Why do people get so outraged by the holocaust yet they treat the indian genocide like its no big deal?

Question

C'mon, the american continent was ethnically cleansed of indians, both South and North America. No big deal, huh?

Answer 1

It was also ethnically cleansed before Europeans ever knew it existed.  Many Indian tribes conquered other tribes and made them extinct.  That continued even after the Europeans settled here, eastern tribes moved west on the lands already inhabited and guess what happened?  That's right they battled for the land just as they would do later with the whites.

So the question is why do you act like that's no big deal?

Racism, slavery and genocide are not exclusively white institutions.

Answer 2

Because everyone wants to think that the Jewish Holocaust was such a big deal, but there are still millions and millions of Jewish People still living today.

But the Native Americans were completely WIPED out!!! There is nobody left on this earth that is actually a true native american.

The Native American genocide was huge but nobody wants to read about it because they don't want to know the truth.

They were all killed because none of them wanted their land to be invaded. They fought because they didn't want their people to die out. It was early in the years where earth was made and they didn't have much high technology or a high population like the world has now. I personally feel verrrrrrrrry sorry for what they had to go through.

Answer 3

The holocaust was 11million people in less than 6 years.These  victims were non combatants only guilty of being Jews, g**s .Retarded and Gypsies! Some Indians were innocent butmany were combatants.  Rightfully so though!

Answer 4

There are really significant differences in the two events.

What you term the "Indian Genocide" was not a concerted, planned, state-sponsored event.  It was, first and foremost, accidental and happened long before Whites physically met Amerindians.  It's known as the Disease Frontier, and there was no way to stop or even limit the levels of deaths caused by European diseases among Aboriginal people.  Secondly, while the US government (and the British Government, and the Spanish government and the Portuguese government) certainly mistreated and broke treaties with the various tribes many times over, there was no overarching plan to kill all Native Americans.  There were, however, at various times and through various religious or governmental sources, planned efforts to wipe out specific tribes, or to "re-educate" Aboriginal people to eradicate their languages, religions and cultures through boarding schools.  Again, however, this lack of plan, lack of specific intent to kill all Native Americans and the lack of any sort of cohesive policy or institution argues fairly strongly against the idea of Genocide.  In addition, there's simply the time factor to contend with.  Why is it, do you suppose, that you neglected to mention the Roman Genocide against Carthagenians?  I mean, there was a really clear, concise attemtp to end Carthage, and to slaughter all their men, and to prevent the city from ever coming back.  Why are you not outraged by this?  Or, what about Ghengis Khan's genocide of the Southern Steppes peoples and the Eastern Russ?  Might it be because it was long ago, and didn't grow out of a similar, and even familiar sort of technology and culture?  

The Holocaust was a precise, clear, planned operation which was intended to ethnically (and religiously) cleanse European populations of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovas Witnesses and other "Undesireables."  It was carried out by the State of Germany, which created a number os special groups, institutions and programs for the specific purpose of fulfilling those aims.  Moreover, it was in living memory of many alive today, and was formented in a culture and society which is at least vaguely familiar to our own, with values which are at least somewhat similar to our own.  That's why it is more emotionally and intellectually significant today.  

Answer 5

I agree with you that it IS a big deal and the attorcity should be taught much much better.  One of the many reasons is that the holocaust was extremely systematic, transparent, and committed over a short period of time. The American genocide was done in a rather piecemeal and covert way over hundreds of years.

Keep in mind too that there are other more current genocides that we also aren't taught about in school.  Why? I have my opinions, but just something to think about.

Answer 6

What happened to the indians was, of course, terrible, but they were not systematically killed. The indians were given lands to live on, granted, they weren't comfortable but I'd take that over being beaten every day in a concentration camp.

Also, there are people who remember the Holocaust, but there are few, if any, who remember the Indian killings.

Answer 7

The Holocaust is of course more recent, but the two are easily distinguishable on many other grounds.  Most of the Jews sent to the camps were living peacefully at home and making large contributions to the intellectual and commercial life in their homelands.

Your question betrays another sin besides any PC violations, that of "presentism".  In today's more or less civilized world we can look back and wring our hands in horror over these events, but such a "kinder and gentler" attitude would not have helped you much when the war whoop came at your cabin door.

