Welcome to yet another installment of Monday Methods!

For this week, we will be discussing a part two to last week's post about American Indian Genocide Denialism and how to combat it. In part one, we discussed the existence of denialism around this topic and several methods used to deny it. Part two will consider why, what, and how genocide is and its applicability to the situation.

Edit: As addressed in the previous thread, it is more accurate to refer to this time period of history as "genocides" rather than just a genocide. For the sake of simplicity in this post (and because this is partially adapted from a previous work of mine), the genocides are referred to in singular. But plural is more accurate.

Genocide in Law

Definition and Applicability

The term "genocide," as coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 (Lemkin, 2005), was defined by the United Nations (U.N.) in 1948 (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948). The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:

1. The mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2. The physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."

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:

• 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;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

• Genocide;
• Conspiracy to commit genocide;
• Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
• Attempt to commit genocide;
• Complicity in genocide.

While the legal framework for criminalizing genocide did not exist prior to the mid-20th century. Therefore, in a legal sense, what is described as "genocide" is a recent invention. Events that are described as genocide in recent history include the 1915 Armenian Genocide, the Jewish Holocaust of World War 2, the Cambodian reeducation in 1975, the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, 1995 Bosnian Genocide, and the 2003 Darfur Genocide (Churchill, 1997; Kiernan, 2007; King, 2014; Naimark, 2017). In these events, not all five listed criteria are present to constitute genocide. Rather, only one criterion is needed to be culpable of genocide. It is important to note this: genocide can and has occurred even without a single person being killed.

This raises the question that if "genocide" is a recent term and a recent crime, can it be applied to what happened to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas? To answer this question, it depends on the context. In a legal sense, no. The crime of genocide did not exist during the colonization of the Americas and could not be retroactively applied to perpetrators of the crime, for doing so would amount to an example of presentism, or interpreting the past in terms of modern values and concepts. This legal framework, however, gives us as basis for which to judge cases to see if genocide has been committed. Madley (2016) affirms this framework as “a powerful analytical tool: a frame for evaluating the past and comparing similar events across time” (pp. 4-5). This is because the legal framework obviously encompasses the very fundamental principles that form this concept of genocide (Churchill, 1997; Lindsay 2012). Lemkin’s work is summarized by Chalk and Jonasshon (1990) that support this notion.

Under Lemkin’s definition, genocide was the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious, or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group. Lemkin conceived of genocide as “a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction.” His definition included attacks on political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of the group. Even nonlethal acts that undermined the liberty, dignity, and personal security of members of a group constituted genocide if they contributed to weakening the viability of the group. Under Lemkin’s definition, acts of ethnocide—a term coined by the French after the war to cover the destruction of a culture without the killing of its bearers—also qualified as genocide (pp. 8-9).

Lindsay (2012) further supports the charge of genocide under the internationally defined definition while discussing the 1948 Genocide Convention. “Following the example set by Lemkin in his recognition of genocide as a crime with a long history, the 1948 Convention opened with the admission “that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity” (p. 14). Legally, the implications are clear. “Whether one actually committed genocidal acts or intended to commit such acts, or even only aided or abetted genocide, directly or indirectly, one was considered criminal and a perpetrator of genocide” (p. 16). Thornton (1987; 2016) further concludes the appropriate use of the United Nations definition through a compilation of works aimed at refuting those who refrain from the term. He notes:

Genocide aims to destroy the group. A terrible way to do so is to kill individuals on a large scale, but there are other ways. And, as Alvarez notes, "Genocide . . . is a strategy not an event" (p. 261). Unlike Anderson, I find the strategy useful in teaching students American Indian history. (And it's an easier concept to explain than ethnic cleansing.) It is more of a political than an intellectual act to question such usage. I believe American Indian history may be taught insightfully as a holocaust involving genocide (p. 216). What we have with the definition and framework constructed and agreed upon by the United Nations is a workable and sufficiently functioning tool to use with which to accurately judge events of the past and is regarded as being appropriate by numerous experts. Despite the lack of retroactive applicability, recognizing and charging genocide to events prior to 1948 is entirely possible. (For examples of the U.S. committing genocide per the criteria, see here.)

