Genocides of Indigenous Peoples: Evil or Necessary?

One of the few things usually left out of context or simply ignored in American history books is the displacement, destruction and out-right genocide of native groups...specifically on the Great Plains.

This is my professional area of study but it is still early on...so I can't comment on the actions of other nations and other regions. But, I can speak for the United States having read the works of many experts on the topic, the testimony from the natives and soldiers...etc, etc.

Honestly, in many cases, it is like talking to a brick wall and, in a way, it exiles me politically from my conservative peers and makes me commune well on the topic with more liberal human rights activists (not that there are no conservative human rights activists). I can see the reason no one on the right wants to bring it up, it is hard to repaint military heroes (one of them, at least, earned Medal of Honor), presidents and others as villains especially when in the same texts the likes of Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Che and others exist.

My take on that is cowardice and the willing to remain ignorant to the truth and to history. Nations who hide the past and doomed to repeat it in some shape or form...maybe not a mass killing but in another manner - mistakes are mistakes; if you don't learn - you can't be kept from doing it again. Those nations that do step up and admit atrocities and move forward are a beacon of what is right - America hasn't stepped up and is left with the ranks of Turkey denying what is blatantly obvious.

... is anyone actually in favour of genocide

It'd probably be a decent step to, I don't know, get rid of Columbus Day? And stop teaching the myth of Thanksgiving? But for some reason people are resistant to the idea.

enekoiru said:

... is anyone actually in favour of genocide

It'd probably be a decent step to, I don't know, get rid of Columbus Day? And stop teaching the myth of Thanksgiving? But for some reason people are resistant to the idea.

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Well, no one is in favor of genocide. But there are those who are willing to call what happened to the natives as necessary for advancement.

Columbus Day shouldn't be fully abolished. He did find the new world but we should make it all fluffy and good...perhaps we can end the parades.

Woo genocide. Nothing I love as much as a good, hearty genocide.

Yeah I can't envision this being a debate, although some people do prefer making America sound perfect over learning history the proper way. I believe, along with I bet the majority of TCoD, that we must take the good with the bad in order to succeed, (although I'd probably differ with a lot of you in saying America is fundamentally good,) although I don't think this requires such drastic measures as abolishing Colombus Day. It's not like we're celebrating Colombus being a great person, it's just the celebration of America being discovered by Europe and American Discovery day sounds awkward >.<

Also, the first thanksgiving was a myth? (Public schooling dollars at work, folks!)

enekoiru said:

... is anyone actually in favour of genocide

It'd probably be a decent step to, I don't know, stop teaching the myth of Thanksgiving? But for some reason people are resistant to the idea.

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FUCK YEA GENOCIDE.

But... Thanksgiving isn't a myth. I'm positive that it was the celebration of the first harvest of the first settlers that /actually/ gave a damn about the natives. I think they were the Quakers.

See, ~discovering America~ ignores that there were plenty of civilisations already here when Europeans arrived. Also, Columbus was a terrible person and as a general rule I don't want to have holidays celebrating terrible people. It falls back into the 'genocide is a bad thing' category.

He even probably wasn't actually the one who ~discovered America~; there's evidence supporting that Africans made it to Central America between 1000 BC and 300 AD. I'm not quite in the mood to reread the relevant chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W Loewen right now, but it's a good book to pick up for a start.

http://www.mrbarth.net/thtruthaboutthefirstthanksgiving.htm From the same book!

A colonist's journal tells of sailors discovering two Indian houses:

”Having their guns and hearing nobody, they entered the houses and found the people were gone. The sailors took some things but didn't dare stay. . . . We had meant to have left some beads and other things in the houses as a sign of peace and to show we meant to trade with them. But we didn't do it because we left in such haste. But as soon as we can meet with the Indians, we will pay them well for what we took.”

It wasn't only houses that the Pilgrims robbed. Our eyewitness resumes his story:

“We marched to the place we called Cornhill, where we had found the corn before. At another place we had seen before, we dug and found some more corn, two or three baskets full, and a bag of beans. . . . In all we had about ten bushels, which will be enough for seed. It was with God's help that we found this corn, for how else could we have done it, without meeting some Indians who might trouble us.”

From the start, the Pilgrims thanked God, not the Indians, for assistance that the latter had (inadvertently) provided-setting a pattern for later thanksgivings.

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enekoiru said:

See, ~discovering America~ ignores that there were plenty of civilisations already here when Europeans arrived... He even probably wasn't actually the one who ~discovered America~; there's evidence supporting that Africans made it to Central America between 1000 BC and 300 AD.

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And then there's the fact that, you know, there's humans in America before Columbus was ever born.

Gee, I wonder.

