Scored Discussion #2, Fall 2017

10/18/2017

Use the reading selections, your take away's from the in-class discussion, and your knowledge of history to:

Post one original question or thought provoking statement with references to the reading or outside knowledge related to your post.
Reply with a question or thought provoking statement to at least 3 other original questions.

A reply to other's comments will only receive credit if it EXTENDS the discussion. Any "I agree, now let me say exactly what you just said or repeat what I said in my own original post again..." will not receive credit.

If you were absent you may post extra comments here to make up the in-class portion of the scored discussion. Each comment is worth 3 points AS LONG AS IT IS A NEW, ORIGINAL THOUGHT ON A DIFFERENT TOPIC THAN YOUR OTHER POSTS. You need to comment enough to earn the 15 points of in-class participation in addition to the required one original-three response posts.

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422 Comments

Caroline Jin

3/15/2018 06:36:32 pm

As in-class debates occurred over how wiping out of native culture played a role in defining whether or not the westward expansion should be considered genocide, a comparison to African Americans who were descended from slaves were brought up. Someone brought up the question, Would the treatment of African Americans in American society, then, also constitute genocide as the slaves were forced to assimilate into American society?

While it is risky to begin falling into the trap of playing oppression olympics as the two minorities were both oppressed, just in different manners, the treatment towards black American citizens would not constitute genocide, culturally- new black culture had developed in the United States that still had ties to African roots. It is distinct from mainstream American culture, and is affected heavily by African American history, so the assimilation was not total as one might believe as white American and black American culture developed separately due to slavery, segregation, and racism. Furthermore, the slaves were treated brutally but needed alive to work as opposed to the killing of natives for land. With those two aspects in mind, in this case, genocide wasn't committed against African Americans.

Navami Prabhu

3/16/2018 10:40:23 pm

I disagree with you. I think that the treatment of enslaved Africans at the beginning of their history in the United States constitutes genocide. The white colonists made a concentrated and conscious effort to get rid of African culture and traditions. They started with forcing them to accept Christianity and punishing them for practicing what they called "witchcraft."
Further racism that stemmed from the continued oppression and enslavement of Africans led to the situation you are describing, with the new culture that formed. At this point they had less ties to African culture, but instead related more with American ideals and beliefs.

Andrew Jin

3/16/2018 11:30:48 pm

How exactly does the destruction of African culture among African Americans constitute as genocide? Although there was intent to destroy their culture, there was no intent to kill all the African Americans in the United States as they were key to the southern economy; this can't be genocide one of the conditions of genocide, as defined by the UN and oxford dictionary definition, is not met. What you describe is more similar to forced assimilation rather than genocide.

Amr Tagel-Din

3/17/2018 11:46:17 pm

There's a crucial element missing found in how people regarded blacks versus how they regarded indians, which is the intent to evacuate or eradicate them all from the lands. Both the south and abolitionists wanted the blacks to stay, which doesn't qualify this as a genocide. By this logic, wouldn't the only true people committing "genocide" against the blacks by evacuating them be the ones who wanted to send them off to their own country? Because they were the only ones remotely trying to "get rid" of the blacks, but this still isn't a genocide, which means that this event can't really be compared in the same way to the Native American treatment (not that the treatment was in any way better of course).

Navami Prabhu

3/18/2018 07:25:30 pm

I think the intent to kill African Americans can be seen in the widespread lynches and murders committed in the South after the Civil War. While this is a while after the arrival of colonists and the beginning of slavery, it is still a way that white Americans attempted to get rid of African Americans. Southerners only wanted African Americans there if they were helpful to the economy and not for any other reasons, as can be seen from the violence and discrimination endured by African Americans after the Civil War.
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While Southerners wanted African-Americans to stay and care for their lands through slavery, Northern abolitionists were intent on sending African Americans back to their 'home country,' specifically to Liberia. The inherent racism and discrimination of the era made many Northerners, including Abraham Lincoln, want to rid America of African Americans by sending them back to Africa.

Grace Farrell

3/19/2018 12:40:20 pm

African Slaves were brought to a forein land by Europeans. As they were oppressed throughout the history of America this would not be concidered a genocide. The European settlers forced the Africans to have "normal" practices such as, racial roles within society. The Africans were never killed due to their cultural practices and were wanted by white southern plantation owners in order to due feild work. The Indians were slaughtered and forced out of their homelands that they had been inhabiting long before the European settlers had arrived. The settlers could not use Indians for their labor meaning they had no place within the American culture. No, the Africans did not go through a similar genocide like the Indians.

Patrick O'Neill

3/20/2018 08:16:45 am

I don't believe that what the colonists did to the African-Americans can even come close to be called genocide. The colonist bought and sold them and viewed them as a piece of property, so why would they destroy something they have invested almost everything in?

Yanis Jaoui

3/20/2018 06:36:22 pm

I disagree with your view that the treatment of enslaved Africans constituted genocide. The fact of the matter is that enslaved Africans were an economic asset, valued at over $2,000 dollars at the height of cotton production in the south. Although slave owners subjected slaves to horrendous conditions, they were not intent on killing the slaves, but getting the most labor out of the least care. This is not the same as intently killing someone, where there is motive, whilst here there would be no motive in killing $2000 worth of "property."

Imaan Jones

3/20/2018 10:02:44 pm

I would have to disagree. The reason the acts committed against the Africans weren't considered genocide was because of the underlying motive. A primary factor of genocide is the intent of eradicating the presence of a certain group of people. The purpose of the use of Africans was solely the exploitation of labor resources for economic benefit.

Ishika Singh

3/17/2018 11:01:29 am

I agree with your statement that the treatment of blacks during the time period of slavery would not be considered genocide. Genocide is defined as the mass killing or murder of a specific group of people, but if you look at the situation Americans had no intent of killing African Americans. They merely wanted African Americans to help them with work and chores, so in that case they would not want to kill them. This would not be considered a comparison with what happened to Natives because they were forcefully and violently pushed out of their land so America could conquer them. Americans wanted Natives gone, but they wanted Africans, so the slavery would not be considered genocide.

Kyle Firman

3/18/2018 02:16:05 am

I agree with the claim that genocide wasn't committed against African Americans for many reasons. The African Americans weren't being forcefully moved off of their territory, as the natives were. In one case described in chapter 17 of the textbook, a general lit and entire village on fire and shot the fleeing natives, including women and children. African Americans were also gaining many more rights in society at the time.

Kirti Nimmala

3/18/2018 08:11:15 pm

African Americans were still oppressed during the time, especially in the South due to the presence of organizations like Ku Klux Klan. Today, even Native Americans have rights. By those standards, does it mean that Native Americans were not victims of genocide either?

Andrew Marshall

3/20/2018 10:24:56 pm

I agree with your statement that genocide wasn't committed against African Americans. However, I think it is important to acknowledge that they were often times trapped on farms due to share cropping. This meant that they were not allowed to exercise their new rights guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. On top of this, black codes and Jim Crow Laws were being enacted to roll back the progress of African American social reform made by Congress.

Aubry Dreikosen

3/20/2018 10:20:17 am

I agree with your statement that the treatment of African Americans does not constitute genocide as their is a major difference among the situations of the native americans and the African Americans. African Americans, although treated terrible, were needed for the American economy to run where as native americans were just seen as obstacles to America's westward expansion. In our class discussion someone brought up the fact that if we classify our relations with the native americans as genocide then we would have to classify everything between that and the holocaust as genocide. Applying this here, if we consider the discrimination against the African Americans a genocide then we would have to consider all things between this and the relations with Native Americans genocide and not al of these things specifically fit the terms of genocide. By admitting that this one thing is genocide we admit that thousands of other cases would be genocide and this is most definitely not the case. I think that Lewy's theory about the Native americans ,that some actions maybe genocidal but the whole relationships can not be classified genocide also applies but to a lesser degree in the case of the African Americans.

Vennela Gottiparthy

3/20/2018 05:07:56 pm

I agree with you that slavery was not a form of genocide. While it was very cruel and displayed hatred towards a race, it did not constitute genocide because it did not fit the definition or principles of genocide. In her article, Dunbar-Ortiz says "The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.” Americans were not trying to terminate African Americans--if anything, they wanted them alive so that the African Americans could perform duties for them and so that the whites could feel superior and in power. While it was wrong for the whites to exploit a race for personal gain, it was not genocide because the race was not trying to be eliminated.

Britnee Negley

3/20/2018 08:11:33 pm

I agree with you on this subject. I think that there is a clear difference between the treatment of Native Americans and African slaves when discussing genocide. I think all of the ideas you brought up were excellent points and I think another idea to note is what colonizers were doing to Africans. In regards to the slave trade, Europeans went to Africa and traded with tribes for slaves. They did not try to take over Africa, colonize it, and force the African people to adopt white customs. They instead took their people for forced labor. The Intent behind the treatment of Africans was different than that of the Native Americans, so therefore it is not necessarily genocide.

Ben Kurian

3/20/2018 09:45:50 pm

I agree with you, the treatment of African Americans isn't considered genocide because genocide is the systematic destruction of a group of people. While African American were treated cruelly, they were mainly exploited, not killed.

Gigi Perazolo

3/16/2018 06:21:35 am

The first historian argues that with settler colonialism there will be violent conflict. This is seen when she says, "Settler-colonialism requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals."

I agree with her because people are greedy, so if people are already living on that land that others want to settle on then they will fight over it to claim it as their own. If the area is free of inhabitants, other people might decide that they want that land enough to fight with the original settlers for claims.

Ishika Singh

3/17/2018 11:09:01 am

I also agree that most times there will be violent conflict when trying to colonize. Most events in history seen show this pattern, such as the Mexican - American War we talked about in the last scored discussion. People want to be expand and become richer that they will do anything in order to accomplish that, and the fastest way is to fight over the land. There can be peacefully negotiations but because of the beliefs that Americans had during this time that only they would be able to take care of the land they did anything in their power to get it. This is seen with their actions towards Natives, they weren't aware of what they were doing back then because genocide wasn't a term, but the deliberate killing of so many Native for the primary reason to take over their land shows how with settler colonialism there will be violent conflicts that take place.

Lucy Agamaite

3/17/2018 08:50:27 pm

To add on to this discussion, what if it were the British or other European nations in control of such land instead of native Americans? Would American colonists perhaps be more intimidated by their presence and more hesitant to take/fight for the land? I think so because of Europeans possibly being more skilled in war/weaponry and their beliefs in white superiority. Colonists were desperate to take land from natives because they knew they would win in a violent war and knew that there was no other way to settle this issue.

Kyle Firman

3/18/2018 02:03:42 am

In the case of the northwestern territory, which was owned by Great Britain, the US government worked out a compromise with them to gain the land. But instead of doing this with the natives, the ideas of manifest destiny and superiority made their actions different.

Caroline Jin

3/18/2018 11:15:34 am

In the expansion and conflict, there was definitely an element of seeing the natives as being inferior to the white American settlers. If faced with a European power, the US would have been more hesitant for sure. This is interesting in how it ties to the Mexican-American war and earlier attempts to gain land. For example, the Louisiana Purchase from France was settled more or less peacefully in the acquisition. The Mexican-American war occurred as negotiations went south (purposefully or not). The natives were driven off their land in "war". It seems almost as if as time went on the methods of getting land were becoming less and less courteous and diplomatic. Or another interesting thing of note is the amount of white influence that decreased with every move to gain land- the French were white, the Mexicans colonized by whites and sometimes mixed with white, while the natives had the least association with whites.

Han Lim

3/18/2018 12:52:00 pm

I don't think the Americans would have been intimidated, but I do think they would have been more hesitant. Polk's campaign for 54 40 or Fight made him popular during the election and showed that Americans were not intimidated by war with other Europeans. I believe the reason Americans were hesitant to go to war against Britain for the land was because American politicians found it harder to justify going to war to gain support. Although it was easy for the U.S. to gather support for expansion by saying that Mexicans/Natives were racially inferior and fit to be dominated, it wasn't as easy to gather support for war against Europeans because they couldn't justify war through race.

Patrick O'Neill

3/20/2018 08:27:08 am

The reason that the colonist wanted the land was for money. Westward expansion was happening no matter who was in their way. If the Europeans were in control of the land I can see an agreement being made rather than war, because of how advanced they were. But since the Native Americans were inferior to the colonist the easiest and cheapest way was to fight for the land. The intent wasn't genocide rather it was all for the gaining of land.

Navami Prabhu

3/18/2018 07:44:42 pm

I think that settler colonialism implies violence. Settler colonialism refers to the conquering of a native culture by an invasive culture to the extent of partially or completely dissolving the native culture. If relations between the invasive and native cultures were amicable, this dissolving of the native culture wouldn't occur and the invasive culture wouldn't prevail.

