Genocide – American History to 1877

March 26, 2014

Indian Removal on the Frontier

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Genocides are usually thought of as the mass killing of a specific group of people. In the passage by Wolfe, we are shown the many different aspects of a genocide and how they can be related to the settler colonialism. There are many differences between the two, but the main goal and the way to get share many similarities.

Wolfe makes the distinction early on that the elimination of a group of people from a colonial settlement have less to do with race than to do with the culture. Those in an area being colonized are less advanced, usually agricultural, and sometimes nomadic. These aspects fueled the Indian Removal from the British colonies more so than the racial aspects of the people there. The incoming culture wants to spread their wealth and by holding the native people below them there is a superiority created by the newcomers. They want to remove the uncivilized in order to preserve themselves and their society. It was not racial as can be seen through a few of the Indians who were able to assimilate and become part of the American culture. Those who assimilated well were not removed because they had removed themselves from their culture and were no longer “savages.”

The removal of Indians did not change much when there were any changes in regime as said in Wolfe’s passage. This shows that it was different from many genocides we think of today. The people of the frontier continued to push out Indians to claim more land. When Britain tried to stop them the colonies revolted and continued to claim more and more Indian territory.This is different from other genocides like the holocaust where the mass killings and removal of the afflicted came about and left with the Nazi party. As said in “The Consequence of Colonial Settlement” the people on the frontier routinely destroyed Indian towns and people. They did this for the land, and probably to feel more safe. They saw the Indians as a threat not only to their society, but to their well being also. To drive the Indians farther and farther away would give them protection and continue the increase of wealth gained from new lands.

Wolfe argues that settler colonialism was a kind of genocide and I believe he is right. The reasoning for the removal of the Indians may not coincide with how many think of genocide, but the outcome is the same. The native people were killed, assimilated, and moved in order to destroy the culture and eliminate the culture on the native lands. The colonists wanted the land to use for themselves and saw the way to do that was to get rid of the native people. Their removal is as much a genocide as the removal of the Jewish population by the Nazi’s and many other genocides in history.

March 26, 2014

Genocide: does culture equal life?

I really enjoyed reading Patrick Wolfe’s article Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Wolfe’s arguments we not surprising to me because I have always understood Indian removal and assimilation in the context of cultural genocide. In middle and high school we talked a fair amount about forced assimilation, treaties and residential schools, and I think we should have had even more of a focus on those parts of our history.

I appreciated the progression of Wolfe’s argument beginning with exploring settler colonization as a structure rather than an event and moving through when settler colonization constitutes genocide, the social/ political contexts and constructs that lead to genocide and the vital role of culture in identity and genocide. At first I was surprised when Wolfe wrote that he doesn’t favor the term “cultural genocide” because it’s a term I have never questioned (398); I have never thought of “cultural genocide” as less than or completely distant from “biological” genocide. Olivia also address the differentiation of genocide and cultural genocide in her blog post “The Indian Removal: A Cultural Genocide”, arguing that the forced annihilation of Native culture cannot be ignored, but that it is unfair to say that the Indian removal was a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. I think the comparison of such horrific events is challenging in and of itself because in making a comparison it inevitably places a hierarchy on different experiences, diminishing one comparatively to the other. I think the argument that Wolfe is making here is that to qualify genocide as cultural, risks glossing over the murderous nature of genocide, by creating a distinction between culture and life. Wolfe argues that “cultural genocide” has a “direct impact on people’s capacity to stay alive” (399), which I would agree with and take one step further. Not only does “cultural genocide”, just like “biological” genocide, lead directly to many deaths (which leaves the community depleted and struggling) it also changes and undermines the identity of those individuals who survive, which has long term social, political and psychological impacts. I think that Wolfe begins to capture this intergenerational impact when he focuses on settler colonization as a structure and not an event, but I think he could have pushed this further. He is discussing the extent to which these policies and their effects were genocide and how they are the same/ different from our current understandings of genocide; it would have been thought provoking for him to address whether the intergenerational impacts resulting in social challenges and deaths decades after these initial policies can be included in genocide.