I think people still keep Columbus Day and the myth of Thanksgiving Day around for the same reason they still teach little children about Santa Claus -- it's what they've been told, it's not doing much harm (that they can perceive), and it's a tradition, almost. It's probably not going to go away anytime soon, and people generally enjoy holidays.

There's evidence that Vikings beat him to the punch as well. Besides, Columbus didn't land in what is now the US, he landed in the Carribean. I believe Columbus Day should be removed.


Also Pwnemon, this isn't just a Debate Forum, it's a serious discussion one, hence why it's called "Serious Business".

The slaughter of the native peoples was terrible. Though I believe that being ignorant of the past can be the greatest fault in any person; but I think there is something to be said about someone who doesn't ignore history and instead accepts it. It's history and it can't be changed, instead we must learn from past mistakes and move forward. I hate to sound crude but, it's done, they're dead, so move on. I think we're well past the grieving point on this one.


Another thing, it was never left out of my text books when I was in school. So I think it is unfair to judge and say it is overlooked by the history books.

Phantom said:

Another thing, it was never left out of my text books when I was in school. So I think it is unfair to judge and say it is overlooked by the history books.

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The Trail of Tears definitely was in the textbook I used, but I remember the teacher glossing over it and trying to justify it when I was in fourth grade (then again, I wasn't in a liberal state during that time). I do not remember learning about it in fifth grade though, and it was barely mentioned at all throughout middle school because US schools tend to go really slowly for History classes. I think the main problem is not whether the genocide is in the textbook or not -- because it definitely is -- but how it's portrayed.

And then there's the problem that the vast majority of textbooks in the US are printed in Texas...

I'm just gonna go ahead and agree with skoots on this matter. Thanksgiving tastes good but is bittersweet. And seriously you can eat turkey any day of the year you want! We do. I can't imagine being native-american and, well, seeing everyone celebrate Thanksgiving. Along with all the other appropriation of their nationality and race, it's just honestly disgusting.

Genocide sucks and should not be celebrated, yup.

Pwnemon said:

(although I'd probably differ with a lot of you in saying America is fundamentally good,)

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what does this mean? how can a nation, as a whole, be 'fundamentally good'? good at what? why? are there nations that are 'fundamentally bad'?

My APUSH textbook made an interesting note on the subject - let me find it...

Here we are. The actual text says "Attacking what turned out to be a superior force of some 2,500 well-armed warriors camped along the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana, the "White Chief with Yellow Hair" and his 264 officers were completely wiped out in 1876 when two supporting columns failed to come to their rescue.*"

The footnote associated with the asterisk is "*When whites wiped out Indians, the engagement (in white history books) was usually a 'battle'; when Indians wiped out whites, it was a 'massacre'. 'Strategy' when practiced by Indians was 'treachery.'"

Well, no one is in favor of genocide. But there are those who are willing to call what happened to the natives as necessary for advancement.

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Absolutely any major historical event, no matter how horrible, has positive consequences. The Holocaust? Sure as hell made people feel guilty for being anti-Semites! Maybe it was necessary to end the systematic oppression of Jews by going just a bit too far...

That will never make the event itself positive, necessary or remotely excusable. Yes, it's nice that some good came of it, but that shouldn't even be weighted against the the awfulness of the genocide. To suggest otherwise is to imply that if they'd all embraced the natives with open arms and become BFFs, the world would surely have gone to hell. That is ridiculous.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating historical milestones like people discovering a continent, no matter who was there first, though. Hero-worshipping historical figures is pretty iffy in general, but let's face it, nearly everyone a couple hundred years ago was a terrible person by modern standards. Holidays are traditions that can spring up from events that are really not all that momentous in the bigger picture, or even events that are just plain stupid to celebrate; that's just how holidays work. As culture moves on, the holiday becomes less about the event that started it and more about the tradition of celebrating - just look at all the atheists cheerfully celebrating Christmas and Easter.

However, the US public school system does a lot of repeating the myth of the ~first Thanksgiving~. This doesn't happen with Christmas and Easter. And at least Christmas and Easter probably weren't actually adventures with graverobbing.

This is the worst thread title I have ever seen.

Ruby said:

This is the worst thread title I have ever seen.

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What a wonderful contribution to the discussion, bravo.

When it comes down to it, history in America is indeed censored and everything in a history textbook is put there after a panel of Democrats and Republicans fight it out over every footnote. What is put in the book tends to be altered or, as Napoleon may have put it, is "a set of lies everyone agrees upon".

Spellca said:

What a wonderful contribution to the discussion, bravo.

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Perhaps change it to "Genocide: For or Against?"

Wouldn't that be redundant considering no one is against genocide. This topic is specifically about if the destruction of native groups was an unnecessary evil or an event that had to happen.

Yes, and your topic title suggests that "evil" and "necessary" are mutually exclusive. This is clearly false.

during the pre-Civil War era in the US slavery was literally referred to as a "necessary evil".