culture. The spanish had been fighting a centuries-long bitter war with the muslims that occupied their country in the recent past. Likely the treatment they were showing the natives in this new land was the same they had experienced under the yoke of the muslim moors. ( "convert or die", I wonder where that came from... ) Let's not forget that not all these native peoples were innocent; the Aztecs were quite fond of canibalism and human sacrifices of their captured prisoners.
The Natives did engage in warfare and customs that seemed savage to European onlookers, but in the New World I think Americans, with their Anglo-Saxon culture inherited from Britain, were every bit as appalling in their treatment of Natives as were the Spaniards. Though to be fair, the French and Scots tended to treat them more respectfully. The U.S. government wrested away the sovereignty of Native nations, rounded them up, killed those who resisted, placed them on lands away from where European American settlers most wanted to be, tried to purge these peoples of their cultures and assimilated them, and kidnapped their children to be Christianized and socialized at religiously-run schools where they were often beaten - some of them to death - and then many were shipped off far from home to ensure their families would not be able to reintroduce them to "savage" ways. The state took control of their finances, and essentially carried out what was felt to be God's will for the U.S. to span clear across the continent to Pacific shores in the west. For decades it was also against the law for Natives to practice in their spiritual belief systems. Adding insult to injury, the government broke over 400 treaties signed with Native nations - even after the negotiations to establish those treaties were often fraught with corruption on the U.S. side. For example, Natives were read terms that did not match the actual written contents of treaties, Congress changed some of the treaties once they had a signature without consulting with the Natives to re-procure their consent, and some nations were given no land or recognition to reduce the acreage of reservations. Nations of people were at times relocated to reservations far from their traditional homelands and/or made to live in close quarters with different Native nations. Chiefs were expected to sign on behalf of their peoples even though within their respective cultures they oft had no legitimate, political authority to do so. Furthermore, agents of the U.S. Army are rumored to have: used WMDs to kill off Natives - intentionally spreading smallpox to the effect of it at times killing 90-100% of people in infected communities, and then being passed on to others on account of international commerce (Natives had extensive trade networks); slaughter bison in an attempt to starve and crush the cultures of Natives on the Great Plains; at times massacred civilians in even those tribes which were allied with the U.S. government; and if I properly recall eventually recommended that Congress make peace with some of the Plains nations and give them food in perpetuity primarily because defeating them through strength of arms was expected to cost something along the lines of seven dead soldiers per Native warrior slain in combat. Mind you, that's aside from BIA resource shenanigans that seem to continue to this day and efforts as recent as during the Reagan administration to abolish reservations with intent to assimilate all remaining nations into mainstream culture. The point to make is not that Whites, Europeans, or even immigrants are bad... just that cultural imperialism is something we should be ever guarded against and oppose on humanist grounds. :\