Imaan Jones

3/20/2018 10:06:37 pm

I agree with your implication that the use of violence played a major role in the development of colonies. Settlers viewed it as a tactic to achieve prosperity believing that the most efficient way to gain wealth was through acts of war.

Rohitha Madduluri

3/18/2018 07:53:44 pm

I agree as well to the extent that violence may be a method when trying to colonize. Violence has been seen throughout history in warfare, riches, and more. People want to expand and enlarge their richness.The quote you have shows that violence was the only way for the colonists to remove the Indians from their lands and achieve their goals in obtaining the land and resources they strive for. This creates a foundation of the U.S. in which violence would be key to gaining the country’s goal for freedom and spreading American democracy.
Although peaceful negotiations could have been done to prelude violence, Americans were stuck to the belief that violence was the fastest way to get what they want.

Aakanksha Gundu

3/20/2018 04:36:47 pm

I think that another reason Americans were so quick to use violence was because they viewed the natives as inferior to them. If the U.S. was trying to obtain land from another European power, I think violence would've been less likely. This is due to the feelings of white superiority of the time. Another reason violence was so common was because of American greed to expand despite the Native Americans' unwillingness to give up their land. Neither group wanted the other to take the resources offered by the land, and this led to conflicts all throughout history.

Janvi Patel

3/21/2018 01:46:45 am

I do not think that peaceful negotiations could have prevented violence because Americans wanted to expand their territories. For example, there were treaties signed with the Natives but the the Americans just disregarded the treaties and took over more of the Natives' land.

Deb Bhattacharya

3/19/2018 09:02:07 pm

I also picked the same quote to discuss and analyze during the discussion. Settler-colonialism in the U.S can be seen from the days of its discovery to the present day, and has been achieved by continuous violence perpetuated against original settlers and other competing colonizing forces for centuries to come. As a foreign nation occupies an autonomous territory, the threat of violence must continue to loom over original inhabitants to dissuade any resistance from occurring as a result. Dunbar-Ortiz's statement defines the conditions needed to maintain settler-colonialism, which requires this violence to be perpetuated in order to continue to exercise control over a region. This interaction can be observed over the U.S.' continuous use of violence to reap control and gain land from the Natives, which was ultimately the goal of settler-colonizers.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 08:54:16 pm

I agree with the statement, "Settler-colonialism requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals." This can be shown not only through the intances of the European settlers settling in the Americas but also in instance such as the colonization of Africa. In both cases Europeans felt as if they owned the land more than the natives that already lived on that land. This common thought process resulted in the destruction of many native populations including the Indians.

Kritika Bokka

3/20/2018 09:41:42 pm

I agree with Gigi because if the natives haven't lived in the land there wouldn't be any violence. But, of course there would be violence because nobody would just give up their homes so someone can take over the land. The natives had every right to not hand over land that they first occupied for generations before the arrival of colonists. The colonists were greedy for land and wanted to take over the land natives occupied before they even arrived to the US and this would cause violence between them where one wants to protect their land and the other wants to take over land.

Ben Kurian

3/20/2018 09:48:14 pm

I agree with this because ever since the Americas were colonized, whenever an area with people already living on it has been colonized, the settlers attack the natives to get their land and resources and the natives retaliated, leading to long periods of violence.

Amr Tagel-Din

3/16/2018 11:07:53 pm

Lewy claimed that one of the reasons this wasn't a genocide was because the U.S. considered this a war, and that in a battle, any actions are acceptable. However, this ideology can be applied to just about any genocide in history, so the question is: to what extent is violence okay in an act of war? At what point does it cross the line from a battle to a genocide? If we can see this event with ambiguity, is it really considered a genocide if the people back that could possibly have also seen this is little more than a battle?

Ishika Singh

3/17/2018 10:39:30 am

Lewy wrote “Clearly an act with genocidal intent, it is still officially considered a “battle” in the annals of US military genealogy.” This showed that clarifying it as a battle allowed for the US to justify their actions. To answer your question violence should never be the answer in my opinion but if the given situation is considered a war by both sides and they are fighting over a certain cause it is not considered genocide. In this case the Native Americans were not under the impression that they were fighting a war, they believed that they were being forcefully pushed out of their land, so this would be considered genocide. I think that the US justification of this event being a "battle" is not accurate. A battle or war occurs when two sides are both fighting each other but in this case only America was retaliating against Natives.

Kirti Nimmala

3/18/2018 08:18:19 pm

I disagree that only Americans fought the Natives due to the multiple uprisings and battles that the Natives initiated. However, I also believe that violence should not be the answer to any problem. In the case, of Lewy's justification, I believe that the Native Americans are far too diverse a population to generalize their actions and Americans mistook all Native Americans as the few who rebelled. I believe the line was crossed when Americans ignorantly massacred peaceful tribes and people who had never battled with them.

Britnee Negley

3/20/2018 08:21:22 pm

@amr sorry I didn't finish writing my response before submitting it. To continue, when the event is separated into the two parts it becomes clear why The holocaust was genocide and not war. I believe that it has to do with the intent of not just conquering or defeating an opponent (as seen in war), but rather with the Intent of completely eradicating them.

Lucy Agamaite

3/17/2018 08:41:23 pm

To further extend this discussion, it is important to note that US citizens' relations with the Native Americans was more than just a war or a series of battles. Underlying intents for discrimination such as Manifest Destiny and white superiority led to them forcing assimilation on natives to make them more civilized. It also continued for centuries, originating from British colonization, Jackson's Indian removal, and other historical events targeting this specific group. Because there were a number of events, both war and non-war, against them, conflicts against them can be considered genocidal.

Amr Tagel-Din

3/17/2018 11:40:58 pm

So if this assimilation is what led to this being considered genocide as well, to what point are these two separate? Some can consider the Cherokee's voluntary attempt to "civilize" themselves as citizens of the united states assimilation, but it certainly wasn't genocide, so where do we differentiate between those two?

Aakanksha Gundu

3/20/2018 04:33:27 pm

I agree that conflicts with Native Americans have been a continuity in history. American citizens' views of superiority played a huge role in the development of native/American relationships. I think that because of the vast time period over which Native Americans were mistreated, it is hard for people to imagine it as a genocide. Most people's ideas of genocide relates back to the holocaust, and because of the few similarities, they find it hard to label Native Americans as victims of genocide too.

Kyle Firman

3/18/2018 02:08:04 am

I think that it is very hard to define what an act of war is, especially when looking at history. However, in this case, I think that some evidence presented in the passages can speak volumes. Some Indians might've fought back, but it specifically states that the US used biological warfare against peaceful native tribes. I think that this indicates that the US wasn't just doing acts out of war, but out of greed as well.

Aryan Anerao

3/20/2018 04:53:34 pm

I do not think it was an act of war but I do think that there was greed that influenced the violent attacks. I do not think it is a war because most of the violence was from citizens.

Imaan Jones

3/20/2018 10:09:24 pm

I agree because I believe that it was greed that allowed them to be blind to human compassion, resorting to cruel methods of colonization. Using these "acts of war" were, in their eyes, justifiable, yet it was completely inexcusable.

Gigi Perazolo

3/18/2018 08:07:17 am

I think that intent is the key difference between war and genocide. In war, there is often another factor that is motivating them to continue to fight like land for example. However in genocide, the only thing that they want is to eliminate a group.
Personally, I don't think wars should be fought, but if it must come to that then I believe damages should be minimized as much as possible. This means that the extent of violence is when it concerns the civilians or dangerous weapons. No innocent civilian should ever be harmed. Those fighting in the war should also not use any damaging weapons that could cause things like cancer.

Caroline Jin

3/18/2018 11:07:25 am

I believe the act of genocide comes from the determination to use violence not just to subdue the people (which would be an aspect of war) but to actively campaign to wipe them out.

Madisyn Hall

3/18/2018 12:18:22 pm

I do not personally believe that nations should go to war, therefore I think violence should not be used in order to gain what someone wants, even in a time of war. I think that if violence does occur, it should be considered genocide if It is targeted at a certain group of people. That being said, even thought it was many years ago and ideals were different, I believe the Americans knew what they were doing and that this treatment of natives should be considered a genocide.

Patrick O'Neill

3/20/2018 08:35:32 am

For a prime example we can look at Nazi Germany. They brought jews, gypsies, gays, and many others into their concentration camps because they believed they were and illness in society that needed to be rid of. Americans never killed the Natives because of their ethnicity, they killed them for their land, and because of war.

Ali Ahmed

3/20/2018 03:34:31 pm

I don't think that it is fair to say that they didn't kill them because of their ethnicity. Nazi Germany and this incident were similar in nature, but different in general. I don't think there is a correlation on Nazi germany's motives and the mass execuution of millions of Native Americans. I do agree that land could have been part of their motivation to take over the area, but I doubt that it was their only reason.

Aakanksha Gundu

3/20/2018 04:24:09 pm

I don't think Lewy's claim is justified. All actions are not acceptable in battle. Genocide in no way is okay even during the time of war. I think any war includes violence, but not all violence is against a certain racial group. This is the detail that determines whether or not it is considered genocide. I think a genocide always has the intent of violence and aggression against a group. On the other hand, countries do not enter wars without an economic or political reason.

Britnee

3/20/2018 08:28:38 pm

I agree with what your position is on this subject. I do not think that any act of violence is acceptable, but I do believed that there is one point missing from your assertion that genocide is violence against a specific group. I believe the clarification needs to placed on the fact that the intent of that violence, towards that specific group, is in fact to destroy them. There are many cases of violence towards a select group of like individuals that is not considered genocide. This is because the intent, whatever it may be, was not complete removal. I don't know much about war, but I agree with your statement that war tends to be about something such as land or money, and once people reach that goal and fulfill that purpose the war is, in essence, over. The fact that European colonists wanted to completely remove Native and destroy their culture with the intent of making them nonexistent, that is what constitutes westward expansion as genocide.

George Lever

3/20/2018 09:47:37 pm

I disagree with you. Killing Native American men in battle was not genocide because it was part of a war, and war is not genocide. Also, you said that not all violence is against a certain racial group. Were the settlers supposed to wage war with other racial groups too? How would they do that? The aggression against Native Americans was not primarily because of their race; they were enemies at war. You are right that countries do not enter wars without an economic or political reason, and this was the same. There was a great economic benefit of settling the Western United States.

Vennela Gottiparthy

3/20/2018 05:15:29 pm

I believe that the genocide began far before the Mexican-American War ever started. It was before the war that Native Americans were forcibly removed by the Trail of Tears and the racism and restriction of equal rights was in place far before the war began. Although wars can include fighting on both sides, I think the line should be drawn where the fighting is targeting an entire race, because this does constitute a genocide and is morally and socially unacceptable. Mexico made it very clear that they did not want to fight in the war, but were eventually forced to. The U.S. took advantage of a weaker country and gave them no choice but to enter a battle. The U.S.'s actions towards Natives still was a genocide, because the whites targeted an entire racial sector and attempted to eliminate them, harm them, and strip them of inalienable rights.

Britnee Negley

3/20/2018 08:16:44 pm

I think you bring up and interesting question. There most likely will never be a clear answer to this because the topic of genocide tends to fall within a grey area of violence that lacks proper and regulated classification. Using the holocaust, the most famous genocide in history, as an example I believe the difference falls onto the intent. This genocide can be broken into two parts, World War II, and the holocaust.

Kevin Xie

3/20/2018 08:36:56 pm

I would argue that there are limits and definitions of a battle as well. Whenever a battle is fought, it is done so for an express purpose beyond simply killing. A battle is fought for the sake of the war, or for whatever cause it stands for. For the people of the time, I could see why they justified it as a battle, considering how feared the natives were. They commonly practiced torture techniques, such as scalping, on enemy prisoners.

Ben Kurian

3/20/2018 09:52:27 pm

I think a battle has become a genocide when the weaker group has given up and surrendered but the stronger group keeps attacking and killing members of the other group. Violence is only okay in war if it is justified and even then, the amount of violence used needs to be looked at to see if it was excessive or not. I still think it is a genocide because the people back then were actively trying to eliminate every native they could or "Americanize" them and destroy their culture, which meets the requirement for a genocide.

Liam McHale

3/20/2018 10:25:00 pm

I think that, in terms of war as you put it, you can always raise a white flag and end what you said as crossing "the line from a battle to a genocide". Genocide differs in that a certain people are oppressed, and the oppressors and the oppressed are not always engaged in war.

Ishika Singh

3/17/2018 10:49:22 am

The author of the second article "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?" was for Jewish decent. His parents were both in the Holocaust and he wrote “But it is demonstrably untrue that, like the Nazis, the missionaries were unconcerned with the welfare of their native converts. No matter how difficult the conditions under which the Indians labored—obligatory work, often inadequate food and medical care, corporal punishment—their experience bore no comparison with the fate of the Jews in the ghettos. The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them.” Do you think his comparison between the Jews and Natives was reasonable?

