NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE

            American history is intrinsically linked with violent conquest. From its revolutionary beginning to present struggles with gun control, the United States has always been a country of aggressive violence. Much of this violence and aggression has been unduly directed toward Native Americans. During the American Revolution, many Native American tribes placed themselves in precarious support of the British, out of fear that an independent United States would expand west and steal their land. Over the 250 years following the Revolution, this fear was very much substantiated as the United States committed one of the largest scale and longest running genocides in human history. The United Nations’ definition of genocide cites five actions, that “when committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” constitute genocide; the United States’ treatment of Native Americans is the poster child for all five of the UN’s genocidal actions.

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            The first genocidal action identified by the UN is the most obvious, “killing members of the group.” There have been more massacres waged against Native Americans (370) than there are Native American reservations (326) left in the United States. The growth of gun culture exacerbated these conflicts as heavily armed American soldiers held an explosive advantage over Native Americans who wielded weapons designed for skillful hunting, not mass killing. One such slaughter with particularly high casualties was the 1863 Bear River Massacre. This incident, which left some 250 Shoshone dead, was a concentration of Civil War aggression, loosed on the most convenient enemy. The Bear River Massacre had the effect of clearing out the Native American settlements in the Utah Cache Valley, which would later be settled by white Mormons. The United States killed Native Americans indiscriminately for the purpose of creating more space for white American settlers, even ostracized groups such as the Mormons were deemed more worthy of this space than Native Americans. 

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            The next genocidal action identified by the UN is “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.” Obviously, killing Native Americans already covers the serious bodily harm piece, but many of the policies the United States enacted on Native Americans also target psychological harm and the extermination of their culture. President Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act removed Native Americans from the land on which they lived for centuries, rich with tradition and meaning, and forced them into undesirable territories thousands of miles away. Beyond the death of more than 3,000 Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, separating Native Americans from their homes and traditions was one of the first steps in the ethnic cleansing which led to the Christianization and Americanization of an unwilling group of people who already had their own rich culture. A century later, in 1934, the American government still refused to leave Native Americans to their own culture, creating the Indian New Deal which reorganized tribes into American-style government systems, invalidating the social and political structure Native Americans had been using for centuries. Beginning in 1953, the Policy of Termination and Relocation sought to integrate Native Americans into urban American society by dissolving tribes and forcing them into cities. The United States has refused to acknowledge Native American society as a valid way of life, seeing and treating it as inferior simply because it is different. This invalidation of culture has destroyed the Native American community by teaching its members that their way of life is unimportant and uncivilized. 

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             The third genocidal action identified by the UN is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The United States accomplished this by forcing Native Americans onto small and desolate reservations. Once the Native Americans were out of the way, the United States could use the land and resources they stole, for profit. Native Americans were pushed onto reservations, conveniently carved out to best suit the United States government, without regard for important cultural sites. As natural resources such as gold and oil were discovered on reservations, the United States absorbed more of the already small amount of land set aside for Native Americans. Additionally, with the introduction of European horses, bison on the Great Plains were overhunted, limiting one of the most important resources to Native American tribes. In response to the loss of land and resources, the Ghost Dance Movement rose up among Native American tribes from 1888-1890. The harmless movement ended in bloody catastrophe at the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, where the United States punished Native Americans once again for a misunderstood custom by killing 190 Lakota. The restriction of land and resources makes it clear that the United States sought to dissolve the Native American population by suffocating it until it disappeared. 

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            The next action of genocide which the UN identifies is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” The method employed by the United States to limit Native American births, was the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children. The goal of attacking peaceful Native American villages was not to subdue them martially, but rather to eliminate as many of their population as possible. This meant killing unarmed men, women, and children for the express purpose of decreasing the number of Native Americans living in the United States, even those who posed no physical threat. One such instance was the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Depending on whose account is referenced, anywhere from 100-500 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children were brutally slaughtered. The death of so many people negatively affected the few survivors by creating an unstable environment for raising children. The United States limited the number of Native American births by murdering Native Americans indiscriminately and creating undesirable and unsafe conditions for raising children.

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            The final genocidal action recognized by the UN is “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” In the 19th century, a popular phrase rang throughout America, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In 1876, the Carlisle Indian School opened as a boarding school for Native American children. At schools such as this, Native American children were taught to renounce their language, culture, and traditions and accept an Americanized way of life. Additionally, Native American children were taught manual labor, trade, and servant skills so that, upon graduation, they could be of use to white Americans, without challenging white society. Whereas young Native Americans would have had opportunities to thrive within their tribes, the United States forced them into subservient roles in white society. The act of putting Native American children into boarding schools to be brainwashed with American ideologies shows that the United States did not care about educating the Native American population, it only cared about using these people in a way that would benefit the white way of life.

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            The decrease in Native American population by 90% since the arrival of Europeans in America is the consequence of one of the longest running genocides in human history. Associating the word ‘genocide’ with Native Americans makes many Americans uncomfortable. The truth is that the remnants of this genocide and racism continue today. Reservations remain overcrowded, isolated from cultural sites, and exist as food deserts with limited access to clean water. Every day, new threats against native land and culture arise in the forms of deforestation and mining, and cultural appropriation and mockery. The United States presents its history of Native American maltreatment as though it is an event in the past, but until it recognizes the horrors of racism which continue to plague a very much active and alive community today, no change will be made.