Video Infoblog; American Holocaust: The Destruction of America's Native Peoples

Introduction

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tonight's speaker will be introduced by Professor Daniel osner he's the Holland

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mctier professor of history of Vanderbilt uh Professor usner is the author of Indian settlers and slaves in

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a frontier exchange economy the Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 it's my pleasure to call upon

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Professor usner to introduce our guest speaker

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thank you sh tonight's speaker in Vanderbilt University's Holocaust lecture series is

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David E Stannard chair of the American studies department at the University of

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Hawaii in 1992 Professor Stannard published a book entitled American Holocaust Columbus and

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the conquest of the new world which undoubtedly qualifies him for this

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year's theme oversights of memory while speakers and writers across

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this nation were celebrating the so-called discovery of America with token recognition of Native

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American suffering and loss Stannard had the audacity to show how Columbus's

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voyages actually launched the violent destruction of indigenous peoples for

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centuries to come while American Holocaust is perhaps

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stannard's best known book to date his publication record reflects a career

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that is as versatile as it is provocative David Stannard received his

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PhD in American studies from Yale University in

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1975 only two years later his first book was published in the Puritan way of

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death a study in religion culture and social change stanner took on nothing

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less than the Theology of colonial new englanders then in 1980 came his next

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book shrinking history on Freud and the failure of psycho

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history where he confronted this time the efficacy of

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psychoanalysis as well as that of psycho history published in

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1989 before the horror the population of Hawaii on the eve of Western contact is

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a sophisticated demographic analysis of the depopulation of native Hawaiians

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caused by European contact which had been underestimated and even minimized for

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all too long in American Holocaust appearing three years later professor standard

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masterfully synthesized huge amounts of historical and archaeological material

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that had already been revising what we know and how we think about conquest of

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the Americas but it took someone with extraordinary vision and passion to

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translate all of that scholarship into a compelling narrative with contemporary

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significance since then another book written by stanard further demonstrated the wide

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range of his inquiry in honor of killing how the infamous Massie Affair transformed

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Hawaii published in 2005 he explored a relatively unknown murder case in order

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to examine white supremacy in mid 20th century America and to explain how

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resistance against it shaped a political revolution in

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Hawaii David stard has taught at Yale University Stanford University and the

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University of Colorado and has been on the faculty of the University of Hawaii

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since 1979 he is the recipient of many honors

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and awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation the Rockefeller foundation and the American

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Council of learned societies throughout his bold Ventures into comparing and connecting the most

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horrible of human experiences Professor stard has impressively endured turf wars

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with early American historians from my field as well as Jewish Holocaust

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Scholars among others in my own teaching of American Indian history I emphasize how although

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teetering on the brink of total Destruction in different places at different times American Indians have

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managed to survive disease defeat disdain and despair by preserving their

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cultural Traditions even political autonomy in some cases and their

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continuing struggles against impoverishment and marginalization against assimilationism

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and racism hold great significance in American hist history as well as in

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global history but it takes a scholar like David Stannard to enrich what he

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calls our necessary comprehension as he wrote in the preface

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to American Holocaust all the ongoing violence against the world's indigenous

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people in whatever form as well as the native people's various forms of

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resistance to that violence will persist beyond our full understanding

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and beyond our ability to engage and humanely come to grips with it until we

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are able to comprehend the magnitude and the causes of the human destruction that

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virtually consumed the people of the Americas and other people in other

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subsequently colonized parts of the globe please join me in welcoming

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Professor David stanard [Applause]

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well thank you Daniel that's uh the most extraordinary introduction I think I've ever had uh not only is it uh

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wonderfully generous um but it's so complete i' had almost forgotten about some of those uh things that I wrote a

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long time ago let me take a a quick Preparatory sip of water so I don't have

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to do it so much while I'm talking it's good to be here despite the weather

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very different from the world that I live in I was telling Daniel and U Shia

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bear that earlier that I had had to do some research for a book I'm working on now and so I had planned this trip um

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with a first stop in Madison Wisconsin uh where I had to go to the archives to look at some stuff because I figured

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Madison will be cold by this time and it would be warm there and I sort of worked my wait to the South where it would be

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uh warm and Madison was beautifully warm and here I am uh I guess we could be in

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Philadelphia I don't know but anyway um again thank you very much and thank all

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of you for being here last spring shyia bear called to ask me if I might be

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interested in speaking at Vanderbilt's Holocaust lecture Series this fall I

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said that I would be honored and we then discussed possible topics he suggested that I revisit a book that I had

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published 16 years ago a book that you've just heard about entitled American

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Holocaust well 16 years is a long time so I asked Shia What specifically he was

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looking for and he said he thought I should address among other things what he call the controversial nature of the

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book's title specifically my use of the word holocaust to describe the

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destruction of tens of millions of lives in North and South America that occurred

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as a consequence of European and American conquest and settlement between

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the 15th and the 19th centuries I agreed and then after we

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hung up I recalled that the exact same question first came up almost 20 years

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ago almost exactly 20 years ago in fact in the fall of 1988 when I sat down over lunch with my

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editor at Oxford University press to discuss their publishing that same book

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although at the time time it was nothing more than a 10 or 15 page proposal Oxford had published two of my

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previous books and my editor Sheldon Meyer told me he was eager to publish this one as

American Holocaust

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well the only problem he said might be my tentative title American Holocaust I

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told Sheldon that I wasn't insistent on the title it was one of several that I had in mind although it did seem to me

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to be appropriate as he knew I was just then finishing a monograph that you've just heard about that I called before

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the horror a monograph for another publisher on the massive population collapse suffered by native Hawaiians

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and other Pacific Islanders in the wake of European and American contact and

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colonization those demographic disasters had been the result almost entirely of introduced

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disease in researching that book I had of necessity done some comparative work

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on the conquest of the Americas focusing especially on the devastating impact of introduced diseases such as small poox

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influenza measles mumps and much more among American Indian populations with

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no previous exposure to them what I inadvertently had found

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however was much more disturbing and that was the horrifying level of deliberate and widespread mistreatment

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enslavement ethnic cleansing and outright Mass Slaughter of native peoples that was recorded on page after

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page in volume after volume of the Settler's own historical Recollections

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and Records to me it appeared to be nothing less than a holocaust and that

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was what I now wanted to write about in this new book but to make this already

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too long story a little bit shorter Sheldon Meyer and I agreed to sign a book contract that day with the

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understanding that the title would be subject to negotiation once the work was complete three years later as scheduled

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I submitted the manuscript in a cover letter I listed some possible alternative

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titles a week or so later I received a phone call from Sheldon a letter was on its way he said detailing some suggested

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changes in the manuscript but one thing was settled the title would be American

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Holocaust there was no question he said that what I had described did indeed constitute a

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holocaust now I'd like to add something here a little digression because that probably is insufficient for some of you

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uh I would think um and what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about something

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that I think was probably implicit in my conversation with Sheldon um which is why we didn't pursue

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it um but something that addresses Shia's question to me more directly

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Holocaust is a very old word dating back to at least the 13th century and

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originally meaning a sacrifice consumed by fire or a burnt offering later

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around the 15th century it began taking on a more General and secular meaning specifically a great Slaughter or

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sacrifice thus in the early 16th century the famous Spanish frier barom deasus

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used the word holocaust to describe the spaniard's ongoing destruction of immense numbers of native people in the

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Caribbean and Latin America Holocaust also was used on various occasions from

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the 16th through the 18th centuries in reference to the m massacres of Irish civilians by English soldiers and

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colonists and among other instances in the late 19th century the word holocaust

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appeared in a New York Times headline above a story describing the slaughter of more than 5,000 Armenians in Eastern

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Turkey part of an ongoing Mass killing campaign there Holocaust again appeared

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repeatedly during World War II as historian Peter Novak has observed in reference and I'm quoting Novak to the

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totality of Destruction wrought by the axis not to the special fate of the Jews

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in fact Novak points out only in the 1960s in the aftermath of the trial in

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Israel of the Nazi criminal Adolf ikan did English language Publications begin

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referring to the Holocaust A Loosely translated reference to the Hebrew word

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Shaw like most people I commonly refer in speaking and writing to the Holocaust

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with exclusive reference to the SL Slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Nazis massive extermination campaign but I

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don't believe it makes sense to expect the word holocaust suddenly to disappear

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from the English language following World War II except with reference to

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the Nazi judeo Side by this same logic we should be prohibited from using the

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word Calamity except with reference to the Armenian Genocide or the 19th century Irish famine Each of which

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killed at least a million people and Each of which has been designated in capital letters and in quotes the great

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Calamity by their victims the same logic would suggest that we strike the word

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devouring from everyday speech since that is the English translation of pus

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the capitalized Rama word for the genocide perpetrated against gypsies by the Nazis other examples of genocide

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victims using a particular word to memorialize their suffering of course abound

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it just doesn't make sense to banish a word from everyday usage because one group or another has adopted it in