Conceptual Genocide

Embodied in the internationally codified definition that constitutes the crime of genocide is the very concept that genocide entails: the intentional attempt at the extirpation of a group of people. Historical events, governments, and groups of people that contain or perpetuated this intention can be identified when the concept of genocide is used as an analytical tool. The legal concept is but one way that the concept can be explored. Other frameworks also exist that expound upon what genocide can truly include.

For example, Kiernan’s (2007) work vigorously studies ancient and more contemporary examples of what can be considered genocide. To define these events, the legal concept of genocide is not used, but a collection of observable tendencies that are consistent with each recorded account.

Kiernan argues that a convergence of four factors underpins the causes of genocide through the ages: racism, which "becomes genocidal when perpetrators imagine a world without certain kinds of people in it" (p. 23); cults of antiquity, usually connected to an urgent need to arrest a "perceived decline" accompanying a "preoccupation with restoring purity and order" (p. 27); cults of cultivation or agriculture, which among other things legitimize conquest, as the aggressors "claim a unique capacity to put conquered lands into productive use" (p. 29); and expansionism (Cox, 2009).

Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) explores what she considers the “roots of genocide” (p. 57). She uses the work of Grenier (2005) to observe the military tactics employed by the European and American settlers, tactics that involved what Grenier calls “unlimited war,” a type of war “whose purpose is to destroy the will of the enemy people or their capacity to resist, employing any means necessary but mainly by attacking civilians and their support systems, such as food supply (p. 58). While this type of warfare may seem common today and is easily defended by claiming the attacks can be stopped before genocide is committed, historical conduct of the United States Army proves that this “unlimited war” continued past the point of breaking American Indian resistance. The road to this strategy of unlimited warfare began with irregular warfare. As Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) explains further, “the chief characteristic of irregular warfare is that of the extreme violence against civilians, in this case the tendency to see the utter annihilation of the Indigenous population” (p. 59).

A primary example of this unlimited war being waged is evident in the extermination of the buffalo herds of North America, an animal that many of the Plains Indian tribes subsisted on and required to sustain their way of life. Extreme efforts were taken by the United States Army to eradicate the buffalo herds beyond the point of subduing the American Indians who came into conflict with the expanding United States (Brown, 2007; Churchill, 1997; Deloria, 1969; Donovan, 2008; Roe, 1934; Sandoz, 2008). The extermination of the buffalo herds was not a direct assault on American Indians, but had the goal of intentionally destroying their food source to undermine their population and culture so as to lessen their numbers and put them on the road to extinction. This is clearly part of the strategy of genocide, for it was willfully targeted at a specific racial/ethnic group for their partial or full destruction, since it was acknowledged that these tribes relied on these herds to survive (Jawort, 2017; Phippen, 2016; Smits, 1994).

Naimark (2017) comments that “the definition of genocide proffered by Lemkin in his 1944 book and elaborated upon in the 1948 Convention remains to this day the fundamental definition accepted by scholars and the international courts” (p. 3), but that the definition has evolved over the course of time through application from tribunal courts (p. 4). This evolving of the term demonstrates its dynamic nature, meaning a multitude of examples can be analyzed with parameters that are still within accepted applications of the term. Naimark (2017) supports this statement by noting “genocide is a worldwide historical phenomenon that originates with the beginning of human society. Cases of genocide need to be examined, as they occur over time and in a variety of settings” (p. 5). Madley (2016) also states that “many scholars have employed genocide as a concept with which to evaluate the past, including events that took place in the nineteenth century” (p. 6). He then provides examples of genocide studies concerning the history of California. Twenty-five years after the formulation of the new international legal treat, scholars began reexamining the nineteenth-century conquest and colonization of California under US rule. In 1968, author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Robert F. Heizer wrote a brief but pathbreaking description of “the genocide of Californians.” In 1977, William Coffer mentioned “Genocide among the California Indians,” and two years later, ethnic studies scholar Jack Norton argued that according to the Genocide Convention, certain northwestern California Indians suffered genocide under US rule (p. 7).

