FREE ESSAY ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN GENOCIDE

THE AMERICAN INDIAN GENOCIDE

The American Indian Genocide
Textbooks and movies are still hiding the genocide of Native American Indian cultures,
which began five centuries ago. There were many friendly and close relationships between
early immigrant settlers and native peoples, but these were not the main current in their
relations. U.S. history is destroyed by acts of genocide against native people, made
worse by the deadly impact of new diseases spread by contact between new settlers and
native Americans. Many aggressive attempts were made to reform the Indian peoples
according to European cultural models, whether under threat of death or, later, through
separation to government boarding schools.
Government policies guided the destruction and control of native American cultures,
concluding in the problematic status of Indian people today. Despite this historical
situation, there has been only the most begrudging admission of any public responsibility
for the damage done to native American cultures. Little public support has gone to
efforts to preserve, retrieve and build upon native cultural traditions. Where
affirmative steps are called for, none has been taken. Chief among the U.S. government's
initiatives toward native peoples has been the reservation -- remarkably like the former
South African homelands. The current laissez-faire federal policy pretends that Native
American cultures are now free to enjoy an even chance in our society, to compete for
resources with dominant cultural forms and traditions. The official alternative to the
reservation has been pressure to assimilate into the mainstream culture.
Through much of the time that Native American peoples have endured this cultural combat,
the idea of the Indian has been a powerful symbol within our national culture. We usually
see Indian people portrayed as brutal and warmongering, worthy of punishment at the hands
of white settlers and the U.S. government. Nevertheless, Indian influences on
contemporary United States culture are extensive. In Hollywood films and western novels
and cowboy art, Indians have symbolized connectedness and sensitivity to nature (and the
loss of the wilderness), highly developed skills, and individual courage. The new age
philosophies which emerged from the 1960's depend heavily on traditional Indian
knowledge; within their frameworks, Native Americans symbolize balance, inner wisdom,
ordeal and transcendent experience, and natural dignity. Recently, Native American
activists have done much to revitalize their cultural traditions. Assimilationism has
lost some of the attraction it had in the past. But history cannot be undone.
American Indians around the United States have been protesting against 
Did you know that most of the Native Americans live in reservations, managed by a part of
the US government called the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And on these reservations, the
Native Americans can't grow their own food; there is not enough land. They can't grow
maize corn and they can't have buffaloes for meat. So the Bureau of Indian Affairs gives
them modern processed food, which is entirely foreign to their way of life. And the
result - diabetes. 
Some of the Native Americans live in villages and cities in the western states, and the
unemployment rate there is the highest in our country. And these cities comprise the
poorest counties in our country. And these cities are where there is another disease that
debilitates the Native Americans - it is called alcoholism.
Since we don't see any of these Native Americans in our normal everyday lives, it is hard
for us to realize that one time, some 200 years ago, they occupied all of the United
States, and they had a rich culture, and we destroyed all that. Do you own a home, or
condominium? You think you own the property that it sits on - but do you know that your
property was stolen? Stolen from the Native Americans.
American Indians want a National Apology for what has done to them 200 years ago and is
currently going on in a different way today. 
American Natives still have to deal with the aftermath of cultural and ethnic genocide.
Many of their ancestral languages and ways of life remain threatened. Political, cultural
and economic autonomy is a work in progress. 
Causes of the Native American Genocide 
Diseases: cholera, smallpox, measles 
Famine: caused by the destruction of wild buffalo populations 
Massacres: wars from 1866 to 1891. 
Major Native American Nations 
Abnakis Maine 
Delawares Middle States and Virginia 
Cheyennes Middle States and Virginia 
Sauks Middle West 
Foxes Middle West 
Kickapoos Middle West 
Black-Foot Middle West 
Iroquois New-York, New England 
Navajos Arizona, New Mexico and Utah 
Apaches Arizona, New Mexico, Oaklahoma 
Hopis New Mexico and Arizona 
Pueblos New Mexico and Arizona 
Native American life expectancy 46 
Non-Native American life expectancy 70 
Total Native American Population 
1492 approx 3 000 000 to 10 000 000 
1896 254 000 
1940 333 000 
1990 1 959 000 
Largest American Native populations 
Navajo 173 000 
Cherokee 58 200 
In the past, the main thrust of the Holocaust/Genocide Project's magazine, An End To
Intolerance, has been the genocides that occurred in history and outside of the United
States. Still, what we mustn't forget is that mass killing of Native Americans occurred
in our own country. As a result, bigotry and racial discrimination still exist.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . . and made the first contact with the
Indians. For Native Americans, the world after 1492 would never be the same. This date
marked the beginning of the long road of persecution and genocide of Native Americans,
our indigenous people. Genocide was an important cause of the decline for many tribes.