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reference to their victimization and no doubt that's why my use of the word holocaust not the

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Holocaust in referring to the destruction of the indigenous peoples in the Americas actually was very little

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remarked upon following the publication of my book much more controversial was my use

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of another word and that word was genocide

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one of the reasons that became controversial is that by employing it I was joining an ongoing debate about the

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uniqueness of the Holocaust I'll talk about that debate and I actually I should as an side here I didn't I really

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didn't discuss that very thoroughly in American Holocaust but I did in a subsequent lengthy essay which I'll get

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to later and I'll talk about that debate the uniqueness debate shortly but first it's important to have some sense of why

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many people who knew nothing about that debate were still instantly resistant to my use of the word the word

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genocide excuse me American Holocaust was published on Columbus Day

Jane Tompkins

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1992 earlier that same year Oxford University press also published a book

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by The prominent literary scholar and cultural critic Jane Tomkins then of Duke University her book was entitled

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west of everything with the West refer refering to the American West it was a

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sweeping and a wide ranging book that included discussions of women in the west white women at least popular

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Western fiction Buffalo Bill and much else even had a separate chapter on

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horses and another separate chapter on cattle only one thing was

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missing Indians the native people of the

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West how could that happen happen Tomkins addressed the question in her

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preface I forgot is what she wrote that's what she said I

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forgot although to be fair she did Express regret for forgetting as she put

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it and I'm quoting her the Indians had been decimated by disease removal and conquest and now I had ignored them so

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she wrote I cried and then she returned to put in the final touches on her

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manuscript I don't recount this story to be critical of Jane Tomkins but rather to suggest that her self-confessed

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memory loss was representative and in some ways perhaps symbolic of the

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attitudes of most Americans and understandably so that's the way it's

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supposed to be consider this in the late 1940s following almost

Liquidation

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three centuries of colonial and then Federal assaults on Indians from mass murder land confiscation ethnic

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cleansing by way of forced removal and then confinement of the small remnant of survivors to what were

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often Barren enclaves known as reservations the American government

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decided to establish an Indian policy it officially called

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liquidation when some people pointed out that in the IM immediate aftermath of World War II that term might suggest

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unsavory connotations the government changed it to

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termination whatever the allegedly fine distinction between those two words the specific words themselves don't matter

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either one was fully appropriate to what was planned the idea behind the new policy

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was to extinguish once and for all everything that was Indian about Indians

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by abolishing their tribes and their treaty relationships while seizing what was left of their land it was to be an

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extermination campaign aign not one aimed at individual lives but at the entirety of these indigenous people's

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greatly varied and distinctive ethnicities nationalities cultures and

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religions all of which are tied to tribal identities and ancestral land

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bases the Indians of course resisted this extermination campaign just as they

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had resisted Invasion and conquest and Annihilation for centuries but in just a

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dozen years we between 1954 and 1966 when the policy itself finally was

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terminated more than a 100 tribes and bands had been dissolved and more than 1.3 million Acres of Indian Land had

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been taken this was on top of the countless other tribes millions of lives

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and two billion acres of land that had been destroyed lost or seized from Indians before the end of the 19th

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century so perhaps it's not surprising that Jane Tompkin forgot about the Indians that was the whole idea and

Christopher Hitchens

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actually by 1992 when American Holocaust was published such forgetfulness was a

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comparatively benign attitude considering how many other historians and pundits preferred to figuratively

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dance on the Indians Graves one culprit among many was

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someone whose name you may know because he's still writing today Christopher

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Hitchens I single him out only because he was not at that time a predictable reactionary but was in one of his

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self-proclaimed leftist phases and still writing as a columnist for the nation as

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Columbus Day Drew near Hitchens briefly acknowledged in his column that American Indians had indeed suffered as the

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euroamerican Empire rolled over them and then he celebrated that historical fact

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charging that those who might L the horrors of the Indians experience were and I'm quoting his words here

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self-hating ridiculous ignorant and Sinister people unable to face the

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simple fact that the massive destruction of technologically backward peoples quote happens to be the way history is

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made Hitchens announced that he for one would celebrate those centuries of horror with great vim and

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Gusto well this is an attitude with a long history and unfortunately a

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widespread and indeed International presence even today perhaps some of you know the name

Benny Morris

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Benny Maris a professor of history at benan University in Israel and a

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prominent author of books on the Israeli Palestinian conflict a few years ago he decided to bring American Indians into

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that discussion in an interview with the distinguished Israeli newspaper haret a

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piece that was entitled survival of the fittest morus was discussing how he recently had come to justify what he

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openly called and I'm quoting him here ethnic cleansing during the 1948

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uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians to establish the Jewish State unquote after all he explained let me

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quote him again you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs even the Great

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American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians there are cases in which the

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overall final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the

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course of history the hrat interviewer described Mars's words as chilling terrible hard

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to listen to he was shocked but he shouldn't have been murderous immorality

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of this sort and the racism that is routinely interlaced with it are commonly encountered in this particular

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intellectual territory they are part of its context and that is because as the

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old cliche has it history is written by The Victors however it's quite a different

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story on those rare occasions when the perpetrators of genocide lose take the most infamous case of all

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Germany in the 1930s and 40s when to adopt Benny Mars's own self-justifying

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terminology the ideology of the Nazi regime perceived an overall final good

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to be derived from what it regarded as the justifiable annihilation of Jews

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Gypsies and others today Germany because the Nazis lost there is no equivalent of

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Christopher Hitchens celebrating the destruction of Jews with great vim and Gusto at least not in the pages of one

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of that country's oldest and most liberal and respected magazines on the contrary to deny the very existence of

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the Holocaust in Germany is a criminal offense that can lead to imprisonment as it can in other European countries as

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well moreover Germany is home to at least eight major Holocaust memorials or

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Museum among more than 60 similar institutions throughout the world including a dozen

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or so in the United States and this is as it should be but where in Germany is

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the memorial to say the Herrero people the Herrero are one of several

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National and ethnic groups in Southwest Africa who also felt Germany's genocidal

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wrath but decades before the Holocaust at the turn of the 20th century by the

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time time the killing ended 2third of the natives of that region had been wiped out by the Germans exterminated

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although the total number killed was Far lower than the Holocaust this was roughly the same rate of EX

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extermination as the one suffered by European Jews during the 1930s and 40s

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moreover in the midst of the killing in 1906 a German military commander

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published a book that justified the slaughter as necessary for attainment of what Benny moris so cheerfully later

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called the overall final good and like marus a century later he used the United

The Final Good

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States treatment of American Indians as a touch Zone this process he wrote referring to the extermination of what

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he called the weak and purposeless Africans and I'm quoting him here is

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played out elsewhere and in a variety of ways such as for example in the elimination of the American Indians

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because they were without purpose in the continued development of the world unquote they were without purpose note

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the Casual past tense in referring to the millions of native people who once lived in North America alone to say

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nothing of the vastly greater numbers who had lived in Mexico and Central and South America but who by that time in

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North America had been reduced in number by more than 90% to several hundred

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thousand an American president of that same era expressed much the same sentiment and with equal s

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satisfaction he began with a comment about one particular unprovoked late 19th century raid by US soldiers on an

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Indian Community in Colorado a raid planned specifically for a time when all

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the young Indian men would be away hunting so there would only be unarmed women children and old men in the

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village as the troops approached on Horseback the Indians waved to welcome them and the elders held a light a large

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white flag aoft a short time later hundreds of Indians

Aftermath

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almost everyone in the village lay dead in the aftermath according to subsequent

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accounts of the soldiers themselves they went systematically from body to body scalping and mutilating the

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dead castrating the corpses of old men and small boys let me let me just quote a snippet

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of one soldier's lengthy testimony before the United States Congress and many of them testified

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quote the men used their knives he said ripped open women clubbed little

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children beat their brains out in numerous instances men cut out the private parts of females and stretched

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them over their saddle bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks one man cut a squaws heart out and

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stuck it up on a stick when asked about this ghastly event president Theodore Roosevelt a

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Nobel PRI Peace Prize winner said it was as righteous and beneficial a deed as

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ever took place on the frontier later referring to the overall long history of the destruction of the

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American Indians Roosevelt dismissed any possible concerns by saying that the Indians were quote an alien race that

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held a coveted prize in its feeble grasp unquote that prize was land and the

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Americans wanted it therefore the Indians Annihilation the president concluded was both I'm quoting him again

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beneficial and inevitable today in the post Holocaust

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era such racist and genocidal boastfulness usually is frowned upon at least in polite company in its place

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especially on the international stage is the Silence Of Denial The Silence of Belgium is an

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example home to an acclaimed Museum of African history and culture a museum that until very recently made no mention

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anywhere of the horrors of the Congo where more than 8 million Africans perished under the bloodthirsty colonial

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rule of belgians King Leopold or the denial of turkey over complicity in the