Lindsay (2012) converged on this point with their entire work of Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1864-1873. Here, Lindsay employs the use of Lemkin’s model for genocide that includes the internationally codified version as well as the additional writing of Lemkin. However, he also employs a framework birthed out of genocide studies done by two particular scholars. This model he uses concludes that “settlers from the United States in California . . . conceived of what they called “extermination” in exactly the same way that many conceive of genocide today” (p. 17) and that “rather than a government orchestrating a population to bring about the genocide of a group, the population orchestrated a government to destroy a group” (p. 22). Lindsay (2012) sums this up by noting “if genocide had existed as a term in the nineteenth century, Euro-Americans might have used it as a way to describe their campaign to exterminate Indians” (p. 23). Thus, the elements that we associate with genocide today are elements that were constituted into policies and actions long before the strategy was named and recognized as what we now call “genocide.” The example of California contains abundant points to demonstrate the abhorrent sentiments of California settlers toward American Indians (Coffer, 1977; Norton, 1979; Rawls, 1984; Robinson, 2012).

California is not the only example that serves to show how official policy was established to commit genocide against the Indigenous inhabitants. Federal Indian policy has been used consistently since the end of the treaty making process with tribes in 1871 (Deloria & Wilkins, 1999).

Conclusion

After reviewing two frameworks for which to consider genocide, those being a legalistic and conceptual framework, and briefly identifying the conduct of the United States within said frameworks, it can be definitely said that the United States government at local, state, and federal level, along with members of the public, are guilty of committing the crime of genocide. This is true both in a historical and conceptual sense of the term genocide, but also in a legal sense as defined by the United Nations. While it is unlikely that members of the American public are actively conducting genocide against American Indians today, the United States government has in recent times engaged in what could be considered acts of genocide and continues to propagate genocidal legacies, tendencies, and/or circumstances. At the very least, they continue to be complicit in the exclusion of this part of their history, conduct portraying guilt of this crime in of itself.

References

Churchill, W. (1997). A Little Matter of Genocide. City Lights Publisher.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (1948).

Coffer, W. E. (1977). Genocide of the California Indians, with a comparative study of other minorities. Indian (The) Historian San Francisco, Cal., 10(2), 8-15.

Cox, J. M. (2009). A Major, Provocative Contribution to Genocide Studies [Review of the book Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur]. H-net Reviews.

Deloria, V. (1969). Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press.

Deloria, V., & Wilkins, D. (1999). Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations (1st ed.).

Donovan, J. (2008). A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn-the last great battle of the American West. Little, Brown.

Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Vol. 3). Beacon Press.

Grenier, J. (2005). The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814. Cambridge University Press.

Jawort, A. (2017). Genocide by Other Means: U.S. Army Slaughtered Buffalo in Plains Indian Wars. Indian Country Today.

Kiernan, B. (2009). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press.

King, C.R. (2014). Final solutions: Human nature, capitalism and genocide. Choice, 51(11), 2027.

Lemkin, R. (2005). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Lindsay, B. C. (2015). Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873. University of Nebraska.

Madley, B. (2016). An American Genocide: The United States the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. Yale University Press.

Naimark, N.M. (2016) Genocide: A World History (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Norton, J. (1979). Genocide in Northwestern California: When our worlds cried. Indian Historian Press.

Phippen, J. W. (2016) ‘Kill Every Buffalo You can! Every Buffalo Dead Is an Indian Gone.’ The Atlantic.

Rawls, J. J. (1984) Indians of California: The Changing Image. University of Oklahoma Press.

Robinson, W. W. (2012). Land in California: The Story of Mission Lands Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Reilroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads. University of California.

Roe, F. G. (1934). The Extermination of the Buffalo in Western Canada. Canadian Historical Review, 15(1), 1-23.

Sandoz, M. (2008). The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men (2nd ed.). Bison Books.

Smits, D. (1994). The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883. The Western Historical Quarterly, 25(3), 312-338.