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Alex Dooley"
SOC 337 Research Paper"
Dr. Henry Kim"
16 December 2013"

"
Genocide at Home: Historical and Ongoing Injustice Against Native Americans!
"

Over their first four hundred years of settlement in what is now North America,

European colonists systematically and continuously committed acts of planned

genocide against the indigenous tribal groups living on the continent before their arrival.
The grievances perpetuated by the colonists have, to a large extent, gone unredressed,
and Native American people groups continue to suffer the consequences of a stratified
racial hierarchy in the United States of America today. This paper will detail ways in
which systemic oppression continue to limit the life chances of Native American tribes in
the United States, arguing for the moral necessity of their discontinuance and
subsequent reparations on part of the United States government."
"

Understanding the historical context of why European settlers originally set out to

exterminate the Native American tribes is imperative for understanding the situation in
which tribal groups currently find themselves. A very early precedent of white
paternalism in relation to the indigenous inhabitants of America was set in 1493 by Pope
Alexander VI, who ordered Spanish conquistadores to continue discovering new lands
in the Americas for the purpose of drawing barbarous nations to Christianity
(Washburn 1995, 5). This feeling of inherent cultural and moral superiority on the part of
Europeans, regarding the native inhabitants of the Americas as an inferior race to be

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subdued and civilized, set off the chain of events leading to the elimination of millions
of indigenous peoples the fact that the four centuries following Columbus initial
encounter with the natives are referred to as the Age of Genocide is certainly no
surprise (Bradford 2006, 518)."
"

The establishment of American Indians as an inferior race by whites provided

justification for the taking of their land and stripping of their culture. A desire to overtake
and exploit Native American land combined with severe disrespect and disregard for the
sovereignty of tribal groups proved reason enough for European colonists and later the
United States government to make the complete extermination of all Native American
tribes a primary goal and method for its expansion (Bradford 2005, 5). Highlighting the
cultural differences existing between the groups, the United States government and its
preceding colonists painted the Native people in an unfairly savage light, racializing their
culture for the purpose of providing justification of their systematic oppression and
slaughter."
"

Reversing the role of a people group from that of the majority culture to colonized

people is no small task, and requires the employment of no shortage of methods to do

so. Besides the original command of Pope Alexander VI to discover, conquer, and
convert indigenous people groups continuing to play itself out over the years, the United
States government enacted other various methods for the extermination of the Native
American people and stripping of their culture. Many colonizers offered financial
incentives for corporate slavers to put tribes at war with one another, creating bounties
between the tribes in order to both accomplish territorial goals and provide free slave
labor for developing economies (Bradford 2005, 4). Not to be understated in the least is

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the full-on ethnic cleansing that took place against Native American tribes. While
estimates on the pre-Columbian population of indigenous tribal groups vary widely (from
five million to ninety-four million), the onslaught of traditional warfare, unintended
spreading of disease (which would later become proactively executed biological
warfare), and indiscriminate slaughter sanctioned by the United States government had
reduced their numbers by as much as 98% to around 300,000 and declining by the year
1880 (Bradford 2005, 4), (Perry 2002, 234)."
"

In addition to its blatantly genocidal policy of taking the lives of Native American

tribal people in order to possess their lands for expansion, the United States engaged in
more subtle, subversive methods of conquest. The term ethnocide is defined as the
paternalistic practice of resocializing or civilizing the natives with the intent of
dismantling their culture and Westernizing the thought patterns of individual members of
indigenous tribal groups (Churchill 2002, 86). One such expression of ethnocide was
the forced assimilation experienced by Native American people, particularly children
who were forcibly removed from their homeland at the earliest possible age and sent to
be reeducated in the ways of Western culture at state-sponsored educational boarding
schools. This scrubbing of cultural identity was fundamental to the ultimate goal of the
United States government, the eradication of indigenous tribal society and culture for
the purpose of establishing superior Western ideals as the default way of living in the
USA. (Churchill 2002, 86)."
"

The absurdly blunt words used in 1895 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the army

officer responsible for the creation and supervision of these Indian residential schools,
speak directly into the mindset of the US government regarding the establishment and