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Armenian Genocide or Japan over culpability for the so-called rape of Nang King and on and on and on there are

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various reasons and rationalizations behind such efforts to ignore or deny the existence of genocides or to

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systematically minimize their magnitude national pride and its flip side

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potential National shame is one reason of course but one nation's genocidal

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denial frequently is aided and embedded by A Chorus of support from others

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political allies around the world thus one reason turkey has been able to remain so adamant in its

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official denial of the Armenian Genocide is support for this denial by the governments of the United States and

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Israel both of them fearful of damaging bilateral trade and diplomatic

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relationships with turkey in the opposite Spirit of denial

Never Forget

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that is the spirit of never forget there is a wall in the United States Holocaust

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Memorial Museum inscribed with a warning something Adolf Hitler reportedly said

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one day in 1939 on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland it's a famous phrase

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who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the

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Armenians more apt then on this day I believe nearly 70 years later is another

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question who after the crushing of Nazi Germany in 1945 could have imagined that the United

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States and Israel of all countries would help to perpetuate that convenient forgetfulness about the annihilation of

29:50

the Armenians and with it Hitler's murderous cynicism on into the 21st

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century indeed it was only a half dozen years ago that the current president of Israel Shimon Perez declared the

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Armenian gen Armenian genoside to be historically

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meaningless this prompted a particularly angry reply from within Israel by a man

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named Israel Charney the executive director of The Institute on the Holocaust and genocide in

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Jerusalem in a letter to Paris Charney wrote that Paris had quote gone beyond a moral boundary that no Jew should ever

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allow himself to trespass adding that specific remarks on the Armenian Genocide being meaningless

30:35

were comparable to denials of the Holocaust this sort of statement is not

Holocaust Denial

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unusual for Israel charning for many years he is ferociously fought back against the evil of Holocaust denial

30:47

while at the same time resisting efforts to set the Holocaust apart as in his words I'm quoting him the ultimate event

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against which all other tragedies of genocide a genocidal Mass death are to be tested

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and invariably found wanting for me he writes the passion to

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exclude this or that mass killing from the universe of genocide as well as the intense competition to establish the

31:14

exclusive superiority or unique form of any one genocide ends up creating a

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fetishistic atmosphere in which the masses of bodies that are not to be qualified for the definition of genocide

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are dumped into a conceptual black hole where they are forgotten unquote which

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finally brings me back to the genocidal destruction of North and South America's native people and the strong resistance

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by some commentators to my use of the word genocide in describing that

31:44

destruction commentators like the recently convicted felon Senator Ted

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Stevens who threatened to use his considerable power to cut off funding of the Smithsonian institution if it used

31:57

the word genocide as it had planned to do in a documentary film on the destruction of the America's native

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people commentators in short who would prefer that those millions of bodies

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remain buried and forgotten in charney's conceptual black hole for those of you unfamiliar with

32:16

the story of what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas during the course of four long centuries

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from Columbus's first landing at Hispanola in 1492 to the massacre at Wounded in December of

32:29

1890 or over the course of five centuries if we bring accounts forward to the US supported genocide in

32:36

Guatemala during the 1980s and Beyond I must confess that it is impossible for

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me here tonight to describe specific events in any detail that's what I did

32:47

over the course of several hundred pages in American Holocaust and even then I barely scratched the surface of what in

32:53

North America alone began with a deliberate calculated extermination of the Indians of Virginia in the 17th

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century what Yale genocide scholar Ben Kieran recently described as genocide on

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the carthaginian model so total was the destruction to the state and federally

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financed Mass killing of 60% of California's Indians in just eight years

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in the middle of the 19th century for what happened on other blood soaked soil

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during the two centuries in between these genocides I'm sorry I lost my place I'm afraid

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you'll have to read American Holocaust or some of the more recent works that I will mention

33:36

later let me just say for the moment however that the claim of euroamerican

33:41

genocide as one of the primary agents responsible for the deaths of millions of indigenous people throughout the

33:47

Western Hemisphere was hardly original with me in fact the first person to make

33:52

that case was the very man who coined the word genocide and who Rel relentlessly and heroically pressed the

33:59

United Nations to declare it an international crime a law professor and

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a polish jew who had lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust rapael lpin

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it's commonly thought that in his efforts to name and define genocide as a crime Lin was F focused exclusively on

34:18

the then ongoing extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany and this is incorrect Recent research in the lypin

Lemkin Archives

34:25

archives at New York's American Jewish Historical Society the New York Public Library and the Marcus center of the

34:31

American Jewish archives in Cincinnati has revealed the existence of detailed manuscript writings from the

34:38

1940s in which Lyin obviously preparing at least one book on genocide probably

34:44

more left numerous folders filed under what he regarded as a variety of genocidal events in history including

34:52

and the titles are his quote Spanish treatment of South American Indians

34:57

North American Indians colon extermination history of genocide

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projected book on North American Indian research and much more in a 1948 report

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to a foundation that was supporting his work Lin listed what he called 10 specific genocide cases this the phrase

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he used on which he was compiling information and I quote to be made available to the United Nations drafting

35:22

committee on genocide one of those 10 cases is labeled the Indians in Latin

35:27

America another is the Indians in North America and then finally in the 1950s

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Lin's archives reveal still more folders bulging with information on these subjects including the draft of a 100

35:40

page essay on genocide against Indians one that includes sections on their incarceration in what he calls

35:46

concentration camps he was of course referring to reservations by the late 1950s Lyin had

35:53

almost completed a massive book on genocide in world history the entire third section of which was to

Genocide in World History

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be given over to genocides in colonial settings with separate chapter titles listed on genocide against the American

36:07

Indians Latin America genocide against the Aztecs the Yucatan genocide against

36:14

the Incas and then on to European genocides against the natives of New Zealand Australia Southwest Africa and

36:22

more but in 1959 Lin died of a heart attack in a hotel room in New York City

36:28

he was not yet 60 years old the book was unfinished but even if it had been

36:34

completed it probably never would have been published because by then a new Orthodoxy was beginning to take hold in

36:41

the United States and elsewhere when that viewed the Holocaust as a singular unique genocidal event in world history

36:48

to some proponents of this idea the Holocaust was not only the preeminent genocide it was the only

36:55

genocide whereas Lyin apparently felt that acknowledging the suffering of others had no bearing on the recognition

37:01

of One's Own painful experience some among this new generation regarded the Holocaust as moral Capital I'm sorry I

Moral Capital

37:09

mumbled that moral Capital to cite one representative writer moral Capital that risked being

37:16

plundered by others who sought acknowledgment of their own horrific experiences in this emerging climate of

37:23

opinion authors who chose to utter even mildly critical comments about ask aspects of the new Orthodoxy including

37:29

such distinguished Jewish political theorists and historians as Han arant and Ral hilberg found themselves being

37:36

abused in print and blackballed for expressing their points of view for the better part of three decades this sort

37:43

of exclusivist thinking dominated scholarly discussion about the Holocaust so much so in fact that in the early

37:50

1990s the distinguished Princeton historian arnno J mayor himself a Jew

37:56

found his classes being Bo Bo cotted by Jewish students and his name placed in a Rogues gallery of so-called H Hitler

38:03

apologists published by the Anti-Defamation League Hitler apologists why because in a book

38:11

entitled why did the heavens not darken mayor had dared to criticize what he saw

38:16

as two camps of historical extremists in his words and I'm quoting

38:22

him those two camps were revisionists who categorically deny the Deo side and

38:29

dogmatists who seek to reify and sacralize the Holocaust in this latter Camp were

38:35

numerous prominent Scholars who vigorously condemned anyone who dared to engage in comparative genocide research

38:43

research wrote One such author that might taint the Holocaust by including it as merely and I'm quoting one among

38:50

an array of other conflagrations in which Innocents were massacred unquote the Holocaust is unique

The Holocaust

38:58

it stands alone nothing can be compared with it so said those Scholars Professor mayor had

39:05

criticized as Holocaust dogmatists indeed according to historian Steven

39:10

tatz writing in the 1990s the Holocaust not only is unique it is the only true

39:16

genocide that has ever occurred thus when asked in 1994 what he thought of

39:22

the recent and ongoing mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda Katz replied that the

39:27

Bosnia situation was merely and I quote a population transfer supported by

39:32

violence unquote while the slaughter of 800,000 people over the course of three months in Rwanda was he said not

39:40

genocidal but simply a struggle for tribal domination the strong influence of this

39:47

line of thinking throughout much of the world of genocide scholarship at that time not only served to sacralize the

39:53

Holocaust as mayor had put it it also intentionally or not provided a cover of pseudo respectability for those very

40:00

secular political forces throughout the world including the United States turkey and elsewhere that were interest

40:06

interested in denying genocides that had occurred in their own backyards this was the generally

40:14

prevailing opinion on the matter when American Holocaust was published in

The Genocide Forum

40:19

1992 but by the mid 1990s times were changing again among other things in the

40:26

wake of the Colombian Quint Centennial a City University of New York historian named Henry huttenbach began to