It was a three way race to colonize the Americas.  The French generally could not get women to come and took native wives, lived among the natives and adopted their ways in furtherance of the fur trade.  The Spanish were much more exploitative and doctrinaire in requiring the natives to become Catholic.  In English America, between the two, the thirteen original colonies which became the US, no one started out to exterminate the natives.  They tried to find someone from whom to buy land, not comprehending that the natives did not have the same societal conventions regarding ownership of land as the Europeans.  They generally sought a modus vivendi.  But they brought their women and families, and made a connected skein of farms where they settled and spread to completely cover the land.  Violence broke out as the natives realized that there was an unending stream of white men who would continue to come and overwhelm their land and culture, and usually the answer was to try to attack them and destroy them before the process could go any further.  The first such instance was in 1624, when the natives suddenly attacked and massacred some 700 settlers at Jamestown.  All that prevented complete annihilation was a warning from a friendly native woman, which allowed about two-thirds of the settlers to "fort up" in their stockades.

Both Pontiac and Tecumseh understood the menace of the steady influx of whites and sought to unite the tribes to expel the white man.

As settlement proceeded westward, new tribes were brought into contact with the encroaching settlers, and as they came to the realization, each tried to make a stand.  When they did, they fell on the isolated outposts and the small farms closest to their lands.  They were merciless and quite savage about it, slaughtering all, with scalping, torture, cannibalism and a great many horrors.  The people who bore the brunt of this onslaught were the frontier dwellers, who were usually the poorest new arrivals, who had no choice but to go to the frontier, as they could not afford land in the civilized areas along the east coast or in the hinterland, lying between the frontier and civilization.  Where these outbreaks happened the natives were more numerous than the isolated whites.  There was a two and one half century history of such wars with these various tribes before the post civil war efforts finally brought a white majority into the field sufficient to "win".

The Cherokee removal was a sad episode, but few remember that many Cherokees were not removed to the west.  Jackson said that so long as they intended to preserve their way of life as a tribal unit they could not remain in the midst of white civilization.  Jackson had personal memories that the Cherokees had sided with the French, during the French and Indian War, and with the English during the Revolution, in each case making their decision based upon which party they hoped would keep the whites away.

If you try to keep an open mind and read the contemporary accounts of native savagery, ask yourself what you would do if you were in the place of the settlers.  History is full of examples of historic migrations, with new arrivals overwhelming and displacing previous inhabitants.  We recall the white displacement of the "native Americans", who were actually Asians whose ancestors took a wrong turn during the last interglacial, because it was the most recent here and involved our people.  If Europeans had not come, do you believe that two of the best of the six inhabitable continents on the planet would still be the exclusive preserve of wandering stone age nomads?  The natives had engaged in an unending series of wars among themselves before the first whites ever arrived.  No one remembers today that Lake Erie is named after a tribe deliberately completely exterminated by the Iroquois, or that the Cherokees were a Siouan nation which was in the southeast only because they had been pushed there by the same Iroquois Confederation.

Answer 8

It definitely WAS a big deal, only by and large it wasn't anyone's plan.  Native Americans almost died off largely because they contracted some nasty diseases that Europeans (and their pigs) carried.  

Similar things happened in other parts of the world where Europeans and natives have been friendly, only because of the friendliness, they were better documented.  Estimated population of Tahiti prior to the arrival of the Europeans in 1760s, for example, was between 50,000 (modern estimates by Robert C. Schmitt) and 200,000 (contemporary estimate by James Cook).  Europeans introduced to the islands a host of diseases including typhus, influenza and smallpox, and Tahitian population dropped to about 16,000 by 1797, and then some more, to the estimated low of 6,000 to 8,000.  Without a single shot fired...

Back to North America, when the U.S. forcibly relocated the Cherokees into Oklahoma in 1838, there were about 13,000 of them.  Just over a hundred years before that, in 1735, the British government spent four months negotiating a peace deal (in London, no more no less) with a delegation of seven Cherokee chiefs.  When peace was reached, the British managed to get a glimpse into the Cherokees' life and found that they had over 60 large settlements and a fighting force of 6,000 men.  Enter the smallpox epidemic of 1738-39; almost half of Cherokee population died. And that was just the first epidemic...

Answer 9

Because like it or not, what happened to the Indians is no different than what has happened to every race and nation at some time in history.  

Read about the 'genocide' inflicted on the Anglo-Saxon race after the Norman Conquest.  Read about the 'genocide' inflicted on the Assyrians when the Arabs swept across the Middle East spreading Islam.  For that matter, read up on the evidence that there were Caucasion people living in North America when the Asians who became "Indians" swept across the Bering Straits.  What do you imagine happened to them?

It's sad, but it's not unique.  Just get over it, guys.

Answer 10

High volume, state sponsored genocide vs slow extinction of many American Indian tribes, mostly by disease.. hmmm, seems to be different to me, but maybe that's just me. death is death, right? I'm outraged by the actions of the Catholic missionaries and priests in early California, that too me would rank up their with the Jewish holocaust.

Answer 11

Because its not taught as much.  I wasn't even fully aware of how horrific it was until college and even then my teacher skimmed over it.  It's an embarrassment and is ignored.  Same with slavery, though.  We're entering an Orwellian age where history is as history is taught.  Very scary..

