Here's are a couple of recent posts, followed by link to a round-up of posts regarding genocides against aboriginal peoples within the US. Tl;dr: yes, but be aware of which incidents do and do not fall under the definition

• Why do we label European discovery of the New World genocide and not conquest?

• When exactly genocide and conquest of Native Americans ended?

• Would it be accurate to describe what happened to the natives americans as a genocide?

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Absolutely. Though the germs that wiped out massive portions of the indigenous population were unplanned for, both Spanish, English, and Dutch colonists engaged in acts of genocide in their encounters with native americans. The United States government Indian policy was often genocidal in its intention. Even when the United States military was not actively killing indigenous people for living in their traditional territories, crafters of indian policy like Dylan Meyer in the 1950s and Richard Pratt in the 1880s promulgated initiatives that were designed to dispossess Native Americans of their land and culture. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that this constitutes genocide

I argue that it was genocide for many reasons, but one has to do with our usage of the term "genocide." The UN uses this definition of genocide:

"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

I don't think this has as much to do with "death toll" nor with early contact and disease as many have argued in other comments (although those are factors as well). I think genocide has a lot to do with the intent of Indian Policies in Canada and the U.S., especially during the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth centuries. Obviously there are intergenerational impacts that are ongoing today. These policies overtly tried to destroy indigenous people as nations and peoples in order to clear the way for non-indigenous people. These policies overtly caused death (especially through starvation/rations and for a good Canadian book on this see Clearing the Plains), inflicted mental harm (really any policy that sought to assimilate indigenous people), prevented births (forced sterilizations of indigenous women), and forcibly removed children (residential/boarding schools and forced adoptions). These are examples of genocide that occurred more recently than most think. For example, the last residential school in Canada closed in 1996! And we are only uncovering the tip of the iceberg of the deaths, abuse, neglect, etc that these schools alone caused. Not only that, I would argue genocide requires a process whereby the dominant group (in this case non-indigenous people and especially those benefitting from the clearing away of indigenous people) ignores and/or believes the process inflicted upon indigenous people is inevitable, "natural," for the better, or for everyone's benefit. This was certainly the case in North America where Indian policies and their impacts were not largely questioned because they were engineered to bring benefits for non-indigenous people through the assimilation and genocide of indigenous people.

Genocide in terms of North American indigenous people is often referred to as "cultural genocide." Yes, the large numbers reflected in the physical extermination of indigenous peoples may have been largely because of disease, but the cultural, intellectual, political, economic, and emotional destruction was intentional and brought on by state and church (and individual) endeavours.

Lastly, I would never use the word "conquest" in reference to North American indigenous peoples, especially as a kind of replacement term for genocide. Indigenous people were never conquered. We persevered in the face of all assimilation and extermination efforts, not only as individuals and communities but as culturally and politically distinct nations.

I'm still learning as a Indigenous Studies and History doctoral student and as someone from a community impacted by assimilation and genocide efforts. Hope this helps us all think critically about our past and present!

Maybe its semantics but I can't help but reject the notion that America/Europe committed genocide against the natives. I would say the motion should be whether or not genocides were committed against natives. Big difference IMO since the first colours the whole relationship as just one of genocide, ignoring the complex relationships/alliances/wars/agreements of this tribe and that colony, it simplifies it too much.

After this point its easier to ask whether the trail of tears or Sioux Wars was a genocide or part of a genocide. What /u/Anoraklibrarian says applies here.

Few more things

Remember that legally speaking both the holocaust and the Armenian genocide (despite the name) can't be genocides since there was no legal definition when they happened. Calling what happened to the natives pre-1948 "genocide" is wrong in this sense (obviously not the only sense).

U.N. definition of genocide is very problematic and (imo) solves the issue by being so broad that pretty much anything can be genocide. You'll find it trotted out whenever genocide is mentioned because whatever case is being discussed its likely going to be a genocide according to it. It really is a discussion killer and one side is now technically right.

here is the U.N. definition

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following 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.

As a result there is an enormous contrast between what people think, when using the word genocide, and the actual definition. It makes a lot of genocide controversies seem rather silly since there is misunderstanding in what actions/policies a nation is even being accused of.