“We ask and require you…that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world and the high priest called Pope… If you do so, you will do well… But if you do not do this, and wickedly and intentionally delay to do so, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall forcibly enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can…we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them… and we shall take away your goods, and shall do all the harm and damage that we can…and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault…”(Washburn 7-8).
Although understood only by those who proclaimed it, this was the Requerimiento, or requirement that was repeated with much abundance to the Native Peoples of the Americas. Thus, the country was built upon the justification of destruction and violence against these people and their way of life. This genocide, while pioneered in the past during the time of Christopher Columbus, is far from abolished. The 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, one of the most gruesome and well known massacres, in which over “eighty-four men and boys, forty-four women, and eighteen children had been killed” (Worcester 321), is thought by many to be the “supposed end of the euphemistically-named Indian wars, as pointed out by David Stannard in American Holocaust (257). However, the systematic annihilation of these human beings is still occurring; the perpetrators have just become keen at hiding their transgressions. Compared to the explicit horrors of the massacres of the past, it is a silent battle, through legal corruption and assimilation to modernity, kept quiet and out of the public eye. This is an exploration of the shift from obvious physical genocide to a modern cultural genocide, a war resulting in the degradation of humanity, for both sides.
Genocide, a term coined by Rafael Lemkin in November, 1944 in his Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, is defined as, “…a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves”(Fussell). The word is derived out of the Greek word for race, or tribe (genos), and the Latin for killing (cide) (Fussell). The term was redefined in 1948, by the United Nations Genocide Council as:
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; (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.(Madley 304).
During the reign of massacres in the nineteenth century, this term was nonexistent. This does not mean the acts described by it did not occur. Although the focus of study for most of these is who was involved, Jerry Rohde, a local northwest coast historian suggests the crucial question to be “why did they do it?” (Rohde 2010). His article Genocide & Extortion, which appeared in the North Coast Journal February 2010, utilizes primary historical resources and native accounts to decipher the justifications of the killings. His findings revolve around two main sources: blind hatred and greed (Rohde 2010).
There was a multitude of resources desired by those who eventually decided to settle on native lands. Gold was of particular interest, but land in general was a sought after resource, for agriculture and pastures (Rohde 2010). The massacres began in response to the tensions they experienced while settling alongside Native Americans. In 1856, some 20,000 acres had been taken over in Humboldt County alone. As written in Indian Wars of the Northwest by A.J. Bledsoe, “The whites were crowding the redskins to the wall” (Rohde 2010).
But this was only the beginning. The same tensions that inspired the brutal period in history “where white was the darkest color to be seen,” (Rohde 2010) also influenced one of the controlling factors of the modern ongoing genocide, that of Indian reservations.
The basic idea behind reservations seem to be beneficial to both sides: The Indians would give up some portion of their lands to the federal government, and in return would be recognized as a sovereign nation, without interference from the state of non-Indian settlers. This promise of a “measured separatism,” however was not kept by the government, and many Native Americans found they were losing more land than they had bargained for.
When settlers began pressing for more land, several Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homelands and relocated, for example during the Trail of Tears in 1831. (Pommersheim 16-17). This is one of the first examples of the federal governments’ involvement in the systematic destruction of Native Americans. What is interesting is that most of these policies came into effect prior to and alongside the massacres. The Dawes Severalty (General Allotment) Act of 1887 was just another example of the deceptive policies to acquire lands and assimilate the Natives. This act allotted 160 acres of land to each family, and auctioned the remaining land to Euro-Americans. This land could not be sold for 25 years, although many were swindled into signing their allotments over to those they had appointed to aid them in decision making, in their wills (many could not speak English, these “guardians” were supposedly helping them) (Mihesuah 34). According to Frank Pommersheim, “More than 26 million acres of allotted land were transferred from the tribe to individual Indian allottees and then to non-Indians through purchase, fraud, mortgage foreclosures, and tax sales” (20). It wasn’t only the loss of land that had an effect; the conditions on the reservations were comparable to those of concentration camps. Only those individuals who were working received subsistence rations, and these were hardly enough for one individual, let alone those non-workers they were sharing with. Many were starving and suffering from malnutrition (Madley 323-324).
Conditions have not improved much since this time. As stated by Joseph Jorgensen, the health problems now are attributed to low employment rates, poor nutrition and sanitation, and lack of medical care. In fact, “Indian life expectancy is only two-thirds the national expectancy” (Waddell 76-77).
There is also the issue in regards to recognizing citizenship and the responsibilities to Natives from the Federal Government, “An Indian might be either a citizen or a member of an Indian tribe, but he cannot be both” (Waddell 23). Those who have chosen American citizenship often run into problems where the organizations in place to help (social welfare agencies, school board, etc.) assume they are the responsibility of the Bureau of Indian affairs, however, the BIA can only help those who are resident to the Reservations (Washburn 221-222). Overall, these places that were alleged to be beneficial to Native Americans were actually more harmful (Waddell 69).