In my opinion I do not think that comparing this event with the Jews from the ghettos was reasonable. What occurred in Germany with Hitler was a very violent form of genocide, and what occurred with the Natives in America is no comparison because the Holocaust was the most extreme form and in this case we should focus on what occurred just in America and if it would individually be considered genocide not by comparing it to the most extreme form.

Lucy Agamaite

3/17/2018 08:33:21 pm

I definitely believe that his comparison to the Holocaust was a bit extreme. It is important to note that Germany in the 20th century had more advanced technology and weaponry compared to the US in the 19th century, which resulted in a greater number of Jewish casualties. Though the numbers may have been less for the Native Americans, they still faced discrimination because they were forced out of their own land, the US implemented government policies relating to their extermination, and in the West, US citizens urged the executive branch to call for greater action against this group. What Natives had to face did parallel to the Holocaust, but to say that it was not as important or that it was not considered genocide because of the extremity of the Holocaust seems unfair.

Gigi Perazolo

3/18/2018 08:01:17 am

I hadn't considered this point before, but I partially agree. The comparison does seem to be unjustified. However, I do think that forcing the Native Americans out of their land should not be considered genocide because of their intent. Americans wanted their land and didn't care that the Native Americans were there. There was only conflict when they refused to leave understandably, but the Americans only had the intent to get that land at all costs.

Amr Tagel-Din

3/17/2018 11:53:19 pm

I definitely agree with your assessment that a genocide can't be defined by comparing it to another. By this same logic, we can't call the Revolutionary War a war because it's death toll wasn't as high as the Civil War. Just as that doesn't make sense, we can't consider the Indian treatment any less of a genocide just because "it bore no comparison" to that of the Jews. Plus, a higher percentage of the American Indians were killed (dropping to 10% of its original) than the Jews, so it isn't as black and white as "the Holocaust was more of a genocide because it had a higher death toll".

Patrick Sullivan

3/20/2018 03:38:10 pm

I don't think this is really an accurate portrayal of his comparison. He said nothing about numbers of deaths-- never once did he make a statement about the death toll of the Holocaust and compare that to Indian deaths. When he says that their fates "bore no comparison", this is written to describe an extremely specific detail-- he refutes the categorization of Indian disease deaths as genocidal deaths. The only issue discussed in the paragraph it appears is this. He concludes that it is invalid that many people consider the deaths of Indians due to disease to be similar to the deaths of Jews due to starvation. In his view, this is illogical because Nazis intentionally killed their captives while missionaries did not. Disregarding whether he's correct in this argument or not, it's disingenuous to say that he is attempting to compare death tolls and make a judgement based on that, because he does not do this at any point.

Kyle Firman

3/18/2018 01:59:14 am

I agree fully with what you said, because something should not be define as a genocide by comparison. Comparing what the US did with the Holocaust obviously makes it look less significant, but that is no excuse for what occurred. The death count and consequences may not be as severe as the Holocaust, but that certainly doesn't mean that what the US did wasn't genocide.

Caroline Jin

3/18/2018 11:31:11 am

Americans hesitate to label this a genocide because to them it could be like an admission of their wrongs- they were fighting against the Nazis in WWII yet they had also slaughtered people of certain ethnic backgrounds in their own country for the same things Hitler claimed he killed Jews for- for the land. The comparison would make the Americans uncomfortable, and they wanted to be seen as heroes rather than villains.

Troy Won

3/20/2018 07:39:55 pm

I agree with this. Admitting that America has committed genocide in the past would tarnish its reputation as a free and accepting land that it has been known as for many years. Committing such a serious crime, such as genocide, would forever change peoples' view on America.

Imaan Jones

3/20/2018 10:11:35 pm

I agree with the views expressed in your statement. The main reason many Americans won't label this a genocide is because they don't want to devalue their pride. They are fearful that it will make their means of colonization cruel and portray their establishment of a nation as tainted with warfare, genocide, and greed.

Madisyn Hall

3/18/2018 12:14:40 pm

I agree with what you said. I do not think that the treatment of natives should be compared to something as extreme as the holocuast. However, that being said, I do believe that the actions taken against natives were a form of genicide and that we should not discount what happened just because it was not as bad as the holocaust.

Jasmine Kaur

3/18/2018 01:24:48 pm

I agree that his justification of comparing Jews in Nazi Germany to Natives in America is not completely valid. The Holocaust is an extreme form of genocide and should not act as the standard for what all genocides should be like to be considered a genocide. Besides, genocides are not just the most gruesome killings, they have set criteria addressed by the other author. If the Native American killings meet that set of UN standards than Native American killings could to be considered a genocide.

Reeva Patel

3/18/2018 06:43:12 pm

I do believe that his connection was reasonable. I do agree that the holocaust was a strong form of genocide and the author might have been slightly biased due to his family members in the holocaust. Overall, I think that it was a good connection to show that the natives and whites were not similar to the holocaust and it was not genocide because there were other feelings involved.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 10:22:14 pm

This is not an appropriate comparison. Americans land grab allowed them to justify the genocide on the Natives. In Nazi Germany they used social darwism and the belief that once race was much more prevelent and nessisary for the survival of the human population as a whole. In german they used this to justify the genocide that was conducted on the Jewish people. Americans used selfish and gready reasons for the genocide of the Native people which is very different from Germany.

Troy Won

3/20/2018 07:36:05 pm

Although the systematic killing of Natives and Jews were comparable, it would be a mistake to think that both events were essentially the same. Germany acted with the intent to wipe out every single Jew in the country, while America only eliminated Natives living nearby or in the territory that they wanted to conquer. Also, America had some sort of assimilation system that Native Americans went through. Although they weren't treated as equal, America was willing to keep them a part of society. Germany had no such tolerance.

Lucy Agamaite

3/17/2018 08:24:44 pm

I believe Lewy contradicts when he states, "Genocide was never American policy, nor it was the result of policy" and when he says the US never "seriously proposed" extermination. In the first article, it is important to note that in the 1970s over 3000 Native American women were sterilized. Additionally, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 which separated native children from their biological families for the purpose of ethnically targeting them and assimilating into American culture. This proves that policies and actions imposed by the US government clearly implied genocidal intents because they influenced native american's conditions of life along with preventing births from the group. What is suprising about this is that there are still debating issues on this today and through the 21st century.

My question is: Why do you believe such relations with the Native Americans have continued for so long despite them being so few in population? What are possible solutions in preserving their group and culture and improving our relations with them?

Gigi Perazolo

3/18/2018 07:56:12 am

I agree that this forced sterilization of Native Americans was genocide. To support this, the Eugenics Board in NC is also considered genocide, so this must also.
However, I don't think that all their fighting over land should be considered genocide because their intent was to gain more land not to kill all Native Americans.

Jasmine Kaur

3/18/2018 01:29:01 pm

I think such relations with Native have continued because American culture still continues to view Natives like "noble savages" much as they did in the Jackson era. They are still viewed to be "lesser" than other Americans and the media's commodification of their culture just perpetuates this stereotype. In terms of possible solutions, I think awareness is the best method of garnering respect for their culture. I think it's safe to say that even the information we have learned in APUSH has caused to view Native groups with more respect.

Cynthia Xiao

3/18/2018 08:49:36 pm

I think the Natives have been attacked and persecuted for so long because of the superiority felt over the natives by the whites. The whites feel as if they have an advantage over the natives, like how they feel over the African Americans. I think that we just need to leave the Natives alone and allow themselves to preserve their own culture. In the past, we have tried to be too involved with their culture, which has led to further differences and harmed our relations.

Kevin Xie

3/20/2018 08:49:22 pm

I believe that the persistence of ongoing relations with Native Americans is due largely to their proximity. Even if they don’t consist of a very high population, they are still a significant community of people who have lived in these lands for thousands of years. Some level of interaction with them is inevitable, although we are isolated from them through the reservation system, starting way back to the Indian Removal Act, which basically designated the Oklahoma territory as a reservation. Restoring relations with them would be a difficult task, since we should take care not to repeat the past by cultural appropriation, but rather take care not to tread upon their way of life.

Liam McHale

3/20/2018 10:28:32 pm

I think that relations like such with the Native Americans have continued for so long because they are powerful people, and are willing to fight and justify their right to preserve their sacred lands instead of packing up their tent and moving to a different area in a heartbeat so-to-speak. Preserving their group should be a large goal in the future. A possible solution is extending the amount of land for Native American Preservation areas.

Janvi Patel

3/21/2018 01:51:00 am

I think such relations have continued for so long despite them being so few in population because the Americans still view the Natives as "barbaric" people who have not given up their nomadic lifestyle. I think that it is important to teach Americans more about Native American culture in order to preserve their group and culture and improve relations with them.

Kyle Firman

3/18/2018 01:43:25 am

Both historians have opposing viewpoints, but neither deny the atrocities that Americans committed. One of these atrocities mentioned is the deliberate trading of infected blankets with the natives. It is quite clear that there was prejudice against Indians at the time, but why do you believe whites would go as far as biological warfare against even peaceful native tribes?

Madisyn Hall

3/18/2018 12:12:03 pm

I believe that the reason whites would go so far as biological warfare was because of America being so power-hungry. Both articles provide evidence to the fact that Americans were willing to do anything in order to obtain land from the natives. I believe that even if natives were peaceful, Americans were willing to take whatever means necessary to gain what they wanted.

PJ Fenton

3/19/2018 07:47:01 am

I disagree, the whites were obviously prejudice towards natives and wanted to remove them from American society, but the notion that they knew how to control germs and use them against others is doubtful. If the whites were so medically advanced that they could conduct biological warfare on their enemies than why would hundreds of thousands of whites die every year from simple diseases and their life expectancy, according to legacy.com in this period was only was only 40 years?

Emma Benson

3/18/2018 02:40:51 pm

I do not believe that Americans actually had the intentions of participating in this biological warfare against the natives. In this time period, the knowledge that people had of types of disease and how they spread was nowhere near as large as it is today. Though they did intentionally kill off natives in other ways, I do not think that they intentionally spread disease, and I do not believe that they understood that they were spreading disease when they gave them the infected blankets.

Troy Won

3/20/2018 07:50:33 pm

I disagree. I believe that America knew exactly what it was doing when it gave blankets infected with smallpox to the Natives. While specifics on how disease spreads were unknown at the time, I believe that people had a general idea of how disease transfers. "We gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital, I hope it will have the desired effect.” This is a quote from Captain William Trent of the garrison militia, meaning that they did intend to use biological warfare on the Indians.

Anisah Ahmed

3/18/2018 04:58:56 pm

I disagree on the fact that the Americans tried to start a biological war against the Native Americans. I don't think they understood how diseases spread, therefore they could not have intentionally spread any diseases. “The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them." This quote was mentioned in the second article and proves that Americans had very little knowledge in the medical field. However, what little knowledge they did have they used to try to help the Native Americans. “Similarly at odds with any such idea is the effort of the United States government at this time to vaccinate the native population.” The Americans tried to protect the natives against disease by vaccinating them. These actions strongly suggest that Americans were not trying to start a biological war with the natives.

Reeva Patel

3/18/2018 06:39:46 pm

While I do believe there was prejudice against the natives during this time, I do not believe that there was any intentional biological warfare with the trading of the blankets. I feel that scientific backing to support how diseases spread and now people were affected was not strong, and I do not believe they intentionally wanted them to die. I think this had more to do with protection as the settlers did not trust the natives and wanted to be sure that they would not try to harm them.

Zacharie Kirk

3/18/2018 08:36:53 pm

Yes, I do think that the American people and the colonists that came before them would go as far as to use biological warfare to eliminate their adversaries. They were focused on expansion of their own land in order to create wealth and profit and had no problem destroying these nations that were so different to them. There was an article we read a while back that focused on the fact that the Europeans (and by extension the early Americans) were not used to people of different races or cultures and therefore treated them negatively and even went as far as to kill and destroy their culture.

Sarah Kim

3/18/2018 10:13:20 pm

I agree with Madisyn that America eager for power and land was the main reason why the Americans pursued the biological warfare. To add on to this discussion, one of the article also stated that even in colonial times, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain had already arrived to colonize the Americas and effectively employed means to eradicate native people. Hence, the Americans would have taken every measures possible to wipe out the native population and take over the prized lands. Furthermore, I believe that the white supremacy views helped fuel the idea that the natives were inferior and that they should be eradicated. Whether intentional or not, the biological warfare reflects the deep-rooted belief of white superiority and how eager the Americans were for new lands.