Answer 12

I'm also a bit outraged as how schools rarely talk about the Armenian Genocide as well.

Edit:

I would like to clear people up on this.  Yes the Indian Genocide did happen over a large expanse of time, but within 10 years of Christopher Columbus' Arrival far more than 11 million natives died, and many of them were shipped out into slavery.

Also, the Colonies and early US the government put up wanted posters for any natives.  They would get 20 ibs for the scalp of an adult male, and 10 ibs for the scalp of females and men under 12 yrs.  The government massacred the indians through their citizens.  That is , I think, far worse than the government doing it.

Oh, a bit hippocritical here, but it seems like some people, including me, are arguing over which is worse.  That is just fu*ked up.  Including me, yes, I am fu*ked up

Answer 13

Your question is ridiculous-read some history about the Holocaust. By the way, Holocaust should always be capitalized.  

Answer 14

Various genocides of native Americans (both continents) is as horrendous, but happened over a much longer period of time.  Why the Holocaust is so memorable (in a bad way) is that is still fairly recent, and it was a concentrated effort to wipe out an entire group within a few years (5-6 million overall, but most of that was in the last three years).  

While murder did occur by arriving European colonists, much of the demise was caused by the diseases they brought (probably more than half the number).  Even though there wasn't genocide per se in Hawaii and Greenland, for example (and there are others), the native people were decimated by foreign diseases and the loss of their indigenous livelihoods.  

Answer 15

What was done to the Natives was not genocide. It was not a deliberate and systematic attempt to wipe them out completely.

Yes, they were mistreated and killed with little provocation, but the plan was to subjugate, not annihilate.

Add in the fact that it's much better to point fingers across the pond that to really examine your own faults and it's not hard to see why the holocaust gets more exposure.

Answer 16

Don't fool youself.

Thousands of Native Americans are still alive who are Holocaust survivers.

US Indian Boarding Schools.

23. Native American children were stripped of their family life, family values, religious beliefs and culture. The methods of "educating" Native American children were typically violent

25. Native American children were in some cases murdered at the Indian Boarding Schools with no repercussions for the perpetrators.

The physical beatings and sexual abuse were justified by school teachers, administrators and officials as a mean to"send the devil out" of the Native American children

Zephier, et al. (Sioux Nation).  v. United States of America Complaint

http://www.twofrog.com/lawsuit.html

On behalf of the victims of boarding school abuse, Herman & Mermelstein is taking legal action against the U.S. government.

http://www.hermanlaw.com/html/native-ame...

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Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools

http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/sou...

Ethnic Cleansing and Schools

http://www.dlncoalition.org/related_issu...

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In Canada, up until 1985, Christian churches ran around 100 boarding schools for aboriginal children.

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

"The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure." - CANADA

http://dutroux.blogspot.com/2008/02/rape...

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Sterilization of Native American Women

No one even today knows exactly how many Native American women were sterilized during the 1970s

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/steriliz...

1928: Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in Alberta, allowing any inmate of a native residential school to be sterilized upon the approval of the school Principal. At least 3,500 Indian women are sterilized under this law.

1933: An identical Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in British Columbia. Two major sterilization centres are established by The United Church of Canada on the west coast, in Bella Bella and Nanaimo, in which thousands of native men and women are sterilized by missionary doctors until the 1980’s.

http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/in...

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Answer 17

Because the holocaust was a deliberate act over six years or less. Far more Indians died of disease than violence, and over centuries.  In fact it has been calculated that in the USA more whites died than Indians in the Indian wars.

But if you want to see separate genocides of Indian peoples, they exist.  The Indians of Argentina were virtually all killed in a killing spree of three years or so in the late nineteenth century.

Norman genocides and Saxon genocides are rubbish.  DNA research has proved that both groups were invading aristocracies who had only a slight impact on the gene pool.

Answer 18

Two reasons:

1) The indian "genocide" as you term it was nothing like the Holocaust. Of course, the government did come in and wipe out a group of indians if they refused to move off land the government wanted. However, the indians weren't systematically massacred, just to get rid of them, and the death count was nowhere near what Hitler racked up.

2) Our enemies perpetrated the Holocaust. We wiped out the indians.

On a side note, I would also ask, why do we get so upset about Hitler's Holocaust but ignore the fact that millions of unborn, defenseless children have been massacred in the abortion holocaust?

Answer 19

Because the jews have better media presence than the indians and if the Americans faced the facts of what their forefathers did they may have to give back most of the land they stole from the original inhabitants  

Answer 20

It's not as widely taught, at least in the US.  Something about national pride, but I too think it's ridiculous.  How far are we from Orwell's 1984, really?