40:33

privately publish a small circulation newsletter called the genocide Forum

40:38

huttenbach a specialist in the Holocaust Germany and the Soviet Union staked out a position far different from that held

40:45

by Katz and his supporters if anything in certain respects it appeared more closely aligned with the thinking of

40:51

such people as Israel Charney and his Jerusalem Institute on the Holocaust and genocide in the very first issue of the

40:58

genocide Forum huttenbach wrote that the narrowly exclusive focus on the Holocaust of far too many genocide

41:05

Scholars was inevitably leading to what he called a stifling intellectual parochialism and the dead end of

41:12

antiquarianism he called instead for a vigorous collaboration among a wide range of genocide Scholars to explore

41:19

what might be learned from an aggressively comparative study of this horrific phenomenon specifically citing

41:25

as clear examples of genocide deserving of more study the killing of Roma by the Third Reich the slaughter of indigenous

41:32

people in South America and the recent mass murders in Bosnia and Rwanda all of

41:38

these were incidents that Steven Katz and others had flatly rejected as actual

41:43

genocides then huton buuk took direct aim by way of a scathing review of Katz's New 700 page Opus a book entitled

41:50

The Holocaust in historical context that relentlessly Advanced the Holocaust exclusivist line Catz did his own

41:58

reputation no favors by replying immediately with an intemperate and wildly ad hominum attack saying that

42:04

huttenbach and I'm quoting would have made a good editor of D sturmer unquote

42:10

the most famous and vile anti-semitic propaganda publication of the Nazis a publication whose actual editor was

42:17

executed by the Allies after being convicted of crimes against humanity at the nberg

42:23

trials clearly by this time if nothing else things were heating up in the little world of genocide

42:29

scholarship next out of the box in 1995 was a book of essays edited by Alan S

42:36

rosenbalm entitled is the Holocaust unique that volume contained pieces on

42:42

the noxi Nazi extermination campaign against gypsies the Atlantic slave trade

42:47

The Armenian Genocide the stalinist terror famine the case of the American Indians and others including of course

42:53

the Holocaust Steven Katz wrote the essay on the Holocaust and I wrote the one on American Indians the entire

43:00

Affair became something of a colorful if minor academic Scandal when one of the authors me received a misaddressed fact

43:09

revealing that the editor of the book had been sending the other contributors essays to his friend Professor Katz so

43:15

that he might anticipate and deal with their arguments in his own essay Katz also was serving as something of a ghost

43:21

editor recommending to rosenbalm deletions in some essays including mine that were critical of C in his work now

The Chronicle of Higher Education

43:29

if all of this sounds to some of you at least some of you who are professors as the sort of academic comedy we all get a

43:35

get a laugh over when we read about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education perhaps that's because the Chronicle of

43:40

Higher Education did do a rather large albeit poorly reported story on the controversy For Better or Worse however

43:47

this little Tempest did bring outside attention to bear on what was becoming an otherwise Arcane academic dispute and

43:55

conveniently a dispute that that moment finally was reaching consensus on one essential point that consensus the one

44:04

thing that almost everyone now agreed upon even Steven Katz and me was that if the Holocaust was to be shown as unique

44:11

beyond the trivial ways in which all major historical events possess unique characteristics it would have to be

44:18

based on the matter of demonstrated genocidal intent by the perpetrator not

44:23

on the magnitude of a particular Slaughter the percentage of people killed the speed of the killing or

44:29

anything else because it had by that time been fully demonstrated that in each of these categories other groups of

44:36

genocide victims from the very distant to the very recent past had equal or stronger claim to the dubious mantle of

44:44

most extreme victimhood alas however as by now you might have guessed what happened this

44:50

consensus only led to some further dispute this time specifically regarding

44:56

the definition of the word intent now although this may sound to

45:01

some of you at least those of you who aren't lawyers as legalistic hair s splitting in fact how we Define

45:08

genocidal intent is a very serious matter indeed one that not infrequently in contemporary criminal cases tried

45:15

before the international criminal court involves matters of life and death unfortunately the time available to me

45:21

tonight I'm already running a little bit over time I think the time available to me tonight doesn't permit a foray into

45:28

this definitional Thicket to do so adequately require adequately would

45:33

require another entire lecture on such matters as the meanings and in practice the limitations of such terms as

45:40

specific intent General intent and more recently joint criminal Enterprise or

45:48

jce joint let me a little aside joint criminal Enterprise is an intent related

45:53

concept that has been proposed as a way of dealing with the extraordinary difficulty to date of getting

45:58

convictions in the international criminal court although some critics regard the concept as so expansive that

46:05

they suggest the letters jce more properly reflect an attitude of just convict

46:10

everyone and as an aside and something you might think about uh having somebody to speak here if she's still here I

46:16

don't know this person um but um I might add that you have a professor in your

46:22

own law school here who's an expert on jce and other related matters her name is Allison Marston

Antidefamation League

46:28

Danner without the luxury of a second entire lecture on the problems of defining intent then let me simply

46:35

assure you that the fine points of Distinction among various ways of calculating genocidal intent in

46:40

contemporary human rights cases provide no impediment to the overpowering case that now exists for recognizing genocide

46:48

as a driving force in the euroamerican conquest of the Americas or other previously disputed

46:55

genocides for that matter last year even the Anti-Defamation League which you will recall once called

47:02

historian Arnold mayor a Hitler apologist for rejecting the uniqueness of the Holocaust even the ADL has now

47:10

acknowledged that the Armenian the Armenians did indeed suffer a

47:15

genocide for the any of you suggest interested in pursuing these questions further I have some suggestions some

Journal of Genocide Research

47:23

students perhaps might willing to follow up on this first you'll recall a name I mention mentioned a few minutes ago

47:28

Henry huttenbach who in the early 1990s founded the modest newsletter he called

47:34

the genocide Forum a newsletter that he wrote entirely himself uh and that took

47:39

part of its charge as part of its charge the reputation of the concept of Holocaust uniqueness or

47:45

exclusivity well in the late 1990s huttenbach established a much more ambitious publication the Journal of

47:51

genocide research which is now arguably grown to be the leading journal in its

47:57

field it has attracted an extraordinarily accomplished array of Scholars from throughout the world

48:02

highly sophisticated specialists in the history of genocide on every continent of particular interest to many of these

48:08

Scholars even those such as Dirk Moses and Norbert Finch and Dominic schaer and

48:14

Jurgen zimmerer whose principal expertise rests in German history and the Holocaust among their interests is

48:22

is also a concern with the legacy of Raphael Lin and his interest in the numerous genocides that have been

48:29

perpetrated against indigenous peoples the matter of genocidal intent I might add is addressed in a number of essays

48:35

in this journal moreover in addition to a decade's worth of extensive collected writings on this topic and others in the

48:42

Journal of genocide research including a recent special issue on Lyin that explores his research on genocide

48:49

against indigenous peoples and settler colonies in the past four years Durk Moses at the University of Sydney has

48:55

edited three major books on this subject carrying the titles genocide and settler Society published in 2004 colonialism

49:03

and genocide 2007 an Empire Colony genocide just published a few months ago

49:09

in 2008 collectively they contain dozens of penetrating essays on Colonial

49:14

genocide in North and South America Australia Africa Indonesia and elsewhere

49:20

as well as extremely important new work on theoretical questions in genocide research including some explorations of

49:27

whether or not settler colonies may be inherently genocidal at the same time there's been

Genocide and Settlers Society

49:34

an outpouring of new and path-breaking scholarship by others such as Mark Lavine of the University of Southampton

49:40

on the parks Institute for the study of Jewish non-jewish relations who in 2005

49:46

published the first two volumes of a major and still developing project entitled genocide in the age of the

49:51

nation state last year meanwhile Ben Kieran who I mentioned earlier the found founding director of the genocide

49:58

studies program at Yale published his massive book Blood and soil a world

50:03

history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to darur a volume which

50:08

devotes fully a third of its pages to the Spanish conquest of the new world as well as genocides perpetrated against

50:14

indigenous peoples under regimes of so settler colonialism in such places as

50:20

16th century Ireland 19th century Australia and Africa and North America

50:25

from the dawn of the 1600 to the close of the 19th century there's even an excellent textbook now available

50:32

entitled genocide a comprehensive introduction by Adam Jones a portion of which explores in detail the theoretical

50:39

and substantive arguments leading to the inescapable conclusion that the native people of the Americas were indeed

50:46

victims of genocide in short although it has been a contentious passage from the

50:51

publication of American Holocaust 16 years ago down to the present there there really is no longer much question

50:58

as to what the proper term should be for the euphemism of American expansion the phrase that most of us

51:05

learned in our high school and college history classes it was indeed euroamerican

51:10

expansionism that made the United States what it is today but expansionism so bloody that it worked hand and glove