Briefly, I also thought that Wolfe’s discussion quantifying who qualified as Indian was really thought provoking. Wolfe writes “under the blood quantum regime, one’s Indianness progressively declines in accordance with a ‘biological’ calculus that is a construct of Euroamerican culture” (400). This can also be seen as a less overt form of cultural assimilation, by imposing empirical measures on someone’s identity and using this analysis to determine rights. This also raises the question for of legal vs. individual definitions of who is Native (particularly related to treaty rights) and how these different definitions can impact the way that statistics are presented, and impacts of policies, such as Indian removal, are tracked and quantified. (This may only apply to Canadian policy, but) are individuals who gave up their Indian status by moving off reserves, but still culturally define themselves as Native, included in impact statistics and if they are not included, does that mean that we overlook them in our historical analysis?

Works Cited:

Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387-409.

March 26, 2014

The Consequence of Colonial Settlement

In Wolfe’s article, he argues that the colonist’s settlement process was an act of genocide towards Native Americans. He first defines genocide as a form of elimination, in which a group of people are forced to assimilate and are looked upon as “non-Indian,” thereby no longer racially stigmatized. In the colonists’ eyes, the “Indians” were no longer an obstacle to expansion once assimilated because they adapted to the colonial culture and treated land as the colonists did. They gave up their large territory and became part of the American culture.

Wolfe argues that genocide is not just the mass murder of a population but also the destruction of a society. A post below, believes that Wolfe’s argument for Native American genocide should be termed “cultural genocide.” However, Wolfe explicitly denies calling this act as cultural genocide because it devalues the experience of the Indigenous people who went through similar experiences, especially in comparison to the “prime” example of genocide, the Holocaust (402). He argues that the term “cultural genocide” implies an almost dismissive attitude towards the experience of the Native Americans specifically because people normally think of the Holocaust, a case of mass murder, as a much more malicious act. Wolfe states that what the Indigenous people went through was just as cruel as what occurred during World War II, only we as culture do not see it so because the natives were not outright killed but eliminated through assimilation. We forget that an entire culture was lost and forgotten, that the natives were forced to adapt or face death.

Others have pointed out that colonial settlement cannot be called genocide due to the intent behind expansion. The colonists had not removed the Native Americans with the intent of destroying a population, but rather, removed an obstacle out of their way and death was an unintentional consequence. While this may be partially true, we forget that for a lot of colonists, death was a consequence they knew but did not care about. Colonists would forcefully remove Native Americans by burning villages without warning or forcing them to march miles without the necessary supplies. I would argue that knowing death was a high possibility due to one’s actions and then ignoring it is just as bad or the same as purposefully murdering someone.

March 25, 2014

Not Genocide

Wolfe’s article titled Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native raised some very interesting points that I can’t say I have ever thought of before. Basically he was saying that in North America, the Native Americans experienced genocide by colonist settlers. He defined this point by saying that “Even where native sovereignty was recognized, however, ultimate dominion over the territory in question was held to inhere in the European sovereign in whose name it had been “discovered.” (5) The Europeans claimed the land as their own, and disregarded the fact that the Native Americans were there first. They wanted to “eliminate” the Native Americans by relocating them to other land. They justified their actions by saying the Native Americans were “unsettled, nomadic, rootless” and that the settlers could improve the land by creating new farms, mining etc. (10) One of my classmates references this by saying “Georgia, being the prime example, began eagerly removing the Cherokee people and were prepared to stand up to National military force to do so.” They were just uncomfortable with having them there. Wolfe ultimately explains his main point that once the frontier ran out and the settlers began the process of assimilation with the Native Americans, genocide occurred because they destroyed the collective group.

While this definitely made me think about the settlers actions, I can’t say that I am persuaded. Compared to other genocides he mentions like the Holocaust and Rwanda, I can’t follow his argument. Reading this article did make me realize that the settlers may not have treated the Native Americans in the best possible manner, but it by no means was genocide. They did treat the Native Americans poorly, killed many, and assimilate a lot, but I still don’t classify that as genocide. It is not right, but it is not genocide.

Another aspect of this is that it is really easy for us to say now that the actions of the settlers were wrong. This is unfair because at the time, they had no idea the impact any of their actions would have on the future. It almost was a necessary evil. At the time, North America was growing, and expansion was the only concern. They were not concerned with the treatment of people of other races. I am not condoning their behavior, but I don’t believe it is our place to critique how they treated the Indians when it was such a different time period.