This blog was added to the Top 50 Native American Literature Blogs. Scroll down to the "Rest of the Best" after the Top 5

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Historical Attempts at Genocide & Deculturalization - MOST COMPLETE LIST ON THIS SITE

Deculturalization and Genocide of NA's may be grouped into several categories:

  • RELOCATION: Forcing removal of NA Nations from their traditional land on to reservations, such as, during the Trail of Tears or Long Walk of the Navajos
  • GERM WARFARE: Delivering smallpox infested blankets into villages
  • OUTRIGHT SLAUGHTER: Systematically killing entire Nations like the Arawak and Pequot
  • BOARDING SCHOOLS: Systematically destroying Native American cultural continuity
  • UNDERESTIMATING: Not being accurate about how many NA's were in the Americas and therefore being inaccurate about how many were destroyed.
  • ENSLAVEMENT: Many Nations were captured and enslaved, some NA's were forced to work on plantations, others were sent to the Caribbean and be re-routed through the Triangular Slave Trade industry of the time. Some of the Nations affected were: Arawak, Pequot, Apache, Navajo, Pawnee
Here is a post about a panel on genocide where I presented.  It includes a "working definition" of genocide.

ARTICLES
Counted Out of Existence 
Schools Have Failed First Nations by Lying About History
BELOW ARE SOME COMMON QUESTIONS - (a portion of the response/answer is reprinted below, click the link to be transferred to entire discussion or list of quotes about this topic)

How Many NA's were there?
Death by Disease
"The natives had no resistance to smallpox, influenza, or plague or even to mild (to us) diseases like measles. Entire populations were virtually wiped out, with some Atlantic coast tribes losing 90 percent of their adult members. Some historians go so far as to say European diseases reduced the pre-contact population of the New World as a whole by 90 percent or more. One says the population of central Mexico was reduced from 25 million in 1519 to 3 million by 1568 and only 750,000 by the early 1600s, 3 percent of the pre-conquest total."

Made Invisible so we don't even know about their influence and presence.
"The American Indian influence can be found in every part of America today. Indians can be found in our U. S. Government, local government, law enforcement, health care and our military. According to Jack D. Forbes, an emeritus professor of American Indian studies at the University of California-Davis, because of undercounts and other census quirks the total number of Indians in the United States today may be close to fifteen or even thirty million. In reference to the 2000 census data, Indians can be called America’s fastest-growing minority."

Was this really a barren wilderness?
No Way! Unfortunately, books"still stereotype Native Americans as roaming primitive hunting folk, unfortunate victims of progress" (132).

References
Loewen, J (1995). Lies my teacher told me. New York, NY: Touchstone.
O'Nell, T. D. (1996). Disciplined hearts: History, identity, and depression in an American Indian community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.