51:18

with genocide as it made its way across the continent if we are now as a nation

51:24

edging closer to a widespread recognition of that reality however another critical task lies

The Wreckage

51:31

ahead the American Holocaust is a matter of history but the wreckage that it

51:37

caused remains vividly evident among many of its survivors descendants today

51:43

from the desert Southwest of a of Arizona to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Beyond many American Indian

51:50

communities barely survive Meed in poverty and despair that has little

51:56

equal except in some of the world's most desperately impoverished so-called third world countries alcoholism diabetes and

52:04

suicide rates are Skyhigh while infant mortality and life expectancy rates at

52:09

places like Pine Ridge reservation are as bad as in Haiti and some of the poorest countries of Africa at the

Racism Kills

52:17

University of Hawaii I teach a course on race and racism and one of the central things I try to make clear is that

52:24

racism kills it's it's not just American Indians lowincome black men have a

52:31

median life expectancy roughly 10 years below the national average multiply those 10 years by the

52:38

number of lowincome black males in a single generation and the result is the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of

52:45

lifetimes that should have been lived but that weren't and it's not just the poverty

52:52

racism as an agent unto itself is a killer Recent research initiated by a

52:58

group of physicians in Chicago is showing that college educated middleclass black women give birth to

53:05

premature and dangerously underweight babies at almost three times the rate of

53:10

comparably educated and situated white women in America I should note that

53:15

pre-term birth not only is a leading cause of death in infants but those who

53:21

survive face a high probability of lifetimes damaged by learning disabilities hypertension diabetes and

53:29

coronary artery disease so This research since this research controls for differences in

53:35

education and income all the indicators point to extreme stress as the primary

53:41

cause of this Health crisis the stress of Simply living day to day as a black

53:47

woman regardless of social class in a deeply racist Society of course what I'm

53:53

talking about here regarding African-Americans is the pathological residue of centuries of slavery Jim Crow

54:01

and ongoing institutional racial discrimination today the same imposed pathologies are

54:08

insidiously at work in many American Indian communities and the Damage being done is

54:16

heartbreaking thus while it is essential that we as a nation face up to the genocidal realities of our past that's

54:23

only the beginning the simmering bigotry and malign neglect of the present

54:29

contined to kill those people among us whose ancestors first settled this land

54:35

thousands and thousands of years ago it's way past time for the nation as a

54:40

whole and for all of us to begin repairing that terrible damage thank

54:52

you I got through the whole thing without water pretty good

55:11

um so I guess as a as a historian maybe it's not your it is your job I suppose

55:16

to document Holocaust and genocide um and perhaps not to address the causes

55:24

but would you comment about that for example uh some people think that with the world getting more and more populated we may

55:31

have reached a sensible bound of the number of people that can live with a

55:37

given amount of resources and live in harmony that things could get worse other people think that uh We've to some

55:45

extent overcome our DNA Tendencies and things may get better do you have a

55:50

projection and any comment on the causes well um a couple of things one

55:56

first of all I noticed that in the uh uh I got the program uh for the year and I noticed that it uh indicates uh and I

56:03

got this after I had already prepared my talk that it refers to the fact that in

56:08

American Holocaust I talk about um Christianity as a driving force I

56:14

believe uh uh Christianity not just not necessarily not entirely um uh as in its

56:22

theoretic um theoretical form um but um

56:27

as it was interpreted and used down through the centuries and as it merged with an emerging uh Western cultural

56:36

framework uh I think was intensely intensely important in uh

56:44

the destruction that happened throughout North and South America and all you have to do is read the

56:49

justifications from by the Spaniards uh by the Puritans um one of the quotations

56:55

I was going to use in my talk that I uh left out because the talk was already getting too long uh was William Bradford

57:02

uh the first governor of Plymouth Colony uh uh who didn't use the word holocaust

57:08

to describe um what what the Puritans had done to a group of Indians uh the

57:14

Pats but his description uh a lush Rich description

57:20

of how wonderfully they had burned them and how the lives of all these people were being extinguished in the fires uh

57:27

of the Puritans assault so much so that their blood obviously some literary

57:33

license here their blood was extinguishing the Flames uh that engulfed them um is a is an incredible

57:41

statement really of Holocaust but of a religious interpretation of the genocide

57:46

that was being perpetrated so I think there is a cultural as well as you're you're talking really about uh much more

57:53

material uh causes um environment Al reasons and so on so forth but I think

57:58

there's a cultural religious um design behind a lot of genocides as well I also

58:05

think and I'm really not by no means an expert on the uh the the environmental

58:10

conditions that you're talking about the population statistics and so on so forth um I know the world is being

58:17

overpopulated and so on so forth but I can recall the debates in the

58:22

1970s um between um let's see who were they Paul erlick was one who wrote a book called the population bomb some of

58:29

you are old enough to remember this uh I hope um uh and um what was his name uh

58:36

Barry commoner uh who was a Critic of Paul erck uh who was also a student uh

58:43

of the environment and commoner's argument was that actually it's not the

58:48

numbers of people that are the problem it's the distribution of resources that's the problem and he felt that

58:53

actually with a decent distribution of resources we're a long way away from really necessarily being an overcrowded

59:01

planet um which doesn't mean that one in a particular situation cannot interpret

59:09

the immediate situation as being one uh in which more land is needed laban's

59:15

realm uh in the case the the infamous case or as Theodore roselt said and I

59:21

mentioned in my talk um that the Indians had something that we wanted which was

59:26

the land so I'm I guess I'm not um I I I don't think that we are

59:35

necessarily at a point now or in the near future where overcrowding where

59:40

simple numbers of people uh would um would would would generate genocide but

59:47

any given situations can be interpreted Any Which Way by people so um I'm sure

59:53

we will see more if we didn't it would be for the first

59:59

time in a couple of thousand years any

1:00:11

else wow pull up that

1:00:20

microphone okay

1:00:30

that's a very unpopular phrase in some circles these days you know

1:00:46

right right

1:01:21

right C

1:01:41

yeah well of course the ultimate the ultimate example of that again uh was uh

1:01:46

the Nazis slave camps um working people to death but in the Americas although I

1:01:53

mean there's a there's a a lot of distinctions from one place to another distinctions from even parts of the

1:02:01

Northeast uh or the Southwest or or so on but particularly there are there's a

1:02:06

major clear distinction I think between the Spanish genocide and the British

1:02:13

genocide that is the genocide that took place in the Caribbean and in South

1:02:18

America and the one that took place in North America um in North America it

1:02:24

there were no resources es there were were was to be mined uh really um what

1:02:32

there was was land and the Indians were to be pushed off of the land not

1:02:37

necessarily to be exterminated um but if they chose not to go easily then to be

1:02:44

exterminated um whereas in South America there were massive resources that the

1:02:51

Spanish were after and in Peru for example um the there were incredible

1:02:56

Silver Mines um in which the they they simply enslaved thousands upon thousands

1:03:03

upon thousands of people drove them off the land um and just used them up life

1:03:08

expectancy at one the most infamous of the Silver Mines was estimated by the Spanish at something around 6 months uh

1:03:16

once the once the the Indians were enslaved and and put down into the mines to go to work so yeah I'm sure there are

1:03:24

many examples uh of of precisely that sort of thing now the

1:03:30

justification again ever since my first book that was

1:03:36

mentioned earlier here about the P the purit in way of death which is really about um um Protestant theology uh and

1:03:43

the way it played itself out I believe uh in certain social functioning

1:03:50

um one of the things that always troubled me about um studying the p even

1:03:56

as a graduate student um I don't know how many of you here are students of early American history is the assumption

1:04:04

that historians have that in Pur to New England everybody was imbued with and

1:04:12

infused with this um this theology in fact a relative Elite really understood

1:04:19

what was going on in the theological teachings um people you they knew the

1:04:25

ritual they knew what they were supposed to be doing so they did learn the um the processes the basic things that

1:04:32

they had to know but they were not necessarily I don't believe um being

1:04:38

driven by the same theological intensity that the priesthood was that the elites

1:04:44

were and I think that's true all over the place I think it's we to do is look at the uh rates of illegitimacy in Rome

1:04:52

uh around the corner from the Vatican um uh to see that um but I think it was certainly true

1:04:58

among uh Spaniards in South America and in Mexico they were they were always

1:05:03

accompanied by priests and the priests were justifying in their writings um these Horrors that were being

1:05:10

perpetrated but in fact The Men Who were doing most of the killing to the extent

1:05:16

that they wrote anything at all and some of them did said that no it's the money if we're after the money uh they had no

1:05:22

intention of wanting to stay again unlike the British s in New England and Virginia who came most of them at least

1:05:30

after the first uh first few first generation who came to stay and to

1:05:36

settle the Spanish had no intention most of the Spaniard had no intention of settling they came to get money the

1:05:42

money was being the the resources the gold the silver and so on was being shipped back to Spain and then they