Cameron Peele

3/19/2018 09:56:46 pm

I think some whites resorted to biological warfare because they were so desperate to succeed. Whites who advocated for westward expansion and Indian removal were greedy and often racist as well. These two characteristics could only combine to create violence. These whites believed they were superior to the Indians and had a destined right to own the land they occupied and after peaceful negotiation failed, they believed their only other option was to physically get rid of the human obstacle blocking their wealth and success. I do not however believe that all Americans agreed with or resorted to acts like this and that is one of the important factors of the second article argued for why the killings of Indians was not a genocide. It was many small unorganized groups rather than one large group as a whole targeting another group.

Carlos Pinel

3/20/2018 11:12:42 pm

I completely agree that in an act of deperation and an attempt to succesfully gain land and power whites resorted to the usage of biological warefare. While i also agree that there was a possibility that not all whites thought it was right to kill natives the avtions of the few have consequences for the many. Similarly to Nazi Germnay not all Germans hated and killed jews but all of Germany was blamed for what happened as they didnt stop it. I think this is veyr important and relates quite evidently to this event and time period.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 10:25:48 pm

The justification that whites used for their actions was that they were much more fit and able to live on and use the land. The whites believed that they rightfully "own" the land over the Native tribes. The quickest way to elimanate the problem while still seeming peaceful was to use biological warfare in order to not start war but instead discretely conduct genocide.

Turanya Ranjan

3/21/2018 12:54:50 am

I agree that the white Americans at that time were heavily set on the idea that they rightfully owned land over the native people. This could be because of white pride, however I disagree with the fact that they wanted to seem peaceful while doing such acts of biological warfare. They were simply trying to remove the natives, and it didn't matter to them if they were being peaceful or not. Biological warfare is still a very harmful way of removing a group of people, and I believe it shouldn't be disregarded as such.

Madisyn Hall

3/18/2018 12:25:43 pm

The author of the second article argues that the relations that whites had with natives were more of a tragedy than a genocide. He also argues that these relations were unavoidable due to the fact that both sides could not come to any agreements with each other. “In the end, the sad fate of America's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values. Despite the efforts of well-meaning people in both camps, there existed no good solution to this clash. The Indians were not prepared to give up the nomadic life of the hunter for the sedentary life of the farmer. The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life. The consequence was a conflict in which there were few heroes, but which was far from a simple tale of hapless victims and merciless aggressors.” Do you believe that the negative interactions between whites and natives were unavoidable? Why or why not?

Han Lim

3/18/2018 01:15:34 pm

I believe the negative interactions were unavoidable. Native Americans did everything they could to stay on their land, but ultimately failed because whites chose to continue expanding. The Cherokee tried to stay on their land by meeting the criteria for a separate nation, generals like Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse tried to stay on their land by resisting with force, and tribes like the Nez Perce in Idaho gave up their lands peacefully. However, the fact that Americans took over the land of all of these tribes shows that no matter what the natives did, negative interactions were unavoidable.

Patrick Sullivan

3/20/2018 09:20:37 am

Wasn't it probably avoidable by America? If the US had acted differently, conflict could've been avoided. It may still have happened, but the US had options to stop the war.

Jasmine Kaur

3/18/2018 01:33:33 pm

I think that with the mentality that Americans had at the time, including the ideas of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny did leave the negative interactions unavoidable. It is mentioned in both articles that when valuable natural resources were discovered on Native American territory, Americans attempted to remove them from their land. This idea is in-line with American's mentality and Manifest Destiny idea that Americans deserve the best to become a world power and spread their ideas. This type of thinking rendered negotiations useless because the Americans would not settle until Natives were completely removed from the land.

Emma Benson

3/18/2018 02:38:06 pm

I do believe that the negative interactions between whites and natives were unavoidable because Americans for so long had already had this idea of Manifest Destiny programmed into their brains. Because of the fact that them and many of their ancestors had already believed that they were far superior to any of the natives, I do not think conflict between the whites and the natives could have been avoided at this point.

Reeva Patel

3/18/2018 06:36:26 pm

I do believe that the interactions between the whites and natives were unavoidable. During this time, there was major white supremacy, which only got worse and worse as the times went by. They believed that they were entitled to the land that the natives were on, and nothing was going to stop them from obtaining it. Also, since the natives and whites did not always speak the same language, there was a buffer between them. This buffer could have caused heightened problems between the groups simply because they did not understand or trust one another.

Cameron Peele

3/19/2018 10:21:10 pm

I definitely believe the negative interactions between whites and natives were unavoidable because many Americans throughout early colonization and early US history believed that they had a duty to use the land to its full potential and that natives were not doing so themselves. Early European explorers also used violence to conquer natives and when later Americans experienced conflict with natives and peaceful negotiations did not work, they looked back to what worked in the past and violence was the answer. Americans were very selfish and did not consider it beneficial to allow the natives to live and maintain their own land when they could produce more goods and make more money off of the same land. Americans did not believe it was possible to acquire the land they so desperately desired without violence and that set them on a course for destruction.

Jasmine Kaur

3/18/2018 01:17:52 pm

In the discussion, we addressed how both articles approach the intentions of American settlers killing Native Americans differently. Do you think that settlers intentionally killed Native Americans on grounds of superiority, making this a genocide or do you think that Native Americans were only killed because they occupied “American” land?

Cynthia Xiao

3/18/2018 02:07:36 pm

I think that the Native Americans were only killed because they occupied "American" land. If it were any other racial group, the Americans still would've done the same and killed the people because they were on the land that they wanted to posses. Due to this fact, I do not think the removal and destruction of Indians should be classified as a genocide.

Aubry Dreikosen

3/20/2018 05:32:09 pm

I agree with you on the fact that the Native Americans were only killed because they were on "American" land but I disagree with the fact that Americans still would have done this with any racial group. Sure the Americans heavily invested in their mission of manifest destiny causing them to rapidly expand westward using violent measures when necessary, but had a racial group they felt were on the same level as them occupied those lands the U.S might not have taken as violent of measures. For example had a group of europeans occupied this land the United States would have been hesitant to use violent measures and might have tried a more diplomatic approach to achieve their goal. The U.S felt they were superior to the native Americans which played a large factor in their treatment of the native Americans as they did not have to fear a devastating retaliation.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 10:29:40 pm

I agree with what you're saying that the Americans would've killed any group that may have been living on the land. However, genocide is defined as: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. In this case if you were to say that the Indians destrustion was not genocide youre going directly against the definition that clearly states that it is the purposeful distruction of a certain group, in this case being the Indians.

Emma Benson

3/18/2018 02:35:56 pm

I believe that settlers intentionally killed Native Americans, along with killing them to occupy their land. In many of the documents that we have read in class, we learned about how the Americans attempted to assimilate the Native Americans into their culture, making them speak English, practice Christianity, go to American schools, and dress like Americans did. Because Americans were intentionally destroying the culture of the Natives, their actions would be classified as a genocide.

Anisah Ahmed

3/18/2018 05:15:06 pm

I think that Native Americans were killed because of white superiority, which makes this a genocide. “The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.” This quote explains how Americans were deliberately targeting Native Americans to get rid of their ethnic group. In the previous score discussion we talked about the Manifest Destiny and how Americans did not like any people of color. The white supremacy that Europeans brought to the New World during colonization has stuck with the Americans. They believe, due to the Manifest Destiny, that it is their responsibility to colonize and rule this land. By "they" they mean white, male Americans. Although the Native Americans were occupying the land American's wanted, I think the Americans would have killed them even if they weren't. They were trying to cleanse America of Native Americans, making this a genocide.

Kate Brown

3/19/2018 07:29:00 pm

I believe that white supremacy and Manifest Destiny were used as justification for taking native lands, but that the motivation of the US was merely to gain more land. The Natives weren't killed simply for being "Native American," it was so that the US could attain their lands.

Reeva Patel

3/18/2018 06:31:53 pm

I believe that the settlers only killed the Native Americans because they were on "American Land." The settlers did not come to the new world with the specific mindset to kill the natives. If there was a different group of people on the land, the settlers would have done the exact same thing because it was not about the people, it was about where the people were located and the resources they had.

Lauren Bryant

3/20/2018 12:11:40 am

I respectfully disagree with your assertion. The settlers in fact came to America to kill natives because of already settled, feelings of superiority. It is historically accurate that Natives have had mixed populations, which whites feared a lot during this time period. Therefore, I believe that the Natives would still have been killed, but less on a grand scale, and only as a way to punish and shame theme into maintaining mixed race societies.

Turanya Ranjan

3/21/2018 12:58:55 am

I disagree with the fact that Americans only wanted to remove native Americans for land. It was quite clear that Americans didn't like the Native Americans because they were a group of mixed people, and most of them didn't adopt American culture. For example, most Americans thought that the Cherokee tribe was some what acceptable because they had assimilated into the American culture at that time. However, I do agree with the fact that these motives had lead to the desire to gain more land because they didn't feel the natives were worthy enough to hold that much land in their possession.

Philip Cicmanec

3/19/2018 05:40:13 am

I feel that the U.S.'s actions weren't fueled by racism so much as the desire for westward expansion. I believe this as had it been any other group of people occupying the land, the U.S. would likely do the same with them. If any actions were taken on the grounds of superiority, I believe that westward expansion is likely the roots of this idea of superiority.

Ananya Badhri

3/19/2018 04:17:04 pm

While I agree that the U.S would have been just as harsh with any other group, I believe racism was a huge component as well. If the americans back then were as accepting as we are today, I do not believe that they would have been as harsh as they were. A racist mind justified and fueled the idea of Manifest Destiny. I think they both are equal factors rather than one being the cause of the other.

Joshua Harris

3/20/2018 11:22:23 am

I do agree with the idea that their desire for westward expansion was a main idea of the conquering of the native Americans, but there was also a sense of racism that was on their minds. Their feeling of superiority thrived with their racism as they destroyed the natives.

Patrick Dunn

3/20/2018 09:29:02 pm

I agree with this statement. White people only used racism to justify their actions; this was not an attack on the natives as much as it was an attack on their land.

Adam Gilleland

3/20/2018 11:19:29 pm

In response to Ananya's comment on racism fueling Manifest Destiny. I believe that although Americans felt superior to other individuals of minority status, I don't believe that was the reason for expansion; a method of exploitation. I believe that it was more political and economical rather than based on race. Expansion was necessary and land was occupied by people who lacked methods of initiating productive land-use, that Americans began expansion.

Amrita Gokhale

3/19/2018 06:07:59 pm

I believe that the fact that Natives occupied land America wanted was one the main reasons that settlers killed Native Americans. At the time, America wanted land desperately, and would probably have had tensions with any group of people that stood in their way. However, I also believe that there was intent to wipe out Native Americans because of feelings of racial superiority, which probably enhanced the tensions between the two groups even further.

Cameron Peele

3/19/2018 10:25:40 pm

I think American settlers killed Native Americans simply because they occupied "American" land. If Americans had not desperately desired the land the natives occupied, I find it very hard to believe that the two groups would have interacted much at all. The main reason for contact between the two groups besides basic "neighbor" activities like trade was to gain more land and if that had not been an American motivation, I think they definitely would have left the natives alone. The combination of native presence AND the hunger for more land combined to create the violent and aggressive American settler.

Ali Ahmed

3/20/2018 03:55:30 pm

I do agree with you that the Americans wanted the land, but the fact that America didn't go north to attack Canada or didn't decide to work out proper diplomatic relations leads to the idea that it might have been more than just land. They could've lived with the Native Americans on the land, violence wasn't necessary, but I think there was a racial dispute between the Americans and the Native Americans

Megan Nickel

3/20/2018 04:55:11 pm

I think that this idea of superiority and the idea that the land was “American” land go hand in hand. These two factors combined resulted in the tragedy imposed on the Native Americans by the white colonizers. This is supported by the Doctrine of Discovery. When discussing the Doctrine of Discovery, Ortiz states, “Therefore, European and Euro-American ‘discoverers’ had gained real-property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag.... The Doctrine of Discovery is so taken for granted that it is rarely mentioned in historical or legal texts published in the Americas.” This quote is very important to recognize that, although many Europeans are credited with ‘discovering’ certain places in America, native inhabitants already occupied the area. The Doctrine of Discovery essentially stripped the natives of the rights to their homeland simply because Europeans believed they were superior. This ultimately led to much of the genocide that is discussed and proves that the ideas of superiority and “American” land are closely related.

Aryan Anerao

3/20/2018 04:59:55 pm

I think that it was a combination of both. The conflict started because the natives were occupying land that the american settlers wanted. The american settlers resorted to violence because they believed that they were superior. I do not think there would have been violence if another european country was occupying the land.

