Gunnar wrote:Claiming that there is not a shred of documentary evidence of any genocide of Amerindians is stretching the truth a great deal
Its easy because its true. No "genocide" of the Amerindians was ever attempted or contemplated by the American government, as far as we have any historical documentation.
"Even you admit that there were at least local attempts by various, locally prominent leaders to exterminate indigenous peoples. Genocide may never have been an overall officially sanctioned or admitted policy, but there is no doubt that there were some who advocated and attempted it and got away with it."
A couple of isolated incidents or strongly worded threats in the midst of open warfare does not genocide make. Genocide means the extermination of most of or an entire people, and nothing of that kind was ever attempted or prosecuted by Americans against the Indians.
"There is no doubt that European diseases were the largest factor in the decimation of indigenous populations, but it would be naïve to deny that there was a considerable amount of deliberate intent involved too at various times and places (especially in the earliest stages of colonization and conquest), and the Europeans certainly and gleefully took advantage of that decimation, whatever their degree of responsibility for it. It would also be naïve to insist that none of it was ever condoned by the colonial powers."
Now you've retreated to special pleading, and we must take statements such as "it would be naïve to deny" and "certainly" and "gleefully" (an attempt at mind-reading projected back several centuries onto colonial Europeans) for what they actually are - an indication that no actual documentary evidence exists to justify the claim of "genocide" by the United States government (and you really need to cease conflating the U.S. government with colonials settlers and Europeans, all of who's conduct predated the founding of the United States).
"Let's not split hairs! They and their ancestors had inhabited these lands for at least 15,000 years before white Europeans "discovered" the Americas. They certainly had a more credible claim to the land than the Europeans."
The crux of the matter is that the entire exercise is a politically correct semantic game for control of the language in a culture war who's core purpose is to delegitimate the entire American and classical liberal project. I am just as much a "native" American as any Indian you ever lived here. The hyphenated term "Native American," much like "African American" (to describe people with black skin who's family lines have been here for centuries) is nothing more than a linguistic line in the sand drawn by those wishing to excoriate and impugn America as a concept.
Secondly, I have always found fascinating the idea that Amerindians somehow had sole rights and determination as to who could and could not live and create a civilization on "their" continent. Its fine for Indians to live here (and engage in genocidal wars with each other, not infrequently), but damn those Swedes, Danes, English, Germans, French, Huguenots, Celts, Jews, or anyone else who wants to come here and colonize, expand, and construct a viable social order.
With no written language or body of statute law determining who one's what and to what extent (this being determined, for the most part, among the ancient American Indian peoples through migration and warfare), was there some reason to think that people from England couldn't come here and stake make some claim to America as a place of migration and homeland?
"How long does a population group have to occupy a particular area before they can be considered natives anyway? I would guess that almost all populated regions of the earth have populations that now consist largely or mostly of descendants of people who first entered or conquered the region where they now live much more recently than the 15,000 or more years ago that the first arrival of the ancestors of the indigenous people residing in the Americas when Columbus first arrived. If those indigenous people already here at that time don't have a legitimate claim to being natives of the region in which they lived, who does?
Exactly the problem with all our culture's politically correct language games, Gunnar. If taken seriously, no one has any claim on any land, territory, or parts of the earth unless one goes back far into prehistoric times in which humans weren't even of the same species as ourselves. As far as recorded human history, virtually everyone has displaced or crowded out someone else at one time or another to establish their homeland or kingdom.
There is also substantial evidence that the Amerindians were never the sole occupants of the Americas, there having been numerous migrations over time from various regions of the world to this continent, none of whom ever put up signs around America saying "keep off the grass."
Except for the fact that "Americans" is probably not actually what they would have preferred to call themselves. I can't imagine that they would have taken any pride in being named after an Italian explorer who was credited with "discovering" the mainland of the "New World"