1:05:48

wanted to return to Spain Rich landlords and live out uh their lives there so um

1:05:54

yeah again the the the motivations are different in many cases and the one that you're addressing certainly I think is a

1:06:00

common one yeah yeah I don't know let's give it a

1:06:08

shot that one I think

1:06:17

[Music] does uh I would like first this I will

1:06:22

come back to the to the word holocaust as you defined at the beginning of your

1:06:29

talk I want to share with you just a small uh event I had I had a

1:06:35

correspondence about the program of our Holocaust series with person who is in

1:06:44

fact the cousin of primoli uh my friend vtor luati is a

1:06:51

very well-known scientist and he was the C of

1:06:56

primi he has really opposed to the extension in my correspondence with him

1:07:04

to the extension of Holocaust to some of the events we report in this program for

1:07:11

instance I was uh introducing the lecture about Spain and

1:07:17

the Holocaust and I was not at ease myself with the title and I will tell you why

1:07:24

with American Holocaust I feel the same as Victor luati feels uh when you when

1:07:32

there is the second title the destruction of America's native peop

1:07:38

seems much more adapted to me and without going to I will say semantics I

1:07:45

want just to ask you the following question I'm Spanish for

1:07:51

origin uh the conquest of

1:07:56

the Americans by the Spanish brought with them people like B de

1:08:04

lasos uh I think I will not Define to the people but certainly you are aware

1:08:10

of who was Bas he was a priest who took the sight of the Indians to the point

1:08:18

that all his life he was fighting for this idea being a little pushed apart by

1:08:26

the order itself of I think he was a Dominican if I am right he was put aside

1:08:33

but he continued all his life claiming that there was a destruction of the

1:08:40

people byid so what I want to ask you the following can a b lascas exist under the

1:08:50

Nazi regime was it possible even can we conceive this is concern of somebody

1:08:58

inside of the Nazi party claiming we are too harsh with the Jewish people that's

1:09:06

where I will push the definition much more than in semantics where you have

1:09:11

stated very beautifully what Holocaust means exactly much it seems to me that

1:09:19

the Nazi regime who has produced the Jewish Holocaust has been responsible

1:09:25

had no possibility to have a Bas or a s if I can say sagun was the

1:09:35

man of frer again who translated the astec to Spanish nowadays we will not

1:09:42

know anything about the astec language if not of his contribution making a

1:09:48

diction picture that's what I wanted to share with you and saying of course that

1:09:54

I'm who interested in what you say but maybe it's important don't leave the microphone have this don't don't leave

1:10:00

the microphone yet cuz I want to ask no can you stay I just okay um one one

1:10:06

thing um just for the record that's interesting about laskasas who is a

1:10:12

person and I can't pronounce his name as beautifully as you do um uh who is one

1:10:17

of my heroes to some extent um on the other hand he did

1:10:24

propose that there we that there was there was no necessity for enslaving the

1:10:29

Indians because we could bring over Africans so this was not somebody who in

1:10:34

a trans in in in who who who embraced all of the people of the world as people

1:10:40

uh who uh should not be enslaved and not be oppressed um but put that aside

1:10:46

that's not the question you asked really uh I am not an expert on the Holocaust I

1:10:51

don't pretend to be um I'll defer to anybody here uh who can answer that

1:10:57

question my assumption is that your assumption is correct um and that is

1:11:03

that no I don't think uh uh laskasas Al laskasas could have existed uh in Nazi

1:11:10

Germany and survived you're absolutely correct and not only in Nazi Germany but

1:11:16

within the reach of Nazi Germany um I'm not

1:11:22

sure how that specifically addresses is the word holocaust um I I I am not at all um soft

1:11:35

pedaling what happened in in Europe in 19 the 1930s and the 1940s um it was

1:11:43

ghastly it was horrendous I'm not I'm not um somebody who wants to somehow

1:11:49

marginalize or reduce the impact of that horror or that Terror by speaking of

1:11:56

others um I'm on the contrary and this is part

1:12:01

of what I was talking about here today I'm concerned that a kind of reverse

1:12:08

Holocaust denial takes place among people who claim only one genocide

1:12:15

really matters in human history and the others well we can find a place for them we can rank them they were terrible

1:12:22

maybe they were maybe it was ethnic cleansing maybe it was a kind of lower level level genocide or something um I

1:12:29

along with people like Israel Charney who I I don't know if you know his work any of you uh is a is a very

1:12:34

controversial person in Israel um but I and he and I have corresponded and

1:12:41

disagreed about things um but I tend overall to agree with him that there

1:12:46

really is this is not a zero sum game where there's only so much uh compassion to go

1:12:54

around um we we don't have to elevate one people's experience and seal it off

1:13:02

from everybody else in order to maintain compassion uh and understanding for

1:13:07

those Horrors I think I think we're human beings and we we're big enough to understand that there were that that

1:13:15

that this is one of the worst things perhaps the worst thing that human beings have ever done to themselves and

1:13:22

they do it and do it and do it and they have done it and have done it and have done

1:13:27

it I as I said in my talk referred to the Holocaust only with reference to the

1:13:35

Nazis destruction of the Jews I don't refer to the Holocaust in any other way

1:13:42

but don't believe that we can take the word out of circulation with a lower

1:13:47

case h that's all so go ahead sorry I what no I didn't want to interrupt you

1:13:53

one certainly can ask had in the in the 1940

1:13:59

1945 Holocaust the Gypsy yes because it was the same idea to eradicate

1:14:07

right the community of gypsies is less abundant but this doesn't make any

1:14:14

difference right but but again the gypsies have their own name for that that's right

1:14:20

that's right uh and so uh and and and and they they tend just I I don't you

1:14:26

know again I only know one or two uh Rama people uh who write about this and

1:14:31

who think about this um but they tend not to associate themselves under the

1:14:37

Holocaust they also essentially defer and say the Holocaust is what happened to the Jews we have our own term for

1:14:45

that I I agree with you however and I must say and this is a judgment call on

1:14:50

a lot of things that the word holocaust is used to the point of triviality in

1:14:56

many many many cases uh and um where we draw the line and whether I was correct

1:15:03

or incorrect in drawing the line where I did is something we can maybe agreed to disagree

1:15:13

about no okay um so you said at one point that uh that the American

1:15:20

Holocaust is is an event of the past but the wreckage from it is something that we're still dealing with today and I'm

1:15:25

just wondering if maybe I can um like push you on that a little bit because I'm wondering if if maybe it's it's the

1:15:32

case that it actually is something that still persists um in the sense that not

1:15:37

you know we don't see government forces going out and slaughtering and a physical sense um indigenous communities

1:15:43

but in a way um we uh we've seen

1:15:49

colonialism works so well that now there doesn't need to be the forces going out and doing it we've actually made it so

1:15:55

communities are very very good at kind of Exterminating themselves um especially I'm thinking in terms of

1:16:01

North American Reserve communities that have the highest rates of violence and suicide alcoholism drug dependency um

1:16:08

incredibly low literacy rates and also kind of just the widespread ability of

1:16:14

like mainstream political Society to make all of those things invisible to us so that they don't come up um so that we

1:16:20

don't actually talk about them so that we can talk about race and racism without actually talking about

1:16:25

indigenous people at all and so I'm wondering if maybe you'd be willing to say that it's still going on or if

1:16:30

there's a particular reason in why you think that it stopped um again feel free

1:16:36

to stay with the microphone if you want I don't know if everybody's wants to leave you want to hear those conversation but um I would take issue

1:16:42

just with one thing that you said and it may have just been a term that you you would not maybe perhaps have wanted to

1:16:48

use or maybe you do um you suggested that somehow or other the system had

1:16:54

become so efficient I think that's not your word or your phrase but that the

1:16:59

people were doing it to themselves that were destroying themselves and to me

1:17:04

that's edging very close to blaming the victims um ultimately they're not doing it to themselves even those who are

1:17:10

committing suicide I think are not doing it to themselves um so there's again

1:17:18

that's a fine point I think but in saying that what I'm really saying is that I agree with you um that yes

1:17:25

this has become a kind of machine that goes of itself in the same way that we

1:17:31

can have deeply racist Society without any overt evidence of hate speech um and

1:17:42

and racial hatred apparent on the surface of the society because we've created institutions that that that that

1:17:49

are are institutionally racist and simply take care of business on their own with without all the r retoric that

1:17:55

was associated with racism in the past so I agree with that I guess that the

1:18:01

distinction that I would make um because I did conclude American Holocaust at the

1:18:07

end of the 19th century although I did make references to um The Killing in Latin America in the 19 the horrible

1:18:14

horrible genocidal killing in Latin America in the 1980s um comes back to the question of

1:18:21

the word genocide and this is a long discussion

1:18:27

and I'll try to keep short because people are already trying to get up and leave but um historians over the many

1:18:33

years have tried to figure some historians just made up definitions of genocide the reason they've made up is

