>>> afenelon at zaz.com.br 04/26/01 07:59PM >>>
-One month ago, I think, I asked you about USA genocide against Native Americans. -As you sent me back some material, I started to enlarge my research. It was quite -interesting, but it s difficult to prove that US government had a systematic policy -of anihilation of Native population.
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CB: I believe it was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Powell who said in an analogous analysis that one is presumed to intend the necessary and logical consequences of one's actions. It was foreseeable to the U.S. government and private institutions of U.S. society that their actions would and were annihilating the indigneous population. As you say below, "the practical results were the same" . The effective results were the same as if it was a systematic conscious policy.
The U.S. Supreme Court just made a decision reitertating its use of "lack of evidence of intent to discriminate" as a basis for 14th Amendment causes of actions against racism to fail. This is analogous to your comment that it is difficult to prove a systematic policy. It parallels what were termed "de jure" and "de facto" segregation in the early modern civil rights cases. It is the loophole that has been used by rightwing racist jurisprudence since the Burger Court started it in the 70's to avoid the doctrine of the case of _Brown v the Bd of Ed._ ( main modern civil rights case precedent).
In general, racists have rapidly learned to hide direct evidence of intent to discriminate, today, but in the time periods you are talking about, there was little effort to hide the genocidal attitude toward Indians.
Actually, I think with more research it will become clear to you that the notion that "the only good indian was a dead indian" and the like was openly espoused by many European invaders , before the beginning of the U.S. and after. The Europeans did not have an sense of hiding their concepts that the indigenous peoples were "savages" and "heathens" and other beings unworthy of possession of the land and resources of the continent, so the whites openly discussed this and wrote about it.
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It s said that there were 5-12,000,000 Native -Americans in the 48 contiguous states of the USA before 1942. Up to 1700, there was -a dramatic reduction in the population, mainly due to smallpox (mortality from -this disease was much higher in Native populations, who hadn t immunity against -this disease). Population data from 1776 is not easily found in the Internet. -However, I found an estimate of 360-400,000 Native Americans in the West in 1850. -Population in the East was dislocated and had their lands stolen during the early -1800 s, culminating with the Trail of Tears, in which there were something like 9,000 -deaths. As the expansion to the West went on, the population was progressively -reduced to a low of 210,000 in 1910. It appears that this happened due to -confiscation of the means of survival Indians needed (extermination of buffallo -and land steal), but there was not a planned policy of extermination (althought -the pratical results were quite the same). I would say it is more similar to -the policies of expropriation and expulsion of English and Irish peasants from -their lands from centuries XVI to XIX than to the systematic killing of complete -populations that Nazi Germany or Spanish colonists made so efficiently. I would -estimate excess deaths of the late XIX century campaign in a few hundreds of -thousands (disease, by the 1800 s, was not so frequent as cause of disease). As -for the use of smallpox as biological weapon, it seems to be one well documented -report (it was used by English colonial army in 1763). It would be important to -state that was a remarkable increase of this population since 1910. It s now -estimated in 2,000,000 people (it s difficult to believe in this 10-fold increase -in so short period....) -Well, what I have to ask to you is: 1-Do you have something to add to this demographic data I put here?
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CB: The demographic data you present seems to be evidence of a genocide, once one looks at the open declarations of willingness to use violence against the indigenous peoples in order to take their land and resources. Do you doubt that the population was drastically reduced by the demographic data that you already have ? I don't see where you need more demographic data.
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2-In what is based your statement that there was genocide against Native American in the USA?
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CB: The open declarations of hostility by the invading Europeans toward the indigenous peoples, the drastic reduction in the population of the indigenous peoples upon the invasion, and the loss of land and resources to the usurping invaders.
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-Note that I m not agreeing of disagreeing from you, just asking for more information. This -seems to be a good case example as the necessity for expansion and capital accumulation that
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CB: Yes, the assault on the indigenous Americans is a part of the chief momenta of the primitive accumulation of all of capitalism.
"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c. "
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-are inherent to capitalism can decimate entire populations even if there is no intention to -do this.
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CB: I'm for an objective standard with respect to the mens rea of intent on this. If a reasonable human being could see that you are slaughtering a population based on your racism against them, the fact that you don't "intend" it or "don't know what you are doing" is not a defense. You are presumed to know the necessary and logical consequences of your action.
I agree that capitalism is inherently genocidal. The Nazis, for whom the term "genocide" was coined at the Nuremburg Tribunal and fount of jurisprudence on "genocide" , were capitalists , a capitalist state. Fascism is a form of the capitalist state. So, of course capitalism is the original genocidal tendency.
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And it seems very few pre capitalist civilizations undertook the massive and -systematic destruction of entire peoples and cultures, like the Europeans colonizers did -in America and Africa
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CB: Agree.
Thanks for your research and analysis, A Fenelon.
http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/native-americans.html http://www.iearn.org/hgp/hgp-home.html http://members.aol.com/aacdrcnnea/natam.htm http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/nadp.htm http://www.miquelon.net/usa/people.html http://www.termpapers-on-file.com/native.htm http://www.frontierpress.com/frontier.cgi?category=ind http://www.greatdreams.com/lies.htm http://www.iphc.org/evusa/culture/native.html (a pentecostal site!!) http://nativeamculture.about.com/culture/nativeamculture/library/blainews.ht m http://www.oneearthonepeople.org/nalinks.html http://www.emayzine.com/history16/syllabus.html http://www.calacademy.org/research/library/biodiv/biblio/amind.htm http://www.studyweb.com/links/2196.html http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/Articles2000/Keeler001115Thanksgiving.htm http://are.as.wvu.edu/ruvolo.htm http://nmnhwww.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/bibliogr.html http://www.welcomepages.org/living_with_the_stigma_of_genoci.htm http://www.iliff.edu/about_iliff/faculty_george.htm http://www.reinventing.com/cmp31.html