Adam Gilleland

3/20/2018 11:22:22 pm

I believe that conflict was evident along whichever path presented above. Although superiority was a factor in acquisition of unused land, I believe that American expansion was so necessary that the US would have found means to obtain the land without consideration of the country residing in a potential acquirable location.

Aarati Bothe

3/20/2018 05:25:34 pm

Although settlers initially arrived to the United States in pursuit of land, the actions against the Native Americans were reinforced by the feeling of superiority. According to Dunbar-Ortiz, "The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate the existence as peoples - not as random individuals." Many settlers saw the Native Americans as unfit to own the land, strongly believing that they were entitled to using the land. These sentiments led the settlers to use any means to terminate the Native Americans.

Troy Won

3/20/2018 08:04:49 pm

Native Americans were seen as wasteful and inefficient when it came to developing and using the land, which fueled the idea of Manifest destiny even more. They felt that the Indians did not deserve the land and took the land for themselves, therefore it was both. I believe that their feelings of superiority accelerated the process, but the primary motive was land.

Erin McIndoe

3/20/2018 08:19:03 pm

I think the natives were killed mainly because they occupied the American land, but I do not think if is fair to discount the impact that white superiority had on the genocide. I believe it is fair to say that the Americans expanded west because they wanted the economic benefits that came with it, but I do believe the massive amount of death that occurred may have had more to do with the concept of white superiority that was extremely prevalent at the time. I think that since the Americans believed that the natives were just in their way of potential economic success and they were seen as savages, they killed them because they believed they were better suited for the land. Their race and the white superiority ideals are what continued to increase the number of native deaths.

Kevin Xie

3/20/2018 08:53:57 pm

I feel like there was a bit of both motivating the settlers. It all ties together in the idea of Manifest Destiny, which was present in the very founding of the nation in the British colonies. Certainly, racial superiority was a factor, as the settlers commonly viewed the natives as being less cultured and human, in need of civilization and stewardship. The desire for land was also dominant, as people sought more property for both profits and their own prosperity.

Emma Benson

3/18/2018 02:33:40 pm

One thing that Lewy mentioned in his article was that the American actions against Native Americans was not necessarily a genocide because of the fact that the Native Americans were also kind of violent towards to the Americans. Also, the Americans believed that they had been in a battle with the Natives, despite the fact that war had never actually been declared. Do you think that it is possible for these actions to be considered both a battle and a genocide at the same time? If not, would you consider this to be a battle or a genocide, and why?

Ben Taylor

3/19/2018 04:50:10 pm

Yes, I do think that a war can still classify as being a genocide at the same time. Just because the people being oppressed fight back against a warring power does not necessarily mean that they are not the subjects of genocide. Therefore, a war/battle can still classify as genocide as long as the group being oppressed is of one culture to meet the conditions of genocide.

However, to completely differentiate between a war and a genocide, the number of those fighting against a "genocidal" power is also important to look at. Just because German/French/English people were being killed during the first World War in extremely large numbers does not make the actions against them genocide, mostly because there was a large number of warring forces on both sides of the conflict. The actions against each other still represented hatred that was somewhat cultural, but due to the scale of the conflict, it cannot qualify as genocide. Therefore, whether something can be classified as genocide really depends on whether actions can be considered acts of war and how large the group being acted upon is. In the case of the American Indians, their population was much smaller than the Americans who acted against them, so, to be more exact, this is more of a genocide than a war.

Ananya Badhri

3/19/2018 04:50:17 pm

The natives had no option but to either fight back or give in to those demands so I do not think this classifies as a battle. In my opinion this was a genocide. The specific targetting of a race was happening, that is why it is a genocide.It cannot be both, it has to be one or the other. While there were instances of the native americans being violent as well, it was no match for what the americans imposed on them.

Ali Ahmed

3/20/2018 05:18:14 pm

I agree that the Native Americans battles were so few in number that they shouldn't really count as a battle or resistance, and rather as a genocide. The Americans were more technologically advanced that it was a masacre rather than a battle. The war took out millions of Native Americans and the effects to the Native American population can be seen today as well. Today their numbers are few because of lasting effects of this genocide.

Turanya Ranjan

3/21/2018 01:08:44 am

I agree with the fact that this was a genocide because of the targeting of one specific group and wiping out such a large portion of the native population. It was said in the second article that in a span of 4 centuries, the native population went from about 12 million to around 200,000. They were a targeted group of people because they were enslaved, and there was also a systematic removal of the Native Americans during the Trail of Tears, which was imposed by the government.

Ideliya Khismatova

3/19/2018 06:36:25 pm

I think that it could be considered both, as the natives played an active role and killed several Americans throughout this time period, but it is still a genocide from the American side because they chose to deliberately kill the Native Americans. In the first article, Ortiz mentions that "genocide does not have to be complete to be considered genocide," which means that the whole population of Native Americans did not have to be destroyed. This could be a war as well because since the Native Americans fought back, though it was to protect their land and not to completely destroy the American population, they still actively contributed in fighting, which leads this situation to be both a war and a genocide.

Brogan Turner

3/20/2018 03:29:32 pm

I would say that while it could be considered both by some people since there was violence on both sides, it is more of a genocide than war and therefore that justification for the actions is invalid. Granted, the Native Americans engaged in some legitimate battles, but that did not require an extensive effort to then wipe them out. While maybe most of the death involved in the Native American population was due to disease, Americans did everything they could to rid their lives of these people and for that reason I believe that while it is both, it was more a genocide than anything.

Megan Nickel

3/20/2018 05:36:38 pm

I think that it is unreasonable to consider the colonization of natives by Americans only war or only genocide. However, I do believe that instances of both war and genocide occurred throughout the wide expanse of time that these events took place. In order to truly determine if an instance was war or genocide, I believe that the specific scenario must be analyzed closely, as Lewy was sure to do throughout his article. For example, in Lewy’s article he stated, “Wounded Knee has been called ‘perhaps the best-known genocide of North American Indians.’ But, as Robert Utley has concluded in a careful analysis, it is better described as ‘a regrettable, tragic accident of war,’ a bloodbath that neither side intended. In a situation where women and children were mixed with men, it was inevitable that some of the former would be killed. But several groups of women and children were in fact allowed out of the encampment, and wounded Indian warriors, too, were spared and taken to a hospital.” If this instance had been a genocide, then neither women nor children would have been spared and no mercy would have been shown to the natives. It is for this reason that I do not believe that a single event can be considered both war and genocide because, unlike genocide, war has boundaries.

Makena Napier-Rowell

3/18/2018 02:42:54 pm

In the article "Yes, Native Americans were the victims of Genocide," the author talked about the different acts that someone would have to commit for it to be considered genocide. One of the acts were the killing of people from a specific group. This is also similar to the idea of terrorism, which could be defined as the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce. Is terrorism similar to genocide or is there something else that differentiates the two?

Anisah Ahmed

3/18/2018 04:45:20 pm

I think that terrorism is the act of provoking fear in people in general, not specifically an ethnic or racial group. It is usually targeting people of a specific country. Terrorism is used to be heard and get attention, usually of government officials. Genocide on the other hand is cleansing a population of a certain ethnic or racial group. It's used to maintain a population of desired races and exterminate those that aren't desired. However, I think that both of these actions try to cause change. Genocide is trying to change the make up of the population in terms of ethnicity. Terrorism is trying to change relations or rules between nations or people. Although they are both violent acts, they have different goals and methods of achieving them.

Rohitha Madduluri

3/18/2018 07:48:06 pm

Terrorism and genocide are similar and sometimes overlapping, and they occur under similar social conditions - in response to conflicts between socially distant and unequal groups. Conceptually, they differ mainly in that terrorism is covert and carried out by civilians, and genocide may not be.Genocide more refers to the deliberate widespread effort by one group to eradicate the presence of another in society through mass murder. Terrorism, in contrast, embraces the use of violent in pursuit of a higher political or ideological cause. Likewise, terrorism uses murder to target members of the opponents of the terrorist actors, but it does not seek to physically eliminate all members of a tribal, racial, or ethnic group.

Ken Asada

3/18/2018 07:50:27 pm

What differentiates terrorism and genocide is that genocide is intentionally trying to destroy a certain group because they are that group. Terrorism can be indiscriminate terrorizing of any group. Terrorism also doesn't have to be motivated based on the destruction of the group. During the years after the civil war, white supremacists terrorized blacks not to destroy the group, but to force submission into antebellum standards.

Philip Cicmanec

3/19/2018 05:45:42 am

By the author's vastly generalized definition, I believe terrorism would fit under the definition of genocide as any individual acts could, by her definition, be seen as genocide. However, I think the two words, genocide and terrorism, are vastly different in that genocide is done with the intent of exterminating a group of people while terrorism has the intent to create terror among a people. I believe there is some overlapping in the definitions but the intent should be the main focus as opposed to the outcome.

Adrienne Masangkay

3/19/2018 07:55:40 pm

To an extent, terrorism and genocide could be correlated with one another. It can be argued that terrorism can be used as a form of genocide. Terrorism is a form of direct political action utilized by individuals and governments in order to achieve a political goal. The main theoretical difference is that terrorism tends to be against more powerful targets wile genocide has a tendency to be against less powerful targets.

Cynthia Xiao

3/18/2018 02:45:29 pm

The UN was the one that created the terms for what classified as genocide. Their definition stated that genocide includes any behavior that is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." This definition was created in the late 1900s. Is there any significance in going back in history and finding all the particular events that satisfy these conditions? If there is, why is it important?

Zacharie Kirk

3/18/2018 05:20:56 pm

I believe so, yes. Going back in history to acknowledge the atrocities of the past is a significant activity that helps the human race to learn from past actions to better the future and ensure such horrors don't happen again. Classifying past Genocides and finding patterns in thinking and behavior beforehand allows us to identify areas which may be prone to them in the future and put a stop to it.

Muneer Khan

3/18/2018 05:58:41 pm

In my opinion, there is a significance in finding these events. History is important because it serves as a lesson to the people of the present. By analyzing the events of the past, we know what constitutes immoral tendencies and what constitutes good intentions. Additionally, the people that were affected by this horror in the past may be struggling to compensate or their culture might be disappearing. Although money does not really fix the problems that the people had at the time, it does allow the culture or society itself to get back on its feet.

Annie Liang

3/19/2018 03:47:42 pm

I think that it is important to go back in history to find particular events that satisfy the conditions of the UN convention because though recognition we can understand the wrongs that were committed and how we can prevent them from happening again. In fact the UN created this definition of genocide largely in response to the large killings of Jews that occurred during the Holocaust. By creating the definition the UN hopes to stop another mass genocide like the Holocaust from happening again.

Anna Stotka

3/19/2018 08:33:29 pm

I think that going back in history and finding all of the events that satisfied the criteria of a genocide would be helpful in examining the wrongs that have been committed, but at the same time I do not think that it would change people's opinions of certain events. For example, people still do not all agree that the Native American killings by the white settlers was a genocide, as seen in Guenter Lewy's writing, so bringing up events from the past that could be considered genocide would most likely result in arguments and more conflict rather than the resolving of previously undiagnosed genocide.

Erin McIndoe

3/20/2018 08:07:37 pm

I think there is a great amount of significance in going back and finding the events that satisfy these conditions. I think it is important to see all the times that these types of events have happened and what were potential causes of them. It is very true that history repeats itself and that there are many continuities and themes all throughout history, and I believe it is beneficial to pick those patterns out and begin to analyze them. By looking back at these events we are better able to understand different societies, their cultures, and their problems to better enable us to progress forward and limit similar events from happening again.

Jordan Barish

3/22/2018 04:43:48 pm

I think it is extremely beneficial to search through history for events that may constitute as a genocide. For one thing, learning about "new" genocides provides the opportunity to further discover what ideologies and policies lead to a genocide. This can aid with the prevention of future genocides. Also, recognizing genocides opens the door for reconciliation between victims and perpetrators of genocide.

Anisah Ahmed

3/18/2018 04:36:01 pm

In the second article the author, Guenter Lewy, compares the treatment and killing of the Native Americans to that of the Jews. The fact that the Natives weren't treated as harshly as the Jews is his justification for why it was not a genocide. “The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them. By contrast, the Nazis knew exactly what was happening in the ghettos, and quite deliberately deprived the inmates of both food and medicine; unlike in Stannard’s"furnaces of death," the deaths that occurred there were meant to occur.” This quote directly explains how the natives were treated very different from the Jews, which backs the authors claim. Is comparing the Native Americans to the Jews a fair way to justify whether or not it is a genocide? Why or why not?

Muneer Khan

3/18/2018 06:24:06 pm

No, comparing the events that occurred to the Native population in the 1800s to the events that occurred to the Jews in the 1940s is not a fair assessment of the atrocities committed to the Native population. While the 1940 Genocide of the Jewish population in Europe was what caused the Genocide Convention and defined what a Genocide is. However, that instance was so extreme that it cannot be the threshold of what constitutes a "genocide".

