October 24, 2006

Wounded Knee just a mistake?

And not a crime? Read about this and much more in

Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? "The violent collision between whites and America's native population was probably unavoidable."

4 comments:

The Local Crank said...

First, could they please stop quoting fake-Indian Ward Churchill as an authority on NDN history? It's like asking Al Jolson in blackface to discuss the African-American experience. Second, the vehemence with which white scholars deny the true population of the Western Hemisphere pre-invasion is just astonishing and, I think, a mix of guilt and condescension. As Charles C. Mann notes in "1491," you have only to read the accounts of the first white invaders, describing a North America "teeming" with Natives to know that the ludicrously low figures bandied around are completely divorced from reality. It's far more likely the the total population of the Western Hemisphere pre-Invasion was over 100 million, making it larger than Europe's.

Rob said...

Russ, is there any documentation on the Web of the claim that the Nazis modeled their "final solution" on the American genocide of Indians? I've heard that claim before and have looked for evidence, but I haven't found anything good yet.

If you have these books and they've never been published before, you should try to get them published. It would be a shocker and would help cement the idea that the Jewish and Indian holocausts are comparable.

The Local Crank said...

"books that detailed the results of forcibly incarcerating Native peoples at the end of 'the Indian Wars"

Not to put words in Winterfella's mouth, but I don't think he's saying the Final Solution itself, as a whole, was based on US treatment of NDNs, but rather the use of concentration camps. These are very well-documented, and I believe their first wide-spread use was not, as usually stated, by the British in the Boer Wars, but by the US Army during the Trail of Tears.

The Local Crank said...

"how many were treated as if they did their usual job well."

In fact, 23 of them received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their role in the massacre. Pretty stomach-churning.