American Indians and Genocide

[Agnapostate]

Do you believe that American Indians (referring to the Americas, not just the U.S.) were the victims of genocide, or as is more likely for a rightist forum, did they just "lose the war" because they were primitive forest dwellers facing guns?

[pete311]

Without a doubt. From 1500 to 1900 the native american's population went from an estimated 12 million to 250k. Manifest destiny is one of the most awful policies ever enacted by America.

[DragonStryk72]

Do you believe that American Indians (referring to the Americas, not just the U.S.) were the victims of genocide, or as is more likely for a rightist forum, did they just "lose the war" because they were primitive forest dwellers facing guns?

Actually, it wasn't genocide, as we were not systematically exterminating them. We just kept kicking them off their land cause they kept picking all the goods spots. It's like in Maverick, "Next time I'll find a piece of swamp land so god awful, maybe then you people'll leave us the hell alone."

Just so we're clear:


gen·o·cide
   /ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/ Show Spelled[jen-uh-sahyd] Show IPA
–noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

no one was wiping them off the map. The numbers quoted are not just murdered Native Americans, because it was mainly diseases we brought over from Europe and Asia that did that one, and that would have been true if it had been they had started populating Europe. Colds and flus that were normal to us, and non-lethal save in the most extreme circumstance were horribly deadly. At the time, in honesty, there was nothing we could have done about that, given the medical breakthroughs of the time.

Another culprit in the decline was the inter-tribal warfare that went on during all this, along with the numerous wars such as the revolutionary war, and French and Indian wars that cost even more lives.

Now, were we anal-retentive megalomaniacs who were being complete twats? Yes, hells yes, and our repeated breaking of treaties with them was unconscionable, as was our hubris in believing our way of life superior to all others.

I've been on dance team with the Calico Dancers out of Glens Falls NY in high school, had a scout leader, Mr. Carroll who was Native American. As well, I've done service projects on reservations a number of times. Yes, the Europeans of the 1500s-1900s who did these things were wrong, but I'm not the one who did it, just as no one here took part in it. Trying to push white guilt on us, however, is just cowardly. Grow up.

[Sweetchuck]

And how many deaths was Stalin responsible for?

[Trigg]

Do you believe that American Indians (referring to the Americas, not just the U.S.) were the victims of genocide, or as is more likely for a rightist forum, did they just "lose the war" because they were primitive forest dwellers facing guns?

The Indian population in South and Central America is thriving, so no genocide.

As far as American Indians, yes, toward the end I think the American Gov. wanted them simply to disappear. Disease had decimated their numbers. Buffalo hunters were destroying the plains Indians way of life and the Comanche and Apache (and others) refused to give up until they had almost disappeared.

They lost the war because they had fewer numbers and inferior weapons. They were unable to defeat the US gov. which is what would have had to happen in order for them to keep their land.

[Agnapostate]

Without a doubt. From 1500 to 1900 the native american's population went from an estimated 12 million to 250k. Manifest destiny is one of the most awful policies ever enacted by America.

The Native American population in the entire Western Hemisphere has been projected to be in excess of 100 million, actually, through extrapolation of the mortality rate of infectious disease epidemics to the observed post-epidemic population. It's important to keep in mind that 75% to 95% of deaths were caused by the importation of plague. But from 1492 to the present (since recent governmental campaigns such as that of General Rios Montt might be considered acts of genocide or attempted genocide against the selected Indian population), there were still millions upon millions of living natives that could be and were violently exterminated.

Actually, it wasn't genocide, as we were not systematically exterminating them. We just kept kicking them off their land cause they kept picking all the goods spots. It's like in Maverick, "Next time I'll find a piece of swamp land so god awful, maybe then you people'll leave us the hell alone."

"We"? You didn't do anything, so there's no need to use a possessive pronoun. And actually, the forcible removal policies you mention are under the purview of a modern term called "ethnic cleansing." Ethnic cleansing conducted with extreme indifference to the living conditions of a group, as well as systematic campaigns of enslavement and violence that cause multitudes of deaths constitute genocide.

Just so we're clear:

gen·o·cide
   /ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/ Show Spelled[jen-uh-sahyd] Show IPA
–noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

no one was wiping them off the map.