Missionaries became established on reservations in yet another attempt to assimilate and improve the lives of Natives as well. However, the missionaries were assigned to reservations, and Natives had no choice of which religion they were to follow (Davey and Thunder Woman 2006). The missionaries brought with them one of the most devastating institutions to impact Native Americans; the boarding school (Pommersheim 21).
The first boarding school (Carlisle Indian School) was federally funded and established in 1879 (Hoerig 642). From this moment on, the lives of Native Americans were subject to an even greater devastation of their culture. Karl Hoerig, museum director of the White Mountain Apache Tribe's Nohwike' Bágowa Museum at Fort Apache, describes the experiences of Native American children and families with such school as:
…often brutal and occasionally fatal. Children were torn, sometimes literally, from their homes and families and transported hundreds or thousands of miles from everyone and everything they knew, often for years at a time. Food was often poor and housing cramped, which facilitated the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and trachoma. Life was reduced to a strictly regimented schedule, and punishment was swift and harsh for even minor failures to meet difficult standards set by teachers and administrators (642).
Not only were many lives ruined, but the impact on culture was greatly significant. The main objective of these institutions, as laid out by Carlisle Indian School’s founder Richard Pratt was to “Kill the Indian…save the man” (Hoerig 642). Many schools adopted mottos such as this; another example was a southwest school, bearing the phrase “Tradition is the enemy of progress” (Washburn 218). Children were often punished for speaking their native language, and thus had an even greater pressure to assimilate (Pommersheim 21). This caused a prominent confusion of identity for Native American youth, the effects of which are still being seen today. The children became torn between two opposing cultures, not a full member of either, as explained by clinical psychologist of the Albuquerque Boarding School Harry Saslow:
The student is not so much hurt as not helped… He knows that things are controlled by whites and he is educated to make his way in a white world that often has no attractions or provision for him. Yet his education deprives him of an understanding of his own culture so that he has no full comprehension of a tradition which might sustain him as an alternative. He is caught between two cultures and knows not enough about either (Washburn 221).
One of the most prominent organizations to evolve in response to these atrocities was the American Indian Movement (AIM). This group, founded in 1968 by four Ojibway men (George Mitchell, Eddie Benton Banai, Clyde Bellecourt, and Dennis Banks) from northern Minnesota, sought to work with already existing organizations to improve Native American conditions (Sayer 28). They accomplished much more, however, including the installation of a “survival school,” which was “aimed at educating Indian children about their cultural heritage and helping them cope with urban life” (Sayer 28). Although the fight against genocide seems to be gaining momentum, it has been constantly bombarded with hardship. “Decades of shifting Indian policies and internal conflicts, coupled with a dwindling land base and worsening economic conditions,” had brought immense tension to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970’s (Sayer 29). These conditions, alongside the fear of increasing attacks on their people helped to instigate one of the most corrupt legal battles in Native American History; what came to be known as the “Pine Ridge Shootout.” The legal battle after this incident on the Oglala Pine Ridge Reservation was best noted for its corrupt preponderance of evidence. Three individuals were accused for the murder of two FBI agents, and while two were found not guilty, the third, Leonard Peltier, was a victim of injustice. There were affidavits from witnesses and supposed witnesses that were allowed to be revised numerous times, each with a different story. The main Evidence against Peltier was a matching bullet to the supposed gun that he had used (which was not able to be proven). Despite the lack of evidence against him Peltier was found guilty by a jury who had been influenced to think negatively about him and the American Indian Movement as a whole (Apted 1992).
One would not think that in a country where all men are considered to be equal such horrible events could ever have occurred. This barbarism seems like something of the past, that modern people do not have this mindset anymore. Perhaps it is not such an explicit hatred and racism that is being experienced in modern times, nevertheless the same effects are being experienced. A main reason for the modern occurrence of genocide is the persistence and ignorance of Indian stereotypes, which are perpetrated not only by non-Natives, but by the Natives themselves.
Alongside the stereotypes being portrayed by non-Native Americans, such as the savage, the brave, or the alcoholic Indian (Mihesuah), are those which are accepted by Natives either because they have heard them all their life, or because they may seem beneficial. For example, Shuichi Nagata writes of some Hopi, who embrace the stereotype that all Native Americans are the same, and will go into town merged into a single category. They are free to be whatever group they choose to be, because outsiders are typically unaware that Native Americans Tribes are distinctly separate, and get away with playing a “dumb Navajo” or “drunken Paiute” for the day (Waddell 132).
Whether aimed toward the positive or negative, modern stereotypes and ideas of Native Americans have a degrading effect on their culture. Native Americans are thought by many to be an extinct race, either spoken of only in jokes, as team mascots, or romanticized in a mythical past. It is thought by many that real Indians do not exist anymore, when in fact, they do, as human as any other person. This modern genocide needs to be recognized and ended, for although many assume it is not a thing of the past, it still persists, and it is killing human beings.
The white man says that the 1890 massacre was the end of the wars with the Indian, that it was the end of the Indian, the end of the Ghost Dance. Yet here we are at war, we’re still Indians, and we’re Ghost Dancing Again.
-Russell Means,
Oglala Lakota-Sioux, 1973
-Russell Means,
Oglala Lakota-Sioux, 1973
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