I really enjoyed reading Patrick Wolfe\u2019s article Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native<\/i>. Wolfe\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
I appreciated the progression of Wolfe\u2019s 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\u2019t favor the term \u201ccultural genocide\u201d because it\u2019s a term I have never questioned (398); I have never thought of \u201ccultural genocide\u201d as less than or completely distant from \u201cbiological\u201d genocide. Olivia also address the differentiation of genocide and cultural genocide in her blog post \u201cThe Indian Removal: A Cultural Genocide\u201d, 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 \u201ccultural genocide\u201d has a \u201cdirect impact on people\u2019s capacity to stay alive\u201d (399), which I would agree with and take one step further. Not only does \u201ccultural genocide\u201d, just like \u201cbiological\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Briefly, I also thought that Wolfe\u2019s discussion quantifying who qualified as Indian was really thought provoking. Wolfe writes \u201cunder the blood quantum regime, one\u2019s Indianness progressively declines in accordance with a \u2018biological\u2019 calculus that is a construct of Euroamerican culture\u201d (400). This can also be seen as a less overt form of cultural assimilation, by imposing empirical measures on someone\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
Works Cited:<\/p>\n
Wolfe, Patrick. \u201cSettler colonialism and the elimination of the native.\u201d\u00a0Journal of Genocide Research\u00a0<\/em>8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387-409.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I really enjoyed reading Patrick Wolfe\u2019s article Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Wolfe\u2019s 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 … <\/p>\n