Just so we're clear:

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

This process began with Christopher Columbus's governorship of the island of Hispaniola (site of the modern countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic),







Many thanks to my Comrade PrairieFire for providing many of these links that I was able to use, and giving me the idea for others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_River_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyesville_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Washita_River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marias_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Grant_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Robinson_tragedy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre




http://www.danielnpaul.com/BritishScalpBounties.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/oldfolks.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

http://www.bcmj.org/traumatic-pasts-...ceptualization

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal...lord_jeff.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...lo.html?cat=37





(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/sterilize.html

Hmmm...that's a little recent. Maybe it could be argued that the practice of chopping womens' breasts off prevented them from nursing children, therefore preventing them from surviving early infancy? You tell me.

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...arding_schools



This successful fulfillment of every single criterion established in the UN General Assembly convention on genocide is not a promising sign for deniers of the American Holocaust.

The numbers quoted are not just murdered Native Americans, because it was mainly diseases we brought over from Europe and Asia that did that one, and that would have been true if it had been they had started populating Europe. Colds and flus that were normal to us, and non-lethal save in the most extreme circumstance were horribly deadly. At the time, in honesty, there was nothing we could have done about that, given the medical breakthroughs of the time.

Scholarly consensus does support the idea that the large majority of the death toll was caused by disease epidemics, though popular opinion still fallaciously attributes it to "superior technology." While it may be appropriate to exclude disease-related deaths from the genocide count in many cases, it is appropriate to incorporate them if they were understood by the invaders themselves to be caused by their aggressive encroachment, as a divine plague that illustrated the judgment of Providence, since they understood the cause and effect pattern, even if not the specific biology of the matter. It is also appropriate to include them in cases where the rapid spread of communicable disease was facilitated by squalid and cramped living conditions. In the death toll of the Jewish Holocaust, there are included numerous people who were not gassed or shot or burned or otherwise directly murdered, but died as a result of malnutrition or infection with communicable disease. Anne Frank is among them, for example.

Another culprit in the decline was the inter-tribal warfare that went on during all this, along with the numerous wars such as the revolutionary war, and French and Indian wars that cost even more lives.

And colonial ravagements of non-combatant communities in an attempt to destroy local and regional ethnic groups were genocidal actions. I'm not convinced that unprovoked invasion shouldn't be incorporated, frankly.

Yes, the Europeans of the 1500s-1900s who did these things were wrong, but I'm not the one who did it, just as no one here took part in it.

All the more reason to discontinue the inaccurate use of the possessive pronouns "we" and "us" that you have peppered your diatribe with.

Trying to push white guilt on us, however, is just cowardly. Grow up.

What "white guilt"? As a mixed-blood with European admixture and a Castilian/Basque surname, it's more likely that I have ancestors that participated in this legacy than you.

And how many deaths was Stalin responsible for?

I'd estimate that Stalin was personally responsible for about fifty to a hundred deaths in his days as an armed robber and heist orchestrator. What of it?

The Indian population in South and Central America is thriving, so no genocide.

Before any factual dispute of this point, I'd like to first indicate its fallacious nature by remaking on the "thriving" Ashkenazi Jewish, Armenian, and Romani (gypsy) communities, and inquiring whether the quoted poster takes this to mean that these populations were not the victims of genocide. I'd next care to point out that this numerical abundance is in portions of Central and South America, the regions correspondent to the Mesoamerican and Andean Indian cultural areas.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Costa Rica is overwhelmingly "white," and there are significant black populations in Belize and Panama. As for the rest of South America, it is dominated by Asian Indians in the Northeast, as their ancestors were enslaved and imported by the British to grow sugarcane, and whites in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc.

As far as American Indians,

America is a pair of continents, as signified by the names North America and South America, and the fact that the word is derived from the name of a Florentine explorer who reached Brazil. Therefore, all Indians at hand are "American" Indians.

yes, toward the end I think the American Gov. wanted them simply to disappear. Disease had decimated their numbers. Buffalo hunters were destroying the plains Indians way of life and the Comanche and Apache (and others) refused to give up until they had almost disappeared.

