America's treatment of Native Americans, genocide or no?

Who cares? They were primitives like the aborigonals and africans, notice how the west didn't exploit Asia? That's because they had arts and technology and weren't running around chucking spears at each other

Microsteve

On another note, the West started exploiting China the first chance they got by trading heroin instead of gold and crippling their workforce.

what the ****

there is a class called "Comparitave Genocide"

wtf type of class is this?

[QUOTE="Microsteve"]

Who cares? They were primitives like the aborigonals and africans, notice how the west didn't exploit Asia? That's because they had arts and technology and weren't running around chucking spears at each other

VanHelsingBoA64

On another note, the West started exploiting China the first chance they got by trading heroin instead of gold and crippling their workforce.

Who cares? They were primitives like the aborigonals and africans, notice how the west didn't exploit Asia? That's because they had arts and technology and weren't running around chucking spears at each other

Microsteve

Can this guy be moderated for racism or something? That's like saying why care aboutthe holocaust because the Jews were weak and couldn't defend themselves.

Not at all. Just another case of a larger civilization swallowing a smaller, weaker one. Same story as all of human history. Then again, that depends on what a "Native American" actually is.

Without a doubt

[QUOTE="Seajack"][QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]No but that is what happens when two cultures clash and land/resources are at stake. Happened throughout history in every country so we'd have to accuse everyone of genocide if that is that case.LJS9502_basic

It was genocide.

whether you count malaria infected blankets to kill tribes, The trail of tears, shoot on site orders for any indians meeting in groups back in the day *as sourced from the ghost dance movement* peaceful meetings called by Whitemilitary leadersfor chiefs to attend and the killing of those chiefs under a flag of peace.

Yeah it was genocide genocide to keep all indian insurgency down and claim the land for the whites. Look at my picture you may not know it but I am of souix ancestory on my mothers side. It was genocide and anyone that says different is simply trying to find a way to justify American greed and injustices.
*wasdie said something similiar on the other side of the fence*

Edit: its not hard to see European colonist, American Colonials, Spanish...etc All see seemingly had an unwritten order of genocide against Native American Indians the only ones that didn't seemed to be the french whom had the closest alliances with Native american tribes in the US and Canada, but its not hard to see just because there was no written order doesn't mean there wasn't an unwritten expectation of such actions against the native american indian peoples.

Yes it was genocide, you cannot change the meaning of words in the English language because of nasty things in your history.

No but that is what happens when two cultures clash and land/resources are at stake. Happened throughout history in every country so we'd have to accuse everyone of genocide if that is that case.LJS9502_basic

Yes it was genocide, but it doesn't really matter any more since everyone involved has been dead for a long long time

Absolutely.

RDR helped with my decision :P

There are lots of things to take into consideration. Some indians where happy with the land they were given. Until Americans found out there was gold on it and took it back. That where the term "indian giver" came from. The whites gave to the indians and then took it back. You have to take into consideration the Cherokee, who instead of fighting the Americans, joined them and wore thier clothes ect. Many tribes where friendly with the Americans not all where whiped or moved. It's true though a lot of them where killed and whiped out and it's a sad history. I would call it war, I wouldn't call it genocide. Take into consideration the middle ages where people threw plauge infested corpses over castle walls, was that genocide? No that was the first "Biological warfare".

what the ****

there is a class called "Comparitave Genocide"

wtf type of class is this?

SaudiFury

Its a class on the history of genocide and whether or not the events in question were actually genocide. I took it for a semester.

I don't think it qualifies as a genocide considering the vast majority of Native Americans were killed from disease. The United States and other western powers certainly mistreated the native population ,but even that was inevitable once settlers began to move further in land. I don't think the government could have prevented people from moving further west even if they tried. One of the causes of the American Revolution was the fact that the British government was evicting settlers who were moving into Native American territory. Native Americans were an unfortunate victim of a clash of two cultures that simply couldn't co-exist.

Was what happened to Native Americans horrible? Yes

Was it a crime? At times, Yes

Was it genocide? I'm not sure, keeping in mind that something like 70-90% of Native deaths came from disease.

the legal U.N. definition of genocide which is (any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately infliction on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group; and forcibly transferring child of the group to another group.)bacon_is_sweet

Yes what happened was cruel, but the Native Americans claimed basically the entire country yet had no way to really protect it or defend it to keep it theirs so naturally it was taken from them.. this is what happens everywhere.