1:18:39

because the genocide Convention of the United Nations was cobbled together by a

1:18:45

group of Nations um to somehow make sense of and

1:18:52

to to institutionalize a law that would say this we cannot have this anymore this is illegal and Nations must act

1:18:59

against it so in order to do that they had to Define it the problem is who is sitting around defining this people who

1:19:08

represent countries that in the past and at that time were committing genocide I

1:19:14

mean it was like having the thieves sit around the table write writing the law um so for example uh Lenin had always

1:19:23

had in his uh definition of genocide among the potential victim groups

1:19:29

political victims people who would be whole groups of of political uh people

1:19:34

who would who were being exterminated because of their Politics the Soviet Union had would have nothing to do with

1:19:40

that because they had how many people in the gulags at the moment that they're

1:19:45

sitting down writing this this this genocide convention they had they had they had exterminated people for

1:19:52

political reasons so they wouldn't they simply could not have that so the genocide convention does not include

1:19:59

political groups as groups that are subject to um to to a a perpetrator

1:20:05

group being um brought to the bar because they kill those people as a result

1:20:11

technically the genocide in Cambodia was not genocide and there are very very few

1:20:19

genocide Scholars who will say that it was genocide um Ben Kieran who a

1:20:24

specialist I mentioned him twice in my talk uh who's a specialist actually in Southeast Asia and J and and and um

1:20:32

Cambodia originally agreed with that and he subsequently has changed his mind but most of the genocide scholars in the

1:20:38

world today would say it it was horrible but the victims were political victims

1:20:44

and that's why it's not a genocide the same thing with the killing of Indians in Paraguay the the killers were able to

1:20:51

extricate themselves by saying yes we killed all of those people almost exterminated an entire people but it

1:20:57

wasn't because of the fact that they were Indians which would have made them a protected group but because their

1:21:04

political activities were such that we they deserved being exterminated and therefore yes maybe that was not very

1:21:12

humanitarian and maybe it was a crime against humanity and so and so forth but it's not genocide anyway that's one of

1:21:18

the reasons why historians have tried many historians and sociologists who write about genocide have tried to

1:21:24

create their own definitions of genocide the problem with that is your definition

1:21:30

includes this group my definition includes that group that that person's definition in groups includes one kind

1:21:36

of activity such as um taking children as the United Nations convention does taking children away from families and

1:21:43

putting them among others as has happened in Australia most famously uh and so on and others don't so therefore

1:21:49

then you've lost everything so I think that really what we need to do and I hate I don't like this because I think

1:21:55

the genocide convention is real problems um is that we just simply have to hold

1:22:00

to the UN genocide convention it's the only one the only thing that definition

1:22:06

that exists that most people have bought into now even then there are arguments

1:22:13

that can take place and one of them has to do with this question of intent I'm get I'm I'm going to get back to your

1:22:18

point right about now um the question of intent and again there are within

1:22:27

everyday criminal law in the United States there are distinctions between specific intent and general intent that

1:22:33

are very important actually it that question was debated internally in the

1:22:38

Bush Administration when they were when um what's his name John Yu uh was

1:22:44

leading the that group of attorneys in trying to justify torture and if you

1:22:50

look at the memoranda that were the famous memorandum in particular that was written by them their struggle over the

1:22:56

use of General intent and specific intent because they decided one group that tried to hide behind specific

1:23:02

intent saying we did not we in in in in the torture that we're about to to

1:23:07

commit we don't intend to torture it's just that we're going to behave in such

1:23:12

a way and do certain things that yes it's true torture is likely to result

1:23:18

from that but that's General intent that's not specific intent specific

1:23:23

intent means you have to intend the thing itself not just behave in such I'm

1:23:31

trying to give you a simple example somebody drives takes a car and drives down there's a Broadway here right um

1:23:37

drives down Broadway um and turns the steering wheel and J drives up on the sidewalk and kills somebody um okay now

1:23:45

the law stands takes a very different position on whether they can determine that me the driver of that car wanted to

1:23:53

kill that person and therefore drove the car to kill that person or whether I

1:23:58

simply drove the car knowing I would kill people and knowing that person

1:24:03

would probably be killed but not intending to kill that person there's a distinction and and the punishment is

1:24:10

different so anyway those are the that those are the kinds of things that international human rights people get

1:24:16

into uh in their prosecutions of cases such as the Rwanda case and so on and so

1:24:22

forth um and I guess what I'm saying to come back to your point which I think is

1:24:27

a very good one is that I think we should stay within the UN definition and

1:24:34

fight about issues within that and in that case then we have to accept the

1:24:41

word intent however we Define it um as

1:24:47

as part of the justification for our use of the term genocide so I think that

1:24:53

maybe we you and I could probably still disagree about this but that what's happening today may not quite involve

1:25:01

intent the way it involved intent when for example the governor of California

1:25:07

in his inauguration speech in 1852 or 1850 said we must exterminate

1:25:16

those Indians and then put together troops to go out and exterminate them

1:25:21

and got money from the federal government to support that extermination campaign that's different from uh

1:25:28

driving people into a situation where their lives uh simply cannot be led um

1:25:37

and and and then backing away and just letting it happen it's a tricky it's a fine point so I gen I agree with your

1:25:43

sentiment but I I'm not sure I disagree with the whether the use of the term Holocaust should or should not extend to

1:25:50

the present okay just one super quick follow I think that um so I agree with

1:25:55

you about the intent but I I just want to like say that I think that the intent

1:26:01

to exterminate has been replaced in a really large way by the attemp to assimilate which I am not sure is all

1:26:09

that um like if you look at the residential school policy I'm Canadian so I know the residential school schools

1:26:15

system in Canada a lot better but if you look at the res residential school policy I'm not sure that um that you can

1:26:20

pull apart uh the intent to exterminate with the intent to assimilate in in that kind of um in that kind of example so

1:26:28

yeah and actually a case can be made that the genocide convention does cover that and uh uh and and people have

1:26:35

written about that in Canada and again in Australia in particular

1:26:42

yeah well as as somebody who is Native American I'm uh Cherokee and

1:26:47

Mogi um got five six other tribes basically my family all ran off during the removal and hit out

1:26:56

um I've lived on three different reservations and um my kids are all

1:27:01

members of Fairly recognized tribes the when you're looking at genocide as

1:27:09

as a native person there was the physical genocide there is the deao

1:27:17

genocide a lot of people don't know that during the 1950s President

1:27:22

Eisenhower with a stroke of a pen extinguished more than 50

1:27:29

tribes and a lot of those tribes have been trying ever since to get their Federal recognition back because when

1:27:35

they lost their Federal recognition they lost their land they lost the resources it was the same thing that had been

1:27:42

going on it was legislating Extinction the policy under isenhower was if we

1:27:49

take them their reservations away they have to move into General society and then within a generation or two they

1:27:55

won't exist and then there's no more Indian problem um I grew up right here in Nashville and I grew up around

1:28:02

mainstream Society being a person from a completely separate culture and having

1:28:09

to deal with why can't you just be an

1:28:14

American why are you still speaking that language why don't you do what we want

1:28:20

to do and I I fought with the Methodist Church I grew up in the Methodist Church in fact um there's a group of us that we

1:28:26

call ourselves the flying figer Fellowship because we deduced after fighting with the church over being able

1:28:33

to be a traditional Native person and be a Christian and function within the church as a native

1:28:39

person we spent most of our time basically with our middle finger in the face of the church because we were

1:28:45

always having to fight with them over doctrines that had absolutely nothing to do with the Scripture it had to do with

1:28:52

their discomfort with our difference and the schools still do this

1:28:59

my kids have had to fight the very same fights in school that I had to fight that my mother had to fight and so forth

1:29:07

and so on where you get one little chapter of maybe four pages and a few

1:29:14

paragraphs and it's so General it's useless it talks about the Aztec it

1:29:19

talks about the Southeastern people and may may mention the Cherokees and the creeks it talks about the northeastern

1:29:25

people and it usually mentions the Mohawks and then it mentions lotas and

1:29:31

um it's just useless it's not taught people don't understand that three-fifths of all the world's food

1:29:38

crops were developed right here in the Western Hemisphere most of the medicines that

1:29:44

most people use came from here we were not only the greatest agriculturalist on the face of the Earth we were also the

1:29:50

greatest pharmaceutical botanists we had had medicines for everything the only thing we didn't have

1:29:55

medicines for were European diseases because we had no familiarity with them

1:30:01

if we'd had them we would have had something to cure them and we don't get any credit for

1:30:07

that they'll say oh sir um Alexander uh Fleming invented Penicillin how could he

1:30:14

invent something that my people had been using for thousands of years I still know how to make penicillin because my

1:30:20

great- grandma taught me how to in fact I've got the little crck jar that she used that she got from her grandmother

1:30:26

that she got from her grandmother and I have no idea how old this thing is but it's always been used to make penicillin