And that is called genocide.

They lost the war because they had fewer numbers and inferior weapons. They were unable to defeat the US gov. which is what would have had to happen in order for them to keep their land.

A common misconception, but an inaccurate one. American Indians as a whole were decimated by outbreaks of communicable disease that they had no previous contact with, and therefore possessed no acquired immunity to; "inferior weapons" generally played little role, and even less after initial encounters since technology transfer occurred. In this specific case, Southwestern resisters generally had the same weapons that the military forces pursuing them did. Or have you never heard of Geronimo?





And directly contrary to the idea of a loss due to "fewer numbers," the Chiricahua Apache renegages that are most famous inflicted disproportionate losses on their enemies, and were only captured because there were other Apaches that assisted General Crook and Miles's military expeditions that pursued and eventually caught them. But in terms of the Apachean peoples, genocide can be spoken of, yes, particularly in the internment of the Navajo and Mescalero Apache at Bosque Redondo in squalid living conditions that resulted in numerous deaths.

[Trigg]

Originally Posted by Trigg
The Indian population in South and Central America is thriving, so no genocide.

Before any factual dispute of this point, I'd like to first indicate its fallacious nature by remaking on the "thriving" Ashkenazi Jewish, Armenian, and Romani (gypsy) communities, and inquiring whether the quoted poster takes this to mean that these populations were not the victims of genocide. I'd next care to point out that this numerical abundance is in portions of Central and South America, the regions correspondent to the Mesoamerican and Andean Indian cultural areas.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Costa Rica is overwhelmingly "white," and there are significant black populations in Belize and Panama. As for the rest of South America, it is dominated by Asian Indians in the Northeast, as their ancestors were enslaved and imported by the British to grow sugarcane, and whites in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc.

I am not commenting on any other populations. Costa Rica is is 94% white and mestizo, it isn't broken down farther than that. Even with the black population the Mestizo population is over 50% in Panama. So yes I'd say they are thriving.

I'm sure your going to bitch about the word mestizo being used since it means a mixture of European and Indian ancestry. I've seen your family pictures posted though, I hope you're not going to claim racial purity.

Originally Posted by Trigg
As far as American Indians,

America is a pair of continents, as signified by the names North America and South America, and the fact that the word is derived from the name of a Florentine explorer who reached Brazil. Therefore, all Indians at hand are "American" Indians.

You are the only one who doesn't seem to know what Americans are and I don't feel like explaining once again why you are an idiot.

Originally Posted by Trigg
yes, toward the end I think the American Gov. wanted them simply to disappear. Disease had decimated their numbers. Buffalo hunters were destroying the plains Indians way of life and the Comanche and Apache (and others) refused to give up until they had almost disappeared.

And that is called genocide.

That's what I said, try reading slower

Originally Posted by Trigg
They lost the war because they had fewer numbers and inferior weapons. They were unable to defeat the US gov. which is what would have had to happen in order for them to keep their land.

[/QUOTE]A common misconception, but an inaccurate one. American Indians as a whole were decimated by outbreaks of communicable disease that they had no previous contact with, and therefore possessed no acquired immunity to; "inferior weapons" generally played little role, and even less after initial encounters since technology transfer occurred. In this specific case, Southwestern resisters generally had the same weapons that the military forces pursuing them did. Or have you never heard of Geronimo?

I believe I already mentioned diseases and the fact that it decimated their numbers.

I've read many books on the subject thank you, and you're right up to a point. Military advancements led to better weapons. The military simply had them outgunned and outmanned.

[Agnapostate]

Get your shit together. I can't wade through all this retarded formatting and misplaced BB code.

[Trigg]

Unlike you, I have an actual job. I can't be on the computer all day making my posts look cute while collecting welfare.

Come one smart ass, respond to the post

[Agnapostate]

Unlike you, I have an actual job. I can't be on the computer all day making my posts look cute while collecting welfare.

Come one smart ass, respond to the post

My job kept me out of town for week-long blocks, so this is just another example of your idiocy.

[Nukeman]

My job kept me out of town for week-long blocks, so this is just another example of your idiocy.

Still no response!!!!