By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact
was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237
thousand.
In 1493, when Columbus returned to the Hispaniola, he quickly implemented policies of
slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population of the Caribbean. Within three
years, five million were dead. Las Casas, the primary historian of the Columbian era,
writes of many accounts of the horrors that the Spanish colonists inflicted upon the
indigenous population: hanging them en mass, hacking their children into pieces to be
used as dog feed, and other horrid cruelties. The works of Las Casas are often omitted
from popular American history books and courses because Columbus is considered a hero by
many, even today.
Mass killing did not cease, however, after Columbus departed. Expansion of the European
colonies led to similar genocides. Indian Removal policy was put into action to clear the
land for white settlers. Methods for the removal included slaughter of villages by the
military and also biological warfare. High death rates resulted from forced marches to
relocate the Indians.
The Removal Act of 1830 set into motion a series of events which led to the Trail of
Tears in 1838, a forced march of the Cherokees, resulting in the destruction of most of
the Cherokee population. The concentration of American Indians in small geographic areas,
and the scattering of them from their homelands, caused increased death, primarily
because of associated military actions, disease, starvation, extremely harsh conditions
during the moves, and the resulting destruction of ways of life.
During American expansion into the western frontier, one primary effort to destroy the
Indian way of life was the attempts of the U.S. government to make farmers and cattle
ranchers of the Indians. In addition, one of the most substantial methods was the
premeditated destructions of flora and fauna which the American Indians used for food and
a variety of other purposes. We now also know that the Indians were intentionally exposed
to smallpox by Europeans. The discovery of gold in California, early in 1848, prompted
American migration and expansion into the west. The greed of Americans for money and land
was rejuvenated with the Homestead Act of 1862. In California and Texas there was blatant
genocide of Indians by non-Indians during certain historic periods. In California, the
decrease from about a quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is primarily due to the
cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early settlers. Indian
education began with forts erected by Jesuits, in which indigenous youths were
incarcerated, indoctrinated with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual
labor. These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times
never saw their families until later in their adulthood. This was after their value
systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations
of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace traditional leadership of the various
indigenous nations with indoctrinated graduates of white schools, in order to expedite
compliance with U.S. goals and expansion.
Probably one of the most ruinous acts to the Indians was the disappearance of the
buffalo. For the Indians who lived on the Plains, life depended on the buffalo. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, there were an estimated forty million buffalo, but
between 1830 and 1888 there was a rapid, systematic extermination culminating in the
sudden slaughter of the only two remaining Plain herds. By around 1895, the formerly vast
buffalo populations were practically extinct. The slaughter occurred because of the
economic value of buffalo hides to Americans and because the animals were in the way of
the rapidly westward expanding population. The end result was widescale starvation and
the social and cultural disintegration of many Plains tribes.
Genocide entered international law for the first time in 1948; the international
community took notice when Europeans (Jews, Poles, and other victims of Nazi Germany)
faced cultural extinction. The Holocaust of World War II came to be the model of
genocide. We, as the human race, must realize, however, that other genocides have
occurred. Genocide against many particular groups is still widely happening today. The
discrimination of the Native American population is only one example of this ruthless
destruction.
Native American Genocide
b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(Destexhe).
In this paper, I will argue that the act of genocide as here defined, has been committed
by the United States of America, upon the tribes and cultures of Native Americans,
through mass indoctrination of its youths. Primary support will be drawn from Jorge
Noriega's work, American Indian Education in the United States. The paper will then
culminate with my personal views on the subject, with ideas of if and how the United
States might make reparations to its victims.
In lieu of the well known and brutal Indian Wars, there is a means of cultural
destruction of Native Americans, which began no later than 1611. This method was one of
indoctrination. Methods included the forced removal of children from their cultural
milieu and enrollment of these children in educational programs, which were intended to
instill more European beliefs. As the United States was not formally a Nation, until
1776, it would not be fair to use evidence, before this year in building a case against
it. The most damaging, to the United States, are parcels of evidence that are drawn from
events after 1948, the year of the Convention on Genocide.
Beginning in 1778, the United States Board of War, a product of the Continental Congress
appropriated grants for the purpose of, the maintenance of Indian students at Dartmouth
College and the College of New Jersey... The young people who had returned from the
schools are described by Seneca leader, Cornplanter as, ...ignorant of every means of
living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, [they] knew neither how to
build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, [they] spoke our Language imperfectly, were
therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counselors; they were totally good for
nothing (Noriega, 376).