I mean nobody, no culture in the entire world would have said "Oh well they were here first, so let them keep it"

In my Comparative Genocide class we discussed the definition of genocide and what it means to actually commit genocide. In the history of supposed genocides, the American Indians comes into question. What do you guys think? Was the American's treatment of the Indians from Jamestown up to the reservations, genocide? My class was split on the issue though I had judged, for myself at lest, that it was not genocide as inflicted by the United States, though genocide had been the unintended result.

My reasoning was on three main reasons:

First of all the the act does not fit the legal U.N. definition of genocide which is (any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately infliction on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group; and forcibly transferring child of the group to another group.)bacon_is_sweet

Actually, we did every one of those things except for possibly trying to prevent birth, and I'm not entirely sure that didn't happen either. If we wanted land and they didn't give it to us, then we would often do a purge of a tribe until they gave in to our demands or simply fled (killing members of the group, inflicting bodily and mental harm on memebers of the group). We infected the natives with smallpox, we killed off the animals they subsided on (deliberate inflictions on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part), and we often seperated children as part of "civilizing" them.

It was never U.S. federal policy that the Native Americans be destroyed or wiped out on a grand scale due to their race or culture.

bacon_is_sweet

It was never explicitly stated as such, but we labelled their culture as inferior and used that as an excuse to destroy it, that's close enough.

Second, I had come to the conclusion that given the wars and relocations had spanned hundreds of years rather than taking place in a much shorter time span such as with the Jews and the Armenians, that the resulting deaths were the result of centuries of fighting a turmoil with the U.S. rather than a proposed genocidal action.

bacon_is_sweet

Ah, so Hitler wasn't wrong then, he just went at it too quickly?

Third, most all instances of genocide involve scenarios in which the victim could not fight back. The Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur all consisted of non-combatant groups (Rwanda has a small exception near the end of the tragedy). The Indians on more than several occasions actively engaged in warfare with the colonists and the United States. Deaths during these events would have been attributed to war and not part of ethnical killings.

bacon_is_sweet

We fired the first shot, Europeans have been killing and enslaving the natives since they first set foot on this continent. Native Americans also largely took it in stride for a good deal of time. They made every attempt to live peacefully with us despite what had been done to some smaller tribes. When we decided to move past the Mississippi they moved easily, and the large-scale fighting didn't really take place until we decided we were going to move them off fertile hunting grounds and onto reservations in infertile and barren lands. We were invading their lands, we were breaking our own treaties, and we were committing heinous acts when they didn't cooperate, I don't think you can rightly call them fighting back when we did these things engaging in warfare.

Understand I don't mean to justify what happened to the Native Americans. It is truly sad what happened to their people. I simply believe that the United States did not enact genocide.

bacon_is_sweet

We destroyed their way of life, we forced them to live on reservations, many tribes are faced with the dangers of inbreeding and thus going extinct. Their culture is all but dead, we committed genocide.

We wanted the land, not all Native Americans wiped off the face of the earth....

It's cruel, but there is a difference.

Blue-Sky

so yeah, it was genocide

We abused the native Americans to get control of the land. Then once we got control of the land, we abused the land.

[QUOTE="bacon_is_sweet"]

In my Comparative Genocide class we discussed the definition of genocide and what it means to actually commit genocide. In the history of supposed genocides, the American Indians comes into question. What do you guys think? Was the American's treatment of the Indians from Jamestown up to the reservations, genocide? My class was split on the issue though I had judged, for myself at lest, that it was not genocide as inflicted by the United States, though genocide had been the unintended result.

My reasoning was on three main reasons:

First of all the the act does not fit the legal U.N. definition of genocide which is (any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately infliction on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group; and forcibly transferring child of the group to another group.)theone86

Actually, we did every one of those things except for possibly trying to prevent birth, and I'm not entirely sure that didn't happen either. If we wanted land and they didn't give it to us, then we would often do a purge of a tribe until they gave in to our demands or simply fled (killing members of the group, inflicting bodily and mental harm on memebers of the group). We infected the natives with smallpox, we killed off the animals they subsided on (deliberate inflictions on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part), and we often seperated children as part of "civilizing" them.

It was never U.S. federal policy that the Native Americans be destroyed or wiped out on a grand scale due to their race or culture.

bacon_is_sweet

It was never explicitly stated as such, but we labelled their culture as inferior and used that as an excuse to destroy it, that's close enough.

