Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?

According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record." By the end of the 19th century, writes David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, native Americans had undergone the"worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people." In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr.,"there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a 'race' of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history."

In my view there is ample evidence that it was the genocide.

p.s. But what about those figures? Is it the reliable information? >

…the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900…

For example we have a lot of information about WWII (documents, chronicles etc). But there’s a heated debate about how many ppl (Soviet citizens / Jews) were killed by Nazis. - There is still no consensus on this matter.

So, in my view this is the very rough estimate but maybe it must not be ruled out that it is the actual data?

 

A high rate of intermarriage and epidemic diseases brought from Europe are the main causes of the population decline of the American Indians until the 19th century and it's impossible to determine how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus and there is a low estimate of 2.1 million (Ubelaker 1976) and 12 million is a wildly inflated figure. The 2010 US census estimated that about 0.8% of the US population (2.9 million) was of American Indian descent and a genetic study showed that 4-5% of white Americans have Native American DNA and the Native American population has recovered to a pre-Columbian level.

 

Some tribes, yes. Others, no.

That being said, Ward Churchill is a nut.

 

No question. Yes

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No question. Yes

 

Ward Chruchill is a leftist plagiarizing crybaby boob.

That being said...while the Indians may not have been victims of systematic Genocide (a'la Nazi Germany)...yeah, it was basically genocide. I think it was the intent of the US government in general at that time to wipe them out over time so they would not be a problem anymore.

 

Well it's a lot closer to 12 than it is to 2.1.

 

Agreed..

 

Disease was a major factor and I agree that some aspects of the genocide were not systemic - e.g. incidents of people (at times in the armed forces) unilaterally deciding to use biological weapons, slaughter both the warriors and civilians of allied Native nations, and commit other reprehensible crimes.

The systemic portion of the campaign was cultural in nature. Culture is comprised of a people's way of life and can be conceptualized as a shared set of customs pertaining to material goods, social hierarchies, spirituality, and language. For a very long time the U.S. government sought to eradicate Native culture, using various means of coercion to make them more "civilized" or Western.

Cultural genocide against the Native nations involved the state taking steps to teach them to be capitalists, abandon their relatively egalitarian ways, practice Christianity instead of their own spiritual beliefs, speak English instead of their own languages, and so forth while simultaneously pushing them off of pieces of land European Americans wanted. A full account of atrocities and misdeeds would be much too lengthy and time-consuming for one to present in a thread like this. The oppressing of these peoples still continues today, albeit not at the same level of severity as in decades passed.

 

The Natives of the Americas practiced genocide on each other to a far greater extent than liberals will ever admit to.

Now a racist bigot, hypocrtie and liar like Ward Churchhill, will always spew the same anti-White hate speech blaming the evil White man for the decline of Native populations. He refuses to accept the fact that Natives have been killing each other off for some 12,000 years---and that disease was the main killer after 1492.

The earliest people in the Americas were from Europe and Asia. The Clovis people were killed off and racially assimilated over the eons. The Maya people killed each other off centuries before Columbus. Unless the "Ancient Aliens" did it, one can't blame Whitey.

Anyone here who has moved on past historical material like Disney's "Pocohontas" can understand that Native tribes did not treat their enemies with the same type of Western/Christian compassion that they should have been doing. They just should have know better! No excuse.

Did any pre-Columbian Native tribe create tribal reservation systems with free housing, food stamps, education and other benefits for their defeated enemies?

I believe the normal Native policy was to kill off the males of a warring tribe, take the women and children as slaves and create new "living space."

