For centuries, the U.S./American government, army and culture (civil society) waged war on and finally put indignenous people in concentration camps ,and in general created all around conditions of life that necessarily and foreseeably cause violations of several of the provisions of the UN Convention and human legal common sense as to what is genocide is. The current U.S. government and People bear the continuing responsibility for their ancestors' creating these concentratron camps. The current American cultural regime maintains them. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and governors of states rule over the concentration camps. Congress' power with respect to the Indian tribes is manifestly awsome, as one court described it. Billions of dollars of private corporations sit on land illegally stolen from the tribes, who have long self-determined themselves to be Sovereign nations. The U.S.is in world historic violation of its treaties with these nations TODAY STILL. Today's Americans are violating those treaties. The clear rationale for this by American society is that it is superior to Indigenous civilization. This is a genocidal motive.
Using U.S. legal reasoning in applying the UN Convention, we might use the experience of civil rights law, U.S. domestic law dealing with some aspects of genocide. By that experience with the 14th Amendment and the principle of the case of _Brown v Bd of Education_, we know that when _de jure_ or open racism was outlawed, racism went underground. The U.S. Supreme Court led by Burger used this to undermine _Brown_ by establishing a strict test of demonstration of intent to discriminate, similar to the demand on this thread to show explicit intent from someone in the U.S. Government or other American "official" to do harm to Indians as Indians. But _de facto_ or factual disparity evidence of racist motive must be used to substitute for "smoking gun" evidence of that racist intent, because modern racists are sophisticated enough to hide their actions. Furthermore, there is a doctrine in U.S. law regarding recklessness as an equivalent to intentional mental state as adequate to constitute the _mens rea_ for crimes or wrongs requiring intent as an element. In other words, if the genocidal harms are the necessary and foreseeable result of putting and KEEPING TODAY people of certain racial or tribal groups in concentration camps, the law will presume this result is intended.
If the treatment of indigenous peoples by U.S./American culture and "civilization" , government, civil society , institutions etc. doesn't constitute genocide under the UN definition, then the definition should be changed to include it. However, a complaint alleging such a genocide pursuant to the UN Convention should survive a motion for summary disposition.
Charles Brown
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 04/12/99 05:31PM >>>
Seth Ackerman wrote:
>I don't deny that the U.S. mistreats
>Indians. You don't have to call it "genocidal" to make the point.
Look, the U.S. isn't slaughtering Indians wholesale as it did in the good old days. No one is claiming that. The point was originally raised in the context of the Yugo war - that if the U.S. was claiming the right to violate Yugoslavian sovereignty on the basis of genocide, the claim could be made with equal legal justification about the U.S. itself. U.S. policy towards Indians fits the legal definition of genocide. Maybe lots of Americans have a hard time believing that about their country, but it's true. No doubt Max Sawicky will have a mocking response to this too.
Doug