Grants given to other schools was just the beginning. In 1820, the United States made
plans for a large scale system of boarding and day schools Noriega, 377). These schools
were given the mission to, instruct its students in 'letters, labor and mechanical arts,
and morals and Christianity;' 'training many Indian leaders' Noriega, 378). In the case
of boarding schools, Native American children would be forcibly stripped from their homes
as early as five years old. They would then live sequestered from their families and
cultures until the age of seventeen or eighteen (Noriega, 381). 
In 1886, it was decided, by the United States federal government that Native American
tribal groups would no longer be treated as 'indigenous national governments.' The
decision was made, not by the conjoint efforts of the Native American tribes and
Congress; but, by the powers that be the United States Legal System. This self-ordained
power allowed Congress to pass a variety of other laws, directed towards, assimilating,
Native Americans, so that they would become a part of mainstream white America (Robbins,
90)
By this time the United States Government, had been funding over a dozen distinct
agencies, to provide mandatory 'education' to all native children aged six through
sixteen. Enrollment was enforced through leverage given by the 1887 General Allotment
Act, which made Natives dependent on the Government for Annuities and Rations (Noriega,
382). The practice of indigenous religions by these students was prohibited (Noriega,
380). Students were compelled to undergo daily instruction in Christianity. In addition,
only the use of English was accepted within these schools. The food was not sufficiiently
nourishing...health supervision was generally neglected...A sincere effort was made to
develop the type of school that would destroy tribal ways (Noriega, 382). While being
held captive at these schools, the students were forced to learn an idealism completely
foreign to them. They would study histories, which had no significance to there lives.
The books talk to him [the student] of a world which in no way reminds him of his own,
(Noriega, ??). This is exactly how the students must have felt; as if they were in
another world. 
To compound the torture, the 'students' at these institutions were forced to work as
maintainers and farmers in order provide for the continued existence of the very
establishments, which were destroying them. The methods of forced labor were considered,
by the educators to be a means of 'developing' the native 'character,' and as a way of
financing further expansion of the system itself (Noriega, 379). The rigid military style
enforced by the schools contributed to the assimilation of the Native Americans' culture.
The students began to not only think white but also to, work white (Noriega, 384).
To this point, I have provided enough evidence to make a hypocrite of the United States.
However, it is my intent to prove that the United States has performed a criminal act
under International law. I will do so by describing genocidal acts committed well after
the time of the convention on genocide.
The government was not satisfied with only educating the Native American youths, they
wished to implant their victims as a virus, a medium through which to hurry along a
calculated process of sociocultural decay (Noriega, 379). They turned their victims into
witless traitors spreading their insipid ideas, and fracturing the cultural
infrastructure.
The apotheosis of this implantation project is clearly delineated in The Indian
Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975. In this act, the United States
Government declared that educated Native Americans' should be used to staff the various
programs aimed at them by federal policy makers (Noriega, 356). These are the same
programs which, the government has always viewed as the ideal vehicle[s] by which to
condition Native Americans to accept the values, and thus the domination of Euroamerica
(Noriega, 387). Through the implementation of this act, nothing really changed...the
curriculum taught in Indian schools remained exactly the same, reaching exactly the same
conclusions, indoctrinating children with exactly the same values as when the schools
were staffed entirely by white people (Noriega, 387). In this way, the government
attempted to mask the face of evil with one of familiar physical origin. It is a classic
story of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
These violent acts have not ended, even with the convention on genocide. Indeed, the
United States is guilty of committing a law, which it has promised to not only abide by,
but also, to help enforce. Does this represent the Mainstream American Culture we so want
to instill into the minds of Native Americans? We should begin taking a look at our own
culture and worrying about its problems, before we start thinking about spreading it like
a dreaded disease.
The fact that Native Americans have arrived at this point with any of its culture left
intact, is an astonishing feet in itself. It shows a character, which is ostensibly
lacking, or at least not shown, within the European and American cultures. Perhaps the
United States should be more the pupil than the pedagogue. 
Bibliography
Works Cited
? Destexhe, Alain (1995). RWANDA AND GENOCIDE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. New York
University Press: New York.
? Noriega, Jorge (1992). American Indian Education in the United States: Indoctrination
for Subordination to Colonialism. In Jaimes, Annette, ed. The State of Native America:
Genocide, Race, and Resistance (pp.371-401).
? O' Brian, Sharon. Native American Policy, Microsoft? Encarta? Encyclopedia 99. ?
1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
? Robbins, Rebecca L (1992). Self-Determination and Subordination The Past, Present, and
Future of American Indian Governance. In Jaimes, Annette, ed. The State of Native
America: Genocide, Race, and Resistance (pp.371-401).
? United Nations: Human Rights, Microsoft? Encarta? Encyclopedia 99. ?1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.