Sarah Kim

3/18/2018 10:21:49 pm

No, comparing the Native Americans to the Jews is not a fair method of justifying whether or not the eradication of the Native Americans is a genocide. Dunbar-Ortiz also states in her article that "Although clearly the Holocaust was the most extreme of all genocides, the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide." Hence, the eradication of the Native Americans and the extermination of the Jews are two independent events that should be assessed separately since there is a broad range of events that can be considered genocide. Furthermore, Lewy brings up the idea of historical presentism and how people today should view the past events in the historical context. It is important to view and assess the treatment of the Native Americans in its own context and the treatment of the Jews on its own distinct context.

Annie Liang

3/19/2018 03:39:51 pm

I think that comparing the killing of Native Americans to the Holocaust of the Jewish is a good comparison to give an standard of what is an extreme case of genocide. Additionally giving a standard of what is genocide is allows for there to be standards to when a certain action is considered genocide. Though I agree that it is not a fair way to justify what happened to Native Americans to what happened to Jews, I think that the author does bring does up a valid point by comparing the removal of Native Americans to the Jewish treatment in the Holocaust.

Makena Napier-Rowell

3/19/2018 06:00:47 pm

I do not believe that comparing the two situations should be evidence to why Native Americans did not experience genocide or why they did. In the first article, the author talks about the Holocaust and Jews. They state that everyone can agree that this was a genocide, but just because this was the most extreme way it could have occurred does not mean other smaller situations could not be considered genocide. This is practically the opposite of the quote stated in the second article. Therefore, comparing the two is not a strong argument on either side of the debate.

Anna Stotka

3/19/2018 08:06:35 pm

I believe that it is a reasonable comparison to make in order to understand what the Native Americans went through, but I do not think that these two events can define genocide in one way or another. Both involved mass, systematic murderings of people based on their race and/or beliefs and neither one should have occurred. However, declaring that the killings of the natives was not genocide could be strongly debated based on the systematic ways with which the white settlers extinguished the tribes in devious ways similar to that of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

Lauren Bryant

3/20/2018 12:08:26 am

I think while the comparison is exaggerated, it was necessary to connect the events historically. In the Holocaust, a widespread country-wide view of Jews negatively allowed for massive efforts of horror and terror. At this time period, when most of the United States would benefit from the ideas of Manifest Destiny, a widespread mutual feeling was developed that land was positive and that all measures should be taken to receive the land we want. Plus, like the Jews living in the Ghetto's, Natives were living in reservations that were isolated and discriminated against by the rest of the world.

Aarati Bothe

3/20/2018 04:54:31 pm

"The term 'genocide' is often incorrectly used, such as in Dr. Anderson's assessment to describe extreme examples of mass murder..." To elaborate on Dunbar-Ortiz's statement, many historians, including Lewy, use the Holocaust as a comparison to determine whether an event is considered genocide, but the Holocaust is considered one of the most extreme forms of genocide. According to the UN, an event can be considered if "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a group of people". Although the conflict between the settlers and Native Americans wasn't as extreme as that of the Holocaust, it follows the UN's criteria for the definition of genocide. Therefore, comparing the Native Americans to the Jews is not a fair way to justify whether or not it is genocide.

Kritika Bokka

3/20/2018 09:35:05 pm

No comparing the Natives and the Jews does not justify wether it is a genocide or not because the Nazis were way more cruel to the jews because at least the US didn't kill everyone they excused the women and children and they in the article it doesn't say anything about natives grouped into tight places and making them work until they died. In addition, the Nazis targeted the whole ethnic population, while the US technically targeted different tribes within the natives.

Reeva Patel

3/18/2018 06:29:01 pm

Both authors compare the Native American “genocide” to the Holocaust but they each take different conclusions from the evidence. How do you think this affects the validity of their claims?

Rohitha Madduluri

3/18/2018 07:40:11 pm

“No matter how difficult the conditions under which the Indians labored-obligatory work, often inadequate food and medical care, corporal punishment-their experience bore no comparison with the fate of the Jews in the ghettos...By contrast, the Nazis knew exactly what was happening in the ghettos, and quite deliberately deprived the inmates of both food and medicine; unlike in Stannard’s ‘furnaces of death’ the deaths that occurred there were meant to occur.” In this quote, the author(Lewy) compares the situation of the native Americans to that of the Jews impacted by the Holocaust. I don’t think that just because the Jews had it worse means that the native americans were not the victims of a genocide. Furthermore, in this quote the author states that “unlike in Stannards ‘furnaces of death’ the deaths that occurred there were meant to occur.”I think that the colonizers meant to kill the natives; if they didn’t want to kill them, then they would have tried to have more peaceful treaties rather than wars.I don't think Lewi's claim about comparing this to Holocaust was valid because just because the Jews endured more horrific events does not mean that the Natives did not endure horrific events, and this does not mean that the European colonizers did not behave with genocidal tendencies.

Lauren Medlin

3/19/2018 09:19:28 pm

I think the use of this comparison is valid in both articles and helps support both claims. Dunbar-Ortiz uses it in her counter point, saying that the opposition to her claim could argue that the genocide of the Jews was more organized and was executed on a larger scale than that of the Native Americans, as Lewy points out in his article. She then goes on to suggest that this does not make the treatment of Native Americans any less significant because the definition of genocide is not relative to the Holocaust. Although they present different views of it, both authors use the Holocaust analogy to validate their own arguments.

Aubry Dreikosen

3/20/2018 05:23:11 pm

I think that both of these claims are equally valid as they draw from the same valid evidence. What causes this difference in conclusions is the bias present in each of the historians writing, Each historians bias comes form their different backgrounds, ages, education, demographics, and previous readings done on this same topic. Lewy believes that the native americans did not experience a genocide so naturally when looking at the holocaust he will not equate the two to further prove his point. Dunbar-ortiz believes that the native Americans underwent a genocide so when looking at the holocaust and native american "genocide" she will try to find similarities between the situations to provide more evidence to support her claim.

Jenny Kim

3/21/2018 02:44:06 am

Comparisons to the Holocaust are made to support their own claims, and I think it is effective in doing this. While one claims that the conditions they were put in were similar to those of the Holocaust in that they caused disease and starvation, the other claims that these conditions were unintended by the Americans but intended by the Germans. By comparing it to an extreme, it is more easily understood and emphasizes the severity.

Muneer Khan

3/18/2018 06:38:43 pm

The articles read for this seminar discussed whether the killing of the Native Americans in the 1840s could be characterized as a genocide. However, the last articles discussed the concept of manifest destiny and how they influenced the Mexican American War. Based off of your personal conclusions from the last discussion, how similar were the conflicts between the Americans and the Mexicans, and the Americans and the Natives? How does manifest destiny influence the killing of the natives?

Cynthia Xiao

3/18/2018 08:46:57 pm

I think that both the killings of the Natives and the Mexicans were extremely similar. Both groups were targeted and persecuted because they were on the land that the Americans wanted. The Manifest Destiny also contributed to the feelings of superiority that the Americans felt over the Mexicans and the Natives. Overall, these contributions led to lots of similarity between the two.

Han Lim

3/19/2018 03:42:50 pm

Both the Mexican-American War and the American killing of natives had some similarities, but I feel like the Mexican-American War wasn't a genocide while the actions of many Americans during expansion were. Both events were influenced by Manifest Destiny because Americans aggressively took over land thinking their actions were justified. However, in the Mexican-American War, Polk formally declared war on Mexico and sent John Slidell to make negotiations and accepted Mexicans into the United States as citizens. Although the Mexicans in America faced lots of racial discrimination, they weren't intentionally killed and were allowed to maintain their traditions. On the other hand, many Americans didn't recognize native sovereignty and went to war without many formal declarations and actively killed a lot of natives for being natives.

Aasim Khan

3/19/2018 11:12:27 pm

I have to agree with this statement. The Mexican American war began due to Mexico owning land that the US deemed as theirs. The concept of manifest destiny plays into this because the US deemed themselves as superior and more deserving of the land. This same superiority complex played a large role in the Native killing. The natives were seen as weak and inferior, and many American's felt that it would be a crime to let them assimilate into the American culture. There are quite a few similarities between the Native genocide and the Mexican-American War

Lauren Bryant

3/20/2018 12:00:48 am

Since Dunbar-Ortiz explains that genocide is the intentional and forceful removal of a group of people off of their land, then yes, the ending of the Mexican War was another example of genocide. Also, Mexicans still remained in North America, but were forced to migrate to the southwest, similarly to how Natives were sent into reservations further out west. Also, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, giving the US more than 500, 000 square miles of land, has developed the feelings of superiority that exists in manifest destiny. The better question would be to what extent did manifest destiny kill natives, which was most of the conflict between whites and Native Americans, the ideas of spreading democracy (or European political systems) and taking as much land as possible, a common US practice since the 17th century.

Joshua Harris

3/20/2018 11:26:12 am

The conflicts between the natives and the Americans is very similar to that of the Mexicans and Americans. the Americans called for the movement or relocation of both of these indigenous groups. There were also battles that took place with both of these situations. Manifest Destiny did influence the killing of the natives because they wanted the land and felt justified in everything they were doing.

Rohitha Madduluri

3/18/2018 07:37:16 pm

According to the author, “The U.S. government could not have prevented the westward movement even if it had wanted to.” Do you believe this to be true? Do you think that had the colonizers intended to have a better relationship with the natives from the start that the two cultures could have had less conflict?

Kirti Nimmala

3/18/2018 08:36:01 pm

I think, initially at least, colonizers wanted to have good relations with the Natives due to the awe of Columbus for Powhatan and their dependency (Jamestown), subsequently, on Natives. It can also be seen in the Lewis and Clark expedition after which many Natives went to meet the US President. However, the combination of supremacist attitudes, declining soil efficiency and Manifest Destiny was toxic and made westward movement inevitable.

Aarati Bothe

3/20/2018 05:48:02 pm

According to Lewy, "There, at first, the Puritans did not regard the Indians they encountered a natural enemies, but rather as potential friends and converts." Although settlers may have intended to foster positive relations with the Native Americans at first, disagreements and conflict eventually led to a more hostile view of Native Americans, which in turn resulted in instances of violence against them. For example, in May 1837, English settlers set fire to a Pequot village, which killed several hundred men, women, and children.

Philip Cicmanec

3/19/2018 05:52:13 am

I believe the U.S. government couldn't have prevented the westward movement had it wanted to. I believe a good example of this was when the English failed to do the same when they enacted the proclamation line on the colonists which contributed to the cries of revolution. Regarding the second question, I do believe a better relationship with the natives couldn't have caused less conflict as the assimilation of the, "five civilized tribes," will show you. The U.S. had an objective and the natives were in the way of reaching that objective to the fullest, so I have a hard time picturing a scenario that doesn't include conflict.

Joseph Gaitens

3/20/2018 05:39:26 pm

I agree with this partly. On the one hand, the US did want the land and the natives were in their way; however, I don't necessarily think that it was possible to have a "better relationship" with the natives based on past events. I find it hard to believe that the natives would ever jump at the opportunity to be friends with the US due to all the mistreatment their ancestors had gone through.

Jessica Bauman

3/19/2018 11:39:10 am

I do believe that the US government could not have prevented the westward movement if it wanted to, as the Americans were very strong-willed. With strong influencing ideas such as Manifest Destiny, the American minds couldn't have been changed by the US government. If the colonizers intended to have a better relationship with the natives from the start, the two cultures could definitely have had less conflict. The Americans were very forceful in their approach to colonizing, and I believe that if a less violent approach was taken, the two cultures may have been able to decrease conflict.

Alex O'Sullivan

3/19/2018 03:57:54 pm

I think that almost from the second Europeans landed in the Americas, they had negative relations with Natives, specifically in North America. Europeans really did not view Native Americans as equals into probably well into the 20th century. The colonizers could have prevented Westward expansion in my opinion, but the idea of manifest destiny and white supremacy was some of the main ideas in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, and Americans desire for land, money, power, and a disregard for Native American lives and culture, caused this westward expansion.

Adrienne Masangkay

3/19/2018 07:27:48 pm

I believe that the westward movement by the US government was inevitable. Due to influential ideas and movements such as the Manifest Destiny, growing population, and America becoming more prosperous. I think that the colonizers would have desired to have a better relationship with the nations from the beginning, however it was probably not their main intentions. If they were to have a better relationship, there may still had been conflicts that rose, however it would have been minimized.