No, U.S. policy was to migrate west. It was not the intentions of the U.S. government or the general American public that the whole of American natives be wiped from the planet. Because if it was, they most surely would have been. The largest amount of deaths did come from unintentional and unavoidable disease from the Europeans. Any instances of "forcible" infection was done by individuals or groups of individuals who had their own agenda and not supported by the government or general American public. The "intent" (as described in the U.N. definition) was not to destroy the native American civilization, it was to move west.

The end result of those policies was almost genocide. I dont think people back in those days had as good of an understanding of morals and ethics. It was a dog eat dog world. But it's a shame that so many of those native societies were basically wiped out. Not just in the states but also in Canada, Central and South America and Australia.

[QUOTE="theone86"]

[QUOTE="bacon_is_sweet"]

Actually, we did every one of those things except for possibly trying to prevent birth, and I'm not entirely sure that didn't happen either. If we wanted land and they didn't give it to us, then we would often do a purge of a tribe until they gave in to our demands or simply fled (killing members of the group, inflicting bodily and mental harm on memebers of the group). We infected the natives with smallpox, we killed off the animals they subsided on (deliberate inflictions on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part), and we often seperated children as part of "civilizing" them.

[QUOTE="bacon_is_sweet"]

It was never U.S. federal policy that the Native Americans be destroyed or wiped out on a grand scale due to their race or culture.

bacon_is_sweet

It was never explicitly stated as such, but we labelled their culture as inferior and used that as an excuse to destroy it, that's close enough.

No, U.S. policy was to migrate west. It was not the intentions of the U.S. government or the general American public that the whole of American natives be wiped from the planet. Because if it was, they most surely would have been. The largest amount of deaths did come from unintentional and unavoidable disease from the Europeans. Any instances of "forcible" infection was done by individuals or groups of individuals who had their own agenda and not supported by the government or general American public. The "intent" (as described in the U.N. definition) was not to destroy the native American civilization, it was to move west.

Ahem.. President Andrew Jackson any one? He has been cited multiple times to absolutely HATING Native Americans.. And was responsible for the Indian Removal Act.. A act that led to the trail of tears.. Furthermore the government continued rounding up native Americans as time went on and placed them on some of the most inhospitable land the US could offer for them to try to live on.. Lets not forget the entire indoctrination the US government tried to do on Native Americans which was more or less the attempt to committ cultural genocide, a phrase popular coined from this very event.

Considering that the US government violated pretty much every treaty they made with the Native Americans and engaged in slaughtering the bison en masse solely for the purpose of removing the Native's primary source of food, yeah. I'd say a case for genocide could be made.

Yes it was genocide, but it doesn't really matter any more since everyone involved has been dead for a long long time

toast_burner

I think it matters a lot. Its surprising and sort of depressing that this subject is even a talking point.

Well since there are still Native Americans in existence today, I would say that we did not commit genocide.

Well since there are still Native Americans in existence today, I would say that we did not commit genocide.whipassmt

Well since there are still Native Americans in existence today, I would say that we did not commit genocide.

whipassmt

I think the european colonization of the americas resulted in a series of genocides partly caused by native (north and south) americans lack of immunity to european diseases, but also by loss of life from war.

Yes. Pretty much the only answer you can arrive at.

I think what makes this slightly worse than other moments in history is the fact it was relatively recent act.

Its better known because of the increased abillity to record said acts.

Anyhow the NAzis, Romans, British the list goes on..........

Not at all. Just another case of a larger civilization swallowing a smaller, weaker one. Same story as all of human history. Then again, that depends on what a "Native American" actually is.

QuistisTrepe_

With a 95% reduction in population? just because it has happened before in history does not make it justifiable. Hmmm kinda reminds me of Germany in the 1940s when Adolf Hitler wanted "breathing room" for the Aryan race. A native american is a person indiginous to the Americas...

I think what makes this slightly worse than other moments in history is the fact it was relatively recent act.

Its better known because of the increased abillity to record said acts.

Anyhow the NAzis, Romans, British the list goes on..........

jwsoul

The Romans merely conquered. They did not actively carry out policies designed to exterminate the people they had conquered. Quite the contrary in fact. Many were employed by the Romans. Some even became Roman citizens. Same with the British.