1:30:32

I was taught as a child how to make various medicines I was also taught our traditional ways and I had an

1:30:38

understanding even as a little bitty kid we didn't talk about that stuff with non-indians because if we did somebody

1:30:45

was going to come down on us or they were going to twist it around and make it something that it wasn't and we have you know that kind of

1:30:53

gen side that goes on too now some of it the the alcoholism the drug abuse the uh

1:31:00

dysfunction that uh exists within families a lot of people wouldn't know it and I hate to admit it but sexual

1:31:07

abuse amongst Native Americans is astronomically higher than it is for the rest of

1:31:12

population it started with the boarding schools or residential schools because you had kids that were taken at the age

1:31:19

of five they didn't see their families for seven or eight years their families

1:31:24

were not permitted to raise their children how can you be a parent when you're not allowed to raise your child

1:31:30

how can you be normal when you're not raised in a family when you're put in a boarding

1:31:36

school and you are beaten for speaking your native language you're mistreated you're

1:31:42

sexually abused every time they they go to an old boarding school site and they

1:31:48

start Excavating because somebody's going to build something else they start finding skeletons probably 25% of Native

1:31:55

American children who went into the boarding schools disappeared and they were never found

1:32:00

those are people who never got to grow up who never got to contribute and we weren't put in those boarding schools to

1:32:07

make us doctors or lawyers or leaders we were put in there so that the girls could become domestic servants and the

1:32:14

boys could become manual laborers that was the only purpose it was to make us

1:32:19

servants and there were some very there were some uh examples were that um where

1:32:28

you had someone exceeded Dr Charles Eastman um Adam Beach played him in a movie there were also the uh um Suzanne

1:32:36

flette who was also not only one of the first female doctors she was also the first native female

1:32:43

doctor so you had people who who did succeed but they were still Indian and

1:32:49

they still had to deal with the same old succeed in Western term they succeeded in Western terms yes but they still had

1:32:55

to deal with the same old crap you know can I I don't be interrupt I'd love to talk to you about this but

1:33:00

I'm wondering if in case somebody else does have something to say I was getting some signals that maybe we should wrap up soon so I don't interrupt you but if

1:33:08

you can just sort of wrap up and then but the thing is the genocide is still going on because the cultural pressures

1:33:13

that are on Native people are still forget who you are become who we say you

1:33:19

are and that's not just the blend into society that the fit into our little

1:33:25

mythology that we have about you people which actually to me is a lot more

1:33:30

insulting than somebody saying why why can't you just be an American you know

1:33:35

I'm not I didn't live in teepee my people never lived in TPS we were farmers and if I don't fit into your

1:33:41

stereotype of how I'm supposed to be I try to be nice about it but sometimes it's just like you know well

1:33:48

that's just tough for you if you can't accept that there's other ways I put it that are not really appropriate for use

1:33:54

in public but you know that's how it goes can I make one comment on what you

1:33:59

said one of the things you said the um or reminded me to to mention it's very

1:34:06

common I think for Americans and most people around the world to think of American Indians as somehow a singular

1:34:14

people um and and of course that's a conventional thing that people from afar

1:34:21

do to other people um was was it George Bush who referred to the country of Africa at one time um uh that uh many

1:34:31

people think of Africa as a single place the people who are they're Africans

1:34:36

people of Asia people of Asia try telling that to a room that's got some

1:34:42

Koreans here and some Japanese here and so on and so forth that somehow you're all the same um it's a very common and

1:34:49

actually in a kind of unintentional I think way racist way

1:34:56

of of of of of making everybody the same and American Indians are not all the

1:35:01

same there are hundreds of different original native nations um Each of which

1:35:10

had distinctive religious Traditions cultural traditions and ways of doing

1:35:15

things ways of living and physiological differences they did not American

1:35:20

Indians don't all look the same very different and the reason this is relevant to the question of genocide is

1:35:28

because if there's one thing that I wish I hadn't said in American Holocaust was

1:35:34

made I made at the beginning of the book and I probably more than once I haven't reread the book for some time um

1:35:41

reference to this to genocide in the singular and

1:35:47

really what happened was a succession I did say this in the book too but the two sort of I I guess I was

1:35:54

was unthinkingly assuming they could live together um what really happened

1:36:00

was serial genocide that took place over and over and over and over again over

1:36:06

the course of 400 years um in some cases which the entire people were obliterated

1:36:15

nothing remained in other cases not every not all Indian groups

1:36:23

suffered genocide some didn't but but the variations are

1:36:28

tremendous and I think in in all explorations of discussions about

1:36:34

American Indians and again just as I said about the Holocaust I'm not an expert on American Indians I don't

1:36:39

claimed to be um uh when I when I went at when I was in

1:36:46

entered graduate school I was going to study slavery and uh racism but mostly

1:36:51

slavery in the United States and I chose not to this was in the early '70s because I decided that a white guy

1:36:57

should not be studying slavery um that was a it just remember this was the 70s

1:37:04

this was a particular political moment in um relationships between white people and black people other whites very

1:37:10

successfully did study slavery Herbert Gutman and various other people but I decided not to do that for that reason

1:37:16

in the same way that when I've written about native peoples in the Pacific and

1:37:21

about American Indians I don't claim to really be writing about Indians I'm

1:37:27

writing about what white people have done to those people um so I don't

1:37:33

really claim to know much about American Indians but I but from what little I do know I think it's important for us to

1:37:39

recognize how incredibly varied uh those groups of people are contined to be but

1:37:46

at one time astonishingly were uh when the numbers in North America nobody

1:37:51

knows what they were the lowest estimates probably um we have more

1:37:57

experts here than I am on this what whatever the latest numbers are have ranged anywhere from 5 million to 15

1:38:03

million um but um within those 500 Nations that existed there was

1:38:09

extraordinary variability uh uh and difference um anyway that's all that and

1:38:15

I'm glad you brought that up and also about the boarding schools both of you bringing them any other

1:38:21

questions pardon is it time I don't know I was getting a little um High sign over here I'll make

1:38:28

it quick um so I think that um I think one of the important

1:38:34

things that I've gathered um from the examples that you gave um which is like how much um these uh multiple genocides

1:38:41

have been glorified or Justified and kind of you know brushed under as not really being um actually as horrible as

1:38:48

we know they are um so I was just sitting here thinking like if history were to be Rewritten um in a way that's

1:38:55

more truthful um to uh these Horrors these tragedies um how would that impact

1:39:02

especially for young people who um are so often given a very um glossy version

1:39:09

of what you know history is in this country um or given at least you know

1:39:15

from the perspective of like you said the victors how would that impact their um their relationship to this nation as

1:39:22

Citizens or you know just how they kind of contribute as members of society how

1:39:28

do you think that would impact young people if they began to really know like what the history of this country like

1:39:34

that they're a member of has done well I think it would be immensely beneficial

1:39:40

uh in the same way that I think it's immensely beneficial um that the history

1:39:45

of African-Americans is finally be for some years now has been taught uh and

1:39:51

taught reasonably well I guess uh in some schools uh and that there's an outpouring of writing and so on so forth

1:39:59

by and about African-Americans but specifically about

1:40:05

genocide I think a terrible disservice is done to let's say the

1:40:11

Japanese um by the concealment and denial of the horrors perpetrated by the

1:40:18

Japanese against Koreans and against the Chinese um and there's tremendous

1:40:24

resistance among some pockets in Japan to this there is a documentary film made in Japan it's a kind of underground film

1:40:33

about the rape of What's called the rape of Nang King The Killing the horrendous horrendous brutal killing of hundreds of

1:40:41

thousands of Chinese um by Japanese soldiers um it's causing all sorts of

1:40:47

trouble there's tremendous fighting about textbooks High School textbooks in Japan about whether or not that should

1:40:53

be concealed on covered on the other hand in Germany and Germany's got its problems it's going to continue to have

1:40:59

its problems it's got neo-nazis all over the place it's got all sorts of problems but I think Germany has actually shown

1:41:06

the way that you can you can deal with the horrors perpetrated by your own

1:41:13

people by coming to terms with it by having Holocaust memorials um and

1:41:19

museums by I we can argue about whether or not

1:41:24

um denial of the Holocaust should be a criminal offense um that's not something that Americans uh buy into very easily

1:41:32

um uh Canada at one time did have uh I believe uh it was it was a criminal

1:41:38

offense and the Supreme Court of Canada said it was not compatible with free speech and overruled it um but um but in

1:41:45

any case Germany to the extent that any country has has tried to come to terms

1:41:52

with the horrors of its own history and I think it's been beneficial so I would

1:41:57

say that it has been it's not easy but I would say in the long term it's incredibly beneficial to a population to

1:42:04

come to terms with the reality of what what its people have done so that they

1:42:09

don't do it again okay anything else

1:42:17

oh yeah okay well I'm getting two people waving me to wrap up uh I'm free to talk a little bit if you want afterwards any

1:42:23

individually want to talk to thank you