Muneer Khan

3/19/2018 10:36:28 pm

Yes, I believe this is true. The government would not be able to prevent western expansion. In fact, western expansion was not due to the government's policies, but rather by the collective ideas of the population. For example, the american colonials wanted to expand westward even though they were getting into conflicts with the natives, and the proclamation line established by the British was disregarded and was one of the factors that led to the revolution which shows that the government could not stop western expansion.

Aasim Khan

3/20/2018 07:58:20 pm

This statement does seem true because the US view of supremacy over the Native Americans stems primarily from the British. Britain is an isolated island nation, so the main mentality over there used to entail Anglo-Saxon supremacy. When the colonists came to present day US, this mentality was immediately shown through the negative interactions between the Natives and the Colonists. Based on this, it is safe to say that the colonists and the Natives would always have conflict, regardless of the first interactions.

Ken Asada

3/18/2018 07:43:49 pm

It was discussed that comparing genocides to the holocaust may not be appropriate as the extreme nature of the holocaust obscures severity of the genocide. As stated by Dunbar-Ortiz "the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide." However comparing to things under the same category can be valuable. In what ways do the parallels drawn between the holocaust and the treatment of the Native Americans help justify giving it the title of being a genocide?

Jessica Bauman

3/19/2018 11:34:18 am

It cannot be argued that the holocaust was a horrific historical event. The holocaust is also inarguably a genocide. This being said, comparing the treatment of the Native Americans to this event will give the perspective that the Natives had to undergo some of the same hardships and conditions in which occurred during the holocaust. In this mind set, it could justify the treatment of the Native Americans the title of being a genocide.

Ben Taylor

3/19/2018 04:59:44 pm

It is of most significance to look at how the Holocaust was targeted at people of a specific culture, which is then apparent in the singling out of Native Americans in the Americas. These native peoples may not all have shared the same culture, but they were close enough in the eyes of the American people to warrant such actions only against the American Indians, and no other groups. These actions by the Americans fit the definition of genocide as defined by the Holocaust.

Anna Stotka

3/19/2018 07:07:01 pm

The title of genocide is justified through the use of the mass killings of the Jews during the Holocaust. Because this event happened so much later in time than the killings of the Native Americans, I think people's views on genocide center mainly around how the Jewish people were treated. At the time when the natives were being killed, forcefully removed from their lands, and assimilated into the American culture, the U.S. citizens did not see the violent and wrong ways of their actions. As a result of this, the mass deaths of natives was not termed a genocide, and the matter did not come up again due to the U.S. not wanting to accept that they were responsible for so many deaths and therefore have the stigma attached to the name relating to genocide. Because the Holocaust is an obvious example, people do not want anything else to be compared to such a tragic event and lead to a bad reputation.

Coral Aman

3/20/2018 06:28:36 pm

The Holocaust is used as the prime example of a genocide. However, I think to some extent, the mass killing of the Jews can be compared to the treatment of Native Americans by Americans. The Nazis and Americans both had the goal of eliminating the existence of a group of people. However, the methods used differ and the reason behind the actions also contrast. The Holocaust consisted of a harsher situation, but the Nazis had the intention of eliminating the Jews. The Americans sought to eliminate the native race in order to achieve their Manifest Destiny. Although the methods differ, in both instances a group of people was targeted with intentional killing or genocide.

Kirti Nimmala

3/18/2018 07:58:47 pm

Both articles had different takes on the subject and different structure of argumentation. Did you feel the writing or its structure contributed to your opinion on the issue? If so, how?

Zacharie Kirk

3/18/2018 08:53:59 pm

I do. I thought the author of the first article, Ortiz, did a better job stating her case as she took a very straight-forward and logical approach to it. She grouped each of the classifications of Genocide with facts from history that confirmed them which allowed the reader to easily follow her train of thought and take in both the opinion and the proof that goes with it simultaneously.

Jon Calabretta

3/19/2018 08:37:48 pm

Going of why Ortiz's argument was better, I thought Lewy's struggled to get his point across. He brought up lots of counterpoints and statements that contradicted himself, and overall I wanted to agree with him but I struggled to understand his evidence. I think this is a good example as to why this is a tricky subject to talk about and maybe that saying Native Americans were not victims of genocide cannot apply to all instances of violence between Europeans and Natives between 1492 to present.

Sahil Patel

3/18/2018 11:30:34 pm

Dunbar-Ortiz was able to bring up counter arguments in the article to further build credibility in the claim that the Native Americans experienced genocide. Lewy kept many question left unanswered by the exclusion of mentioning the popular notion of the genocide under Adolf Hitler in regards to the fact of complete extinction as a requsite for a genocide.

Lauren Medlin

3/19/2018 08:53:05 pm

I think the writing style had a huge impact on the persuasiveness of each article. Like most of the people in our class, I think Ortiz developed a stronger argument and properly refuted her counter points. Lewy, on the other hand, used counterpoints as the basis of his article, providing evidence for the contrary belief and simply stating that it was wrong or insignificant. This frustrated me as I was reading his article because the writing came off as more of a childish "I'm right and nothing will change my mind" than a scholarly argumentative paper.

Sarah Kim

3/18/2018 09:58:20 pm

In the first article, Dunbar-Ortiz clearly states the principles and definitions of genocide based on the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. She seems to stick with the definition set by the UN Convention and uses the qualifications of genocide to support her claim that the Native Americans were indeed the victims of genocide. However, Lewy doesn't seem to explicitly mention a straightforward definition of genocide and rather employs comparison between the Native Americans and the Jews from the Holocaust.
Do you believe that there are any differences between how the two authors defined the term "genocide" and to what extent does that affect each person's argument?

Sahil Patel

3/18/2018 11:28:26 pm

I believe that Dunbar-Ortiz defines genocide according to the UN's definition and implicitly defines genocide as tramatic events that darkens a race's future interpretation. In contrast, Lewy focuses only on the aspect of mass killing and complete extinction to define a genocide fully.

Ideliya Khismatova

3/19/2018 06:32:14 pm

Dunbar-Ortiz defined genocide by the definition given by the genocide convention, specifically: "killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Generally, these terms are pretty loose and many actions can be interpreted as genocide, which helped her convince the audience that it was a genocide. However in Lewy's article, he never really defined the word genocide. This left the definition to not be able to be judged by the audience, and therefore we were more likely to agree with him. By not defining the word, he gave many exceptions, and it helped his argument by stating that there were many loopholes.

Destiny Padovano

3/20/2018 11:45:20 am

I disagree that the exceptions that Lewy gave helped his argument because when after he introduced them he didn't give much evidence to back up why it wasn't genocide. Also, the lack of definition gave the audience the chance to determine the definition of genocide, which could possibly affect how the audience sees his view on the American Indian situation. But I do agree that the use of the definition of genocide given by the genocide convention did help Dunbar-Ortiz's argument.

Jon Calabretta

3/18/2018 10:17:00 pm

While the question of if Native Americans were victims of genocide is debatable, it is indisputable that they have suffered greatly since 1492. Have we done enough in the recent past to repay the Native Americans for their suffering, or do we brush the issue off because they are a minority.
I don't think we do enough to help Native Americans today. The United States does have a lot of issues, so it is understandable why we would ignore the problems of a small demographic minority, but we could take more steps towards rebuilding their place in society. I remember during 1st grade when our classes had a Native American day and we all dressed up in moccasins and shot a paper mache bull with a bow and arrow. Looking back, all this did was mock Native Americans. Instead of teaching kids these stereotypes, we should spread the awareness of Native American issues and give them aid in order to repay them for centuries of suffering.

Sarah Kim

3/18/2018 10:28:06 pm

It is undeniably true that the Native Americans suffered greatly throughout history. And I totally agree with you that the Native Americans should receive aid as the repayment of suffering. However, this could be a painful reminder of the past to some Native Americans and can be, in some instances, sensitive issues. Then, how should the awareness of the Native American issues be more efficiently diffused and how should we approach in giving them the right aid today?

Jon Calabretta

3/19/2018 08:02:53 pm

Well, I think classes such as Native American studies are a step in the right direction on the education side of the issue. To further educate the public, specifically older generations, movie directors can make films that debunk myths of Indians instead of the classic "Cowboys and Indians" movies. Making informational documentaries or mini series about Native American culture would also help to educate people. As far as possible legislation, we should find a solution that is better than leaving Native Americans in reservations. I think programs that would integrate Indians into American society while still keeping their cultural identity would be successful. This could mean bringing them to major cities or setting up infrastructure in the reservations to help get jobs and get higher education.

Sahil Patel

3/18/2018 11:26:20 pm

I believe that more educated representations of Native Americans should be shown to the public. Many of the modern-day interpretations of history stem from entertainment and media; therfore, more information about the nuances to Native American life should be shown to alleviate the sterotypes that have darkened America.

PJ Fenton

3/19/2018 08:01:44 am

I agree, it is a disgrace that a group of people who had such a big role in the development of our country is forgotten by most for their complex societies and accomplishments but remembered by all for their feathers, tee-pees and bow and arrows. In order to change this, the history of Native Americans should be taught in school at a very young age. This would change the overall opinion and the legacy of Native Americans, which is in desperate need of improvement.

Annie Liang

3/19/2018 03:31:59 pm

I think that often the problem of Native Americans is never addressed enough and that many people often lack the knowledge of the different cultures. I think that awareness to general American history and all cultures could be better. By understanding history better we can learn from past generation's mistakes. I think that by understanding from past mistakes and putting in measures to prevent those mistakes is that best way to repay Native American for centuries of suffering

Colby Francfort

3/19/2018 11:53:52 pm

I agree that Natives are highly stereotyped and that they should be respected as a culture. But in the reality of things every single culture on this earth is stereotyped in some way and perceived a certain way by others. Therefore it can't necessarily be said that they need to be repaid just due to simple mockeries bu they can be payed for all the land that was stolen from them by colonizers.

Sahil Patel

3/18/2018 11:24:07 pm

In our class seminar we learned that present day Native American reservations are avenues for illegal crimes. The governement position on the reservation is that the state police is the only form of control active within the reservation. Obviously the police can not always be prompt to criminal activities; thus, many capitalize on this fact by performing illegal crimes for personal gain. I believe that this must come to light and be addressed as soon as possible. If these criminal activites persist then our country will never progess.

Philip Cicmanec

3/19/2018 06:00:21 am

A lot of the first article's argument relied on one definition formed by the U.N. many years after the events discussed took place. The definition Google will give you is one that focuses on killing. With that being said, why do you believe the author of the first article based much of their argument on this one definition? Do you feel that the U.N.'s definition may be wrong in any way or is it possibly simply a more modern definition for the word?

Ken Asada

3/19/2018 03:24:45 pm

The Google definition is probably an oversimplified version that just gives a generic idea of what genocide is. The author of the first article probably used the U.N. definition because it is more reliable and includes the legal and ethical implications. The U.N. came up with the definition for the purpose of identifying future genocides so using this definition will increase the credibility of identifying a genocide in the past.

Alex O'Sulilvan

3/19/2018 03:53:46 pm

I definitely think that the first author based his argument off of the U.N definition of genocide. However, I don't believe that just because the U.N came up with this definition after the Native American genocide, that it is not true. I don't think that the U.N's definition could be wrong in any way, and I think that it addresses both modern day genocides, and genocides of the past. I agree with Ken about google being a simplified version of what a genocide is, because I think genocide definitely goes more deep than just killing.

Colby Francfort

3/19/2018 11:38:36 pm

I believe that the UN's definition of genocide is more modern and more rounded upon the Holocaust and how genocide is modernly perceived from a world leader viewpoint. The author based his argument upon the google definition because of how to the point it is and how it really does support his idea of genocide in America.

PJ Fenton

3/19/2018 07:31:13 am

Do you agree with Dunbar-Ortiz opinion that the US is partaking in an "ongoing colonial process" and is still an imperialistic nation? If so, give some examples in recent years of actions taken by the US government that were at the expense of other countries.

Grace Farrell

3/19/2018 11:53:38 am

Yes, America continues to be an imperializing nation. In recent years America has continued its colonial holdings through the possession of the US territorys of: Guam since 1898, The Virgin Islands since 1917, and Puerto Rico since 1898.

Adrienne Masangkay

3/19/2018 08:29:07 pm

Yes, I do agree that US is continuously an imperialistic nation. Although America's territorial holdings have declined over the years, it still maintains a large political and economical in some parts of the world. Modern Imperialism takes the form of aggressive foreign policy, spreading democracy, and expanding corporations throughout the world through Americanization. An example in the recent years is the 2012 militarism in Africa where the Obama administration dispatched American personnel to Africa and used american Military bombing in Libya to help gain independence for smaller North African countries.

Adrienne Masangkay

3/19/2018 09:52:44 am

Dunbar-Ortiz argued in her article that "Settler colonialism requires a genocidal policy." Do you believe that genocide is necessary for colonization to be successful?