No. 90+% of the Native American population was wiped out by disease.

And it's not like Native Americans were peaceful, hippie-like creatures. They killed each other off for thousands of years before the 'white man' arrived. They hated each other so much they couldn't unify again the white man. The few times they tried they ended up fighting internally or their enemies allied against them with the whites.

Tribal society and disease were far more deteromential than the white man.

No. 90+% of the Native American population was wiped out by disease.

And it's not like Native Americans were peaceful, hippie-like creatures. They killed each other off for thousands of years before the 'white man' arrived. They hated each other so much they couldn't unify again the white man. The few times they tried they ended up fighting internally or their enemies allied against them with the whites.

Tribal society and disease were far more deteromential than the white man.

KC_Hokie

Europeans killed each other off as well. They didn't unite to fight the mongols. The greeks didn't unite to fight the perisans. The saxons didn't unite to fight the danes. The list goes on and on.

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"]

No. 90+% of the Native American population was wiped out by disease.

And it's not like Native Americans were peaceful, hippie-like creatures. They killed each other off for thousands of years before the 'white man' arrived. They hated each other so much they couldn't unify again the white man. The few times they tried they ended up fighting internally or their enemies allied against them with the whites.

Tribal society and disease were far more deteromential than the white man.

Tokugawa77

Europeans killed each other off as well. They didn't unite to fight the mongols. The greeks didn't unite to fight the perisans. The saxons didn't unite to fight the danes. The list goes on and on.

It WAS genocide and anyone who believes different is ignorant. Americans committed genocide on the native americans period.

specialzed

Disease killed off 90+% of Native Americans.

[QUOTE="Tokugawa77"]

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"]

No. 90+% of the Native American population was wiped out by disease.

And it's not like Native Americans were peaceful, hippie-like creatures. They killed each other off for thousands of years before the 'white man' arrived. They hated each other so much they couldn't unify again the white man. The few times they tried they ended up fighting internally or their enemies allied against them with the whites.

Tribal society and disease were far more deteromential than the white man.

KC_Hokie

Europeans killed each other off as well. They didn't unite to fight the mongols. The greeks didn't unite to fight the perisans. The saxons didn't unite to fight the danes. The list goes on and on.

That has nothing to do with the ability of a people to unite against a common enemy. I was just pointing out that your judgement of the native americans is biased, because Europeans encountered the same problems.

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"][QUOTE="Tokugawa77"]

Europeans killed each other off as well. They didn't unite to fight the mongols. The greeks didn't unite to fight the perisans. The saxons didn't unite to fight the danes. The list goes on and on.

Tokugawa77

That has nothing to do with the ability of a people to unite against a common enemy. I was just pointing out that your judgement of the native americans is biased, because Europeans encountered the same problems.

Native Americans couldn't unite against the white man. Even when they needed to and this was due to their bloody history against other tribes.

[QUOTE="Tokugawa77"]

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"]Good point. And those invading groups aren't known as genocidal manics either.KC_Hokie

That has nothing to do with the ability of a people to unite against a common enemy. I was just pointing out that your judgement of the native americans is biased, because Europeans encountered the same problems.

Native Americans couldn't unite against the white man. Even when they needed to and this was due to their bloody history against other tribes.

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"]

[QUOTE="Tokugawa77"]

That has nothing to do with the ability of a people to unite against a common enemy. I was just pointing out that your judgement of the native americans is biased, because Europeans encountered the same problems.

Wolls

Native Americans couldn't unite against the white man. Even when they needed to and this was due to their bloody history against other tribes.

I brought out their lack of unification as a fatal flaw due to tribal society. Tribes fought against each other more than they ever fought whites. In ever major North American wars tribes picked sides often because their rival tribe was fighting with the other white group (French, British, etc.)

We don't call the Mongols, Persians, Moors, etc. 'genocidal manics' because they were able to conquer entire countries in Europe partially due to the lack of unification of Europeans. Some even fought with the invaders against their local enemies.

[QUOTE="specialzed"]

It WAS genocide and anyone who believes different is ignorant. Americans committed genocide on the native americans period.

KC_Hokie

Disease killed off 90+% of Native Americans.

[QUOTE="KC_Hokie"]

[QUOTE="specialzed"]

It WAS genocide and anyone who believes different is ignorant. Americans committed genocide on the native americans period.

Zaibach

Disease killed off 90+% of Native Americans.