What were you doing for "week long blocks" smuggling illegals across a legal border????????????????????

[Missileman]

Still no response!!!!

What were you doing for "week long blocks" smuggling illegals across a legal border????????????????????

"Illegals" is such a derogatory term...can't we just call them informal citizens?

[Agnapostate]

I am not commenting on any other populations. Costa Rica is is 94% white and mestizo, it isn't broken down farther than that. Even with the black population the Mestizo population is over 50% in Panama. So yes I'd say they are thriving.

And that's either the kind of "mestizo" that dominates the population in Mexico, predominantly Indian, or the kind of "mestizo" that dominates the population in Argentina, with minority non-European admixture, but generally recognizable as white. Or alternately, the kind of mulatto-mestizo that forms a significant portion of the population in Brazil and Puerto Rico.

I'm sure your going to bitch about the word mestizo being used since it means a mixture of European and Indian ancestry. I've seen your family pictures posted though, I hope you're not going to claim racial purity.

Sure, because my statement of "As a mixed-blood with European admixture and a Castilian/Basque surname, it's more likely that I have ancestors that participated in this legacy than you", is such powerful evidence that I'm going to claim to not be a mestizo. That said, since different members of a family can inherit dramatically different genes, you don't have such a good basis for making inferences, do you?

You are the only one who doesn't seem to know what Americans are and I don't feel like explaining once again why you are an idiot.

This isn't an argument, you dumb bitch. It's repetition of earlier statements that you've made without argument.

I believe I already mentioned diseases and the fact that it decimated their numbers.

In that case, you'll be accurately claiming that "superior technology" played a minimal role in the deaths of the large majority.

I've read many books on the subject thank you, and you're right up to a point. Military advancements led to better weapons. The military simply had them outgunned and outmanned.

LOL, all you've done is repeat the same assertion you made earlier without corroborating arguments or evidence. If they were "outmanned," it was because other natives were assisting the European invaders. That is essentially the uniform case everywhere.

Still no response!!!!

What were you doing for "week long blocks" smuggling illegals across a legal border????????????????????

Of course you had to stick your cinderblock head in, Pukecan. You're right; Druggin'Jerk hasn't responded. But no, I wasn't helping Noir swim to America.

"Illegals" is such a derogatory term...can't we just call them informal citizens?

Nah. I'll call a spade a spade.

[crin63]

This whole thing is just more victimhood crap, oh woe is me.

My family came here in 1685 from Italy but I wasn't here, I didn't do it and I don't care. Right or wrong, we came and we conquered, end of story.

My wife's maternal side (grandparents) came straight off the reservation in the 1940's and made something of themselves instead of whining about how they were mistreated and crying in their beer.

[revelarts]

Seems like there's a question as to what genocide is.

I suppose, If you define it strictly as the WILLFUL attempt to wipe out a race, or group or culture. Then strictly speaking I think you could say some people did have that intent from time to time over the past 500 years. Others had that intent for small groups of Native Americans and followed through with it. ANd Mascaraed might be a better word. But Strictly Speaking I can see how someone might say it wasn't genocide.

But over all the actions collectively intended or not pretty much adds up to genocide. The fact that the Native Americans have survived it doesn't really mean that it wasn't the probably logical result of the practices.

It's interesting that we don't like to talk about the darker actions of the American past. And Don't want to claim any negative history. But when it comes things that were proud of the in the countrys past were quick to claim it as WE. "when WE won WWII" When "We went to the moon" "We are the greatest nation in the world." where we by implication attach our egos to the best of our collective history.

Nobody wants to be attached to all the ugliness. Nothing wrong with that. But no need to diminish the history. Were are young country but we need to get past adolescences and stop denying crap that has hurt others. And tolerate and sometimes encourage people telling their stories. without getting so defensive. Acting as if something's brought up that they want something. On a personal level I've found that they just want others to genuinely acknowledge it happened , not to take on guilt of it or the blame. No one here would deny any Mother Against Drunk Driving member from marking the history of what happened. or tell them to stop bringing up the fact that a drunk killed their kids. Most of them don't define there lives by the event but they are not going to deny it or let the history be whitewashed to save the feelings of people when the subject comes up.