Jessica Bauman

3/19/2018 11:28:20 am

I don't believe that genocide is necessary for colonization to be successful. There could've been colonization in places where civilization didn't exist yet, and therefore no genocidal acts would be taking place. If history was different, the colonizers and the Natives could have worked together and became successful without genocide.

Ken Asada

3/19/2018 03:34:03 pm

Genocidal policies aren't necessarily needed for colonization in general, however settler colonialism is a particular method of colonization that does have some implicit genocidal tendencies. Settler colonialism utilizes invasive policies to displace indigenous populations and these policies can easily become genocidal.

Alex O'Sullivan

3/19/2018 03:49:37 pm

I believe that in the colonists eyes, some sort of "genocidal policy" would be necessary in order to gain what they wanted. The colonists wanted land, they wanted to farm on this land, and they wanted to create a new home on this land. Colonists did not consider Natives their equals, and in most cases, they were completely unwilling to share land with other people. They wanted Natives out of the land completely.

Shaan Stephen

3/19/2018 08:52:01 pm

I don't think that genocide was necessary, but I think that without it the colonists wouldn't have been able to expand as much as they did. There was too much in their way, even after disease had killed most of the native populations.

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 06:36:00 pm

I disagree with Dunbar-Ortiz, genocide is not neccesary in order for colonization to be successful. In the case of Native Americans, obviously a genocide occured, but throughout history the overwhelming majority of succesful colonzination has been completed without a genocide. For example, when the Portuguese built an Atlantic empire in the 1400s by colonizing the Canary, Cape Verde, and Azores Islands of Africa, they used no mass killings or any genocide type tactics, but were still extremely successful.

Sonu Basnet

3/20/2018 10:52:53 pm

I do not believe that genocide is necessary for colonization to be successful because that is taking it too far. There are other ways to colonize an area without taking down the whole nation or tribe. However, while colonizing, one of the most important factor is fighting with the natives that live on the territory. From a colonist point of view, I can see how genocide may be used to be successful.

Jessica Bauman

3/19/2018 11:42:33 am

It was very apparent that the Americans had their belief in superiority over other cultures. Do you believe that if ideas such as Manifest Destiny didn't exist, the US and the Natives could have had better relations?

Ananya Badhri

3/19/2018 04:21:06 pm

Manifest Destiny and superiority are two different things. Superiority justified the concept of Manifest Destiny. Even if Manifest Destiny did not happen, the superior mindset of Americans at that time will show itself through some other form. I do not think the U.S-Native relations could have ever been good.

Amrita Gokhale

3/19/2018 06:01:10 pm

I think that they would have still had bad relations with the Natives.There have also been conflicts in the past between Americans and people of similar cultures over land. Since land was something Americans desperately wanted during that time period, I believe that they would have had bad relations with any group of people that stood in their way. However, the belief that they were racially superior to the Natives may have enhanced the tensions between the two groups.

Ideliya Khismatova

3/19/2018 06:40:55 pm

I think that if the concept of Manifest Destiny did not exist, then American relations with the Native Americans would have been more peaceful and maybe even coexistent. Without this concept, the Americans would not think that there is only one way that everything would be right, and that is to be ruled by the white man. They wouldn't regard themselves as "superior" and would possibly respect other nationalities such as the Native Americans. I don't think it was inevitable, as the Spanish had good relations with the Indians and Spain is not far away from Great Britain on the map, so it's not like the Americans were a whole different species. This concept, unfortunately, caused a thought process that placed the Americans above everyone else. If the idea of Manifest Destiny did not exist, then in fact, the western United States could have been left alone and the Americans would have been satisfied with the land they already have.

Kate Brown

3/19/2018 07:08:36 pm

I agree- the natives were not killed simply for being "Native American," they were killed because Europeans wanted their land. It was Manifest Destiny ideals that led Europeans to believe that they had the right to simply take land that is not their's and therefore Manifest Destiny that led to any conflicts between natives and Europeans.

Kate Brown

3/19/2018 07:19:54 pm

Absolutely! If not for Manifest Destiny, the US would not have tried to take over Native lands, which is the root of all of their conflicts. If not for this insatiable need to expand, the US could have had peace and even trade relations with the Natives like the French did.

Adam Gilleland

3/20/2018 11:26:26 pm

If acquired land was not necessary for political/economic expansion, then Native conflict would not have taken place. Americans wanted to expand their territory to maximize profitable land and acquire their god given right to pursue land.

Kohl Abrams

3/19/2018 08:19:29 pm

I believe that if Manifest Destiny did not come into play, then the Americans would have still taken over the Indians. With their imperialistic mindset, knowing that they were better than the Indians, caused them to want to show their dominance. What better way than coming to their land, taking it over, and forcing them out.

Patrick Dunn

3/20/2018 09:34:51 pm

I disagree, I think that Americans would have continued moving west without manifest destiny but they would not have moved forward with such aggression. Manifest Destiny planted a seed in American minds that blossomed into a argument for their racism and continued attempts at wiping out the native population.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 11:31:29 pm

Even without the idea of Manifest Destiny Americans believe that the land that the Indians lived on was meant to be theres. Yes, Manifest Destiny was the main drive to take control of this land but it was not the main driving factor towards the Indian genocide. Even before the idea of Manifest Destiny Europeans still took land that didnt belong to them and kill native peoples all over the world.

Deb Bhattacharya

3/19/2018 09:38:18 pm

The ideas of Manifest Destiny appear as a result of American occupation and dominance over native populations, which occur by the time that the first settlers arrive into the New World. The Manifest Destiny was an extension of American superiority felt after this time. It's impossible to attribute the atrocities endured by the Natives to the permeance of Manifest Destiny. Rather, the perceived dominance of settlers against native populations fuel many of the "America-first" type supremacist sentiments such as Manifest Destiny to be so widespread in American society.

Anadil Siddiqi

3/20/2018 02:00:13 pm

I completely agree with this. Manifest Destiny, especially after acquiring the Mexican land, had grown to an especially ignorant point. American's felt that no matter who was there first, the land was theirs to take. Manifest Destiny, I also feel, prevented proper negotiations from occuring which could have prevented that many people from getting killed and forced off.

Makena Napier-Rowell

3/20/2018 05:40:27 pm

No, the term Manifest Destiny came during westward expansion while the idea of superiority could be felt throughout American history. They believed that they were superior over all native tribes, and therefore believed the land that was occupied by Native Americans belonged to them. They had no say in whether or not the Americans should take their land or not.

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 06:41:47 pm

Yes, the Americans belived that they were superior over other cultures, but this was because of ideas such as Manifest Destiny. If whites were not being told daily about how much better they were than the natvives through Manifest Destiny and other common beliefs of the time, I defintiely feel that the US and the Natives could have had better relations. In my opinion no one is born hating others or feeling better than others, if one develops feelings of superiority it comes from what they are being told and at this time whites were being told since their were babies that they were better than the natives. If you remove the ideas and teachings of Manifest Destiny whites and natives would have gotten along perfectly fine and probably have formed to create an even bigger and more powerful America than what we have today.

Zacharie Kirk

3/19/2018 01:10:14 pm

In the first article, Ortiz talked about genocide and settlement colonialism going hand and hand throughout history. Do you believe there was any way for colonization to occur in the time period that it did without the genocide of the native people?

Kohl Abrams

3/19/2018 08:23:13 pm

I do not believe settlement would be possible without killing the natives, however, I do believe that there could have been better ways in killing the natives so that the whole debate whether or not it was genocide wouldn't come into play. A fully declared war (which what it technically was) would have been the best way to do so, because than the killing of the natives would be deemed "justified."

Destiny Padovano

3/20/2018 12:02:51 pm

I do not believe that colonization would have been possible without the genocide of native because Americans believed it was their land. This doesn't just relate back to Manifest Destiny, but the Doctrine of Discovery from the 1400's. The Doctrine of Discovery gave Europeans the right to take land that they discovered, even if there were inhabitants. Their belief that the Native's land was theirs was one of the causes of the genocide of the American Indians.

Erica Belson

3/20/2018 02:06:20 pm

I think that there could be a way to non violently colonize the area the native people lived in. If the americans were accepting of the natives culture and way of life they could have worked together to merge cultures or come up with an agreement to the land. This, although, would have taken patients and working together.

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 06:20:35 pm

I do not feel that colonialism is impossible without genocide in most cases, but in the case of Native Americans it sadly was. If the whites could have taken over the land without spending money and even their own soldiers lives on conflict with the natives, they would have. But the natives were not going to just sit back and let them take their land and just run away to a different place. So they gathered their men and weapons and took a stand against the imperialistic whites. When the whites were faced with this they responded with even more violence, leading to the genocide of Native Americans because if they were not killed they were simply not going to give up their land and the whites would not be able to colonize.

Erin McIndoe

3/20/2018 07:59:19 pm

I think there was definitely a way for colonization to occur without genocide or any mass killings. I think the colonizers went in with a very closed minded mindset about what they wanted and what they were willing to do to get it. I think they also had a very strong white superiority complex that was very prevalant all throughout American history. I think the reasons for the mass killings have many interpretations, but if the colonizers had found a way to compromise, have a discussion, or not be so closed minded; I think there could have been a way to not have genocide. The natives may not have been viewed as less civilized or as savages without the white superiority complex and they may have allowed for potential deals where natives could have been a part of the new society or they could have split the land.

Sonu Basnet

3/20/2018 10:46:32 pm

Colonization will mostly result in number of deaths as two groups are trying to battle and win a territory. The Europeans and Natives could have tried to came up with an agreement of their share of land. It did not have to go to the extent of a genocide but rather a compromise.

Patrick Sullivan

3/19/2018 01:10:19 pm

I find it to be unfair that Dunbar-Ortiz refers to those who disagree with her as "genocide deniers". This is a harsh term conjuring images of Skinheads and Holocaust deniers. This is not remotely an appropriate term. Nobody is denying that the events she discussed happened. No disagreement is there, as is the case with true Holocaust deniers. The only disagreement is over the intention involved and the interpretation of reasoning. This is not denial, just disagreement.

Deb Bhattacharya

3/19/2018 09:20:06 pm

If a series of actions meets the criteria of genocide, which Dunbar-Ortiz lists and analyzes in relation to the violence perpetuated against Natives, is intention essential in categorizing this violence as a genocide? Some criteria, such as "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group" were met by forceful sterilizations of Native American women as mentioned during the discussion. In these actions, intention was pretty clear; to eradicate the existence of Native populations. I believe these intentions would be classified as inherently genocidal.

Anadil Siddiqi

3/20/2018 01:57:51 pm

I completely agree with Deb's argument, because pretty much every piece of evidence that Dunbar-Ortiz introduced is backed up by a piece of evidence from a direct sources. When defining genocide, acts that we have proof the US did, fall directly under that. Ortiz was just trying to emphasize that point.

Yi Liu

3/20/2018 09:05:55 pm

I agree in that Ortiz should not call people who disagree with her as genocide deniers, but I do believe that this term can apply to a part of the people who disagree. Although harsh, the term applies to those who deny the existence of a genocide for the sole purpose of keeping American history clean.

Annie Liang

3/19/2018 03:16:52 pm

Dunbar-Ortiz sites that there is a case in June 2013 where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The ruling said that a child, widely known as Baby Veronica, did not have to live with her biological Cherokee father. The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 to protect the cultural resource and treasure of Native children Do you still believe that Native American children are still specifically being targeted? Do you think that the law is still applicable to today?

Han Lim

3/19/2018 03:27:03 pm

Lewy argues that the actions of Americans "were almost certainly in conformity with the laws of war accepted at the time." If we label the actions of Americans during expansion as genocide, should we classify all similar historical events as genocide as well? If so, why? If not, what was different about the actions of Americans during this particular time period?

Ben Taylor

3/19/2018 05:26:44 pm

No, other conflicts throughout history cannot be labeled as "genocide" based on the actions of the Americans.
At the time, the American people were, as Lewy says, "in conformity with the laws of war," but this definition of war would usually be considered genocide in modern times due to their targeted actions against native people. However, this definition of war has changed over the course of history, and so what these Americans thought constituted a war cannot be applied to an event like the first World War because what occurred during these two conflicts is entirely different, and defined by differing laws of war.

Shaan Stephen

3/19/2018 08:40:06 pm

I think that we should label other historical events as genocide, but not because of what Americans did to the Native Americans. We should label it as genocide based on the UN definitions of genocide, or other definitions of genocide. It should not be a relative term.

Yi Liu

3/20/2018 09:10:41 pm

The term "genocide" should apply to all events who are between the severity of the Nazi genocide of Jews and the American genocide of Natives. The definition of genocide according to the UN covers