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maintenance of these schools kill the Indian, save the man (Pratt 1895, 761-762).
Not only was the Native American way of life seen as substandard, it was viewed
ultimately as subhuman. Besides the scrubbing of cultural ideals experienced at these
schools, children were frequently sexually abused and placed into unhealthy forcedlabor conditions (Churchill 2004, 100, 103). The last of these schools in the United
States, located in Phoenix, AZ, was finally closed in 1990, an unfortunately recent blot in
the history of Native American exploitation in the U.S. (Churchill 2004, 97)."
"

Being the ones who bore the brunt of the obviously misguided, paternalistic

mindset that instigated these processes, Native American children forced into these
situations of internment were left with no alternative but to develop a profound sense of
dual consciousness upon returning to their respective tribes. The Western ideals forcefed to Native American children by their captor-educators conflicted with those of their
respective tribal cultures. Coupled with the gross abuses dealt to them while in the
camps, the resulting disparity in their internal, expressed, and observed identities
served the original purpose of their reeducation quite well to dismantle indigenous
tribal systems of living and eventually render immobilized future generations of the
people-groups from which they came."
"

Some key dates in the history of US-Native American relations provide further

insight into the subversive ways that ethnocide has been attempted and carried about.
When colonizers and conquistadores claimed land from indigenous people groups, it
was most frequently done by taking advantage of tribal misunderstandings of the
Western idea of property rights. Whereas tribes conceived land as being irreducible to
individual ownership and thus a communal possession, the Western authors of the

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treaties were interested in sole control of the land on which these tribes made their
homes. By phrasing things in such a way as to be incomprehensible to one not fluent in
the English language (and using alcohol to assuage any suspicions potentially held by
the tribal leaders), the colonizers were able to manipulatively acquire rights to land that
Native Americans did not intend to give them, often leaving entire tribal nations without
land on which to reside (Bradford 2005, 5). Such practices give extreme validity to the
adage white man speak with forked tongue and further demonstrate the dishonest
lengths to which colonizers were willing to travel for the purpose of exploiting Native
American culture."
"

That being said, later treaties made with the United States government often

contained provisions for parcels of land to be set aside for exclusive use by the tribe.
Tribes would be granted sovereignty and permitted to self-govern without intervention
by the United States government, allowing them to maintain some semblance of the
independence and freedom as a nation they once experienced. In 1893, however,
Congress established a commission headed by Senator Henry L. Dawes to negotiate
the private allotment of lands already belonging to the five officially recognized Civilized
Tribes and the dissolution of their tribal governments (French 1999, 244). The Dawes
Act effectively set up the usurping of all previous treaties held between Native American
tribes and the United States government; the vehicle for breaking these treaties was the
Curtis Act of June 28, 1898. This act negated the authority of all tribal laws and tribal
courts, requiring all persons in Indian Territory to come under U.S. authority, irrespective
of their race (French 1999, 245). Effectively dissolving all tribes within Indian Territory,
this allowed formerly American Indian land to be open for purchase and development

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and further exhibited that, although the government of the United States would say one
thing, the white man still speaks with a forked tongue."
"

Eventually, the Dawes Act was repealed in 1934 with the enactment of the Indian

Reorganization Act, establishing the current system of federal trust tribal lands in place
today. (French 1999, 245). However, in 1953 Congress began to terminate federal
supervision over American Indians in a policy known aptly as Termination, effectively
rendering them extinct in the eyes of the government (Bradford 2005, 11). Due to its
drastic failure, this policy was reversed and officially ended in 1973 (French 1999, 245)."
"

Additionally, a strategy for attracting the best, brightest Native American young

adults to move to Northern American cities called Relocation was employed by the U.S.
government for the purpose of creating Indians who were Indian in appearance but not
in culture. These attempts to strip Native Americans of their cultural heritage and
traditions is yet another example of ethnocidal paternalistic relations between the United
States and Native American people groups."
"

Today, the conditions on many Native American reservations are some of the

worst living conditions in the entire United States of America. The effects of years of
systemic oppression by the government have rendered economic conditions and
circulation of capital to be quite substandard within many reservations. More than 27
percent of all Native American households fall below the poverty line, and in some
tribes, such as the Navajo, more than 45 percent of families live in poverty (Mezey
1996). The health level among Native Americans is the lowest and disease rates the
highest of all major population groups in the United States, with the incidence of
tuberculosis being four hundred percent higher than average, strep infections one