 

Many scholars now believe that there were between 40-100 million Indians in the hemisphere (Denevan 1992). This conclusion is primarily based on evidence of rapid early declines from epidemic disease prior to the first population counts (Lovell, this volume). I have recently suggested a New World total of 53.9 million (Denevan 1992, xxvii). This divides into 3.8 million for North America, 17.2 million for Mexico, 5.6 million for Central America, 3.0 million for the Caribbean, 15.7 million for the Andes, and 8.6 million for lowland South America. These figures are based on my judgment as to the most reasonable recent tribal and regional estimates. Accepting a margin of error of about 20 percent, the New World population would lie between 43-65 million. Future regional revisions are likely to maintain the hemispheric total within this range. Other recent estimates, none based on totaling regional figures, include 43 million by Whitmore (1991, 483), 40 million by Lord and Burke (1991), 40-50 million by Cowley (1991), and 80 million for just Latin America by Schwerin (1991, 40). In any event, a population between 40-80 million is sufficient to dispel any notion of "empty lands." Moreover, the native impact on the landscape of 1492 reflected not only the population then but the cumulative effects of z growing population over the previous 15,000 years or more.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~alcoze/for398/class/pristinemyth.html

 

However it has to be understood the "Empty Lands" was exactly what people found. With the catastrophic reduction in populations the place did look empty. Many of the first colonists actually moved into old Indian villages and lodges left over from the deaths

 

The early English settlers did not discover "empty lands" in North America and they had to reach a legal agreement with the tribal chiefs on the Queen's behalf to allow British colonisation of the New World. The English settlers lived side-by-side with 2-4 million Native Americans peacefully and the Indian-English relations were generally amicable and mutually beneficial and there was no genocidal intent at all and the depopulation of the Native Americans was an unintended consequence caused by foreign diseases such as small pox.

 

No, he's not a nut. He is a political dissenter with balls. He stood up in 2001 and in very crude terms claimed that 9/11 was merely teh chickens coming home to roost after decades of US illegal activity around the globe. Hard to argue that, despite O'rielly's attempts at villification and insistence that America's shyte don't stink.

as for the genocide of native americans (first nations in canada) there shouldn't be the slightest doubt in anyone's mind.

 

When the first settlers began to penetrate inland they were dealing with peoples that had lost up to 90% of its population in the generation before they arrived

 

Well, that certainly is a "sanitized" reading of historic events.
Sure the pilgrims weren't bent on genocide. But by the 1770's it was in full swing. YOu've no doubt heard of the indian wars? of the distribution of blankets infected with small pox? the uses of liquor to rob and cheat the indians and destroy the social fabric of clans and tribes? the murder of entire tribes? the trail of tears?

There isn't any possible defence against the broad accusation that the white man engaged in genocide of the native america peoples.

 

Some of our tactics were definitely genocidal. Killing off buffalo herds to force people to find food elsewhere (if they could) was genocidal. Trying to turn hunter/gatherers into reservation farmers was also genocidal since it takes a couple generations to produce a decent farmer.

 

Did you just attempt to justify genocide with food stamps?

 

This is basically not true. Although low-level fighting was almost endemic among many neighboring tribes, actual "genocidal" behavior was vanishingly rare. Tribes that got too weak tended to shift territory rather than continue to contend with their opponents, or they allied with another tribe or tribes for added strength.

 

I don't generally support people who are nativists -- whether they are Native American ones, white ones, or black ones, or anything else.

Ward Churchill is a racist, essentially.

 

Remember, Native Americans killed white men (european settlers) also, just not as many as we killed them. All wars a genocidal. Each group is trying to take out another group of a specific ethnicity for a reason. So all wars can be concidered genocidal if genocidal is even a word. If not you get my point. This next point I am about to make I kind of feel but then I don't feel so much. I am on the fence about this but to put the european killing of native americans in a genocide light is slightly but purposely putting the european american settelers in a negative light. If thats the case, all immigrants from all around the world who have faught for land are being put in a bad perspective. Though the actual killing was wrong and the taking of the land should have been done in a different way besides killing I also don't necessairly agree with somewhat purposely painting a bad picture on the european settlers.

 

most of them died prior to actual contact due to disease preceeding the white advance

 

I'm not condoning what happened to the Indians. To put it bluntly, they got royally (*)(*)(*)(*)ed. But to assert that their where 12 million Indians before the arrival of Europeans, is idiotic. There is no way to accurately estimate the native population, but I highly doubt there where even close to 12 million.

On a side note, Ward Churchill is a fraud.

 

many scientists disagree with you.

 

No, not really.

 

yes really