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thousand percent, meningitis two thousand percent, and dysentery ten thousand
percent higher. Life expectancy among reservation-bound Native Americans is one-third
shorter than the general US population according to census data (Strickland 1997, 53).
Given the significantly more difficult life on reservations than elsewhere in the USA, it is
easy to see how the decreased life chances experienced by the majority of Native
Americans decrease successive generational mobility and help to perpetuate a vicious
cycle of poverty that is very difficult to break out of."
"

To this day, land rights originally granted many Native American tribes in their

initial treaties are still being withheld, denied, or usurped by commercial enterprises.
The treaty signed by the Makah Tribe in Washington State provides for the right to hunt
the gray whale for both subsistence and ceremonial purposes. However, due to gross
overhunting in the early 1900s by various commercial fishing enterprises from a variety
of countries (including the United States) and the consequential near-extinction of the
species, the U.S. government repealed this provision of their treaty in the 1930s
(Watters 1997, 3). The fact that the Makah had little to nothing to do with the vast
overfishing of this species of whale, yet are banned from participating in what has
historically been a very significant part of their tribal tradition and culture, is very ironic
and speaks even further of the United States continuing paternalism and suppression of
tribal sovereignty and self-governance as outlined in their treaty."
"

Given the grievances committed against Native American people by the United

States that even continue to this very day, a Christian observing this situation and
applying godly moral principles sees the clear need for repentance and restoration.
There are several ideas about how such reparations could possibly be made, but none

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seem to be as holistically sound as the Justice as Indigenism model proposed by
William C. Bradford in his article Acknowledging and Rectifying the Genocide of
American Indians: Why Is it that They Carry Their Lives on Their Fingernails?"
"

Bradford advocates that the United States government should acknowledge the

grievances committed against the Native American people, issue a formal, public
apology, and engage in peacemaking sessions with appropriate tribal councils and
boards. Furthermore, the government would be wise to commemorate the grievances
committed against the indigenous American peoples with national monuments at sites
of Native American genocide and in major cultural centers (i.e. the Holocaust Museum)
so that the people of America will never forget their past mistakes. Monetary
compensation would be regarded as wholly and completely inadequate to cover past
grievances and wrongdoings, thus rendering any exchange of financial capital as
entirely symbolic, and perhaps dispensable."
"

Additionally, and perhaps most difficultly in Bradfords argument, Native

Americans must be given back their original tribal territory to whatever extent is
reasonably feasible. Tribes would have the authority to do what they please with the
land, including granting ownership or access to those currently residing on it, if they so
choose. This grants them full autonomy over the land that the United States government
effectively stole from them and removes the paternalistic way in which the United States
government has traditionally treated Native American tribes. Legal reform would also
need to take place in order to ensure that genocide or ethnocide against the Native
American people at any level never occurs again. Finally, good-faith attempts at

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reconciliation must be made between the United States and Native American people
groups, to whatever extent possible."
"

This final point is particularly true of citizens of both the United States and tribal

nations who claim to have faith in Christ. Scripture is filled with specific instructions to
love our enemies, do good those who have hurt us, and forgive others as the Lord has
forgiven us (Matthew 5:44, Colossians 3:13). Luke 19 gives the account of Zaccheus,
the tax collector who had cheated people out of significant sums of money, yet offered
to pay back four times as much to everyone from whom he had stolen. Genesis 50 tells
the story of Josephs brothers coming to him begging forgiveness for selling him into
slavery, and throughout the Word we see examples of repentance being necessary for
right standing with God and forgiveness."
"

How can Christians living in the United States knowingly look back on a history of

injustice, oppression, and genocide in their own country and turn an uncaring shoulder?
The United States of America has committed grievances against the Native American
people literally on par with Hitlers genocide of the Jews during the Holocaust. Failing to
corporately ask forgiveness on behalf of those who have oppressed and continue to
oppress the Native American people is, simply put, a sin. Regardless of the economic
ramifications of doing so, something must be done to make restitution for the sins of the
United States of America we certainly did not take the economy or culture of the
Native Americans into account as we enslaved, exploited, and oppressed the entire
continent in the name of Christ, bastardizing His name in the process. Forgiveness and
humility will prove much more effective than conquering in acting as ambassadors for
Him, and we owe it to those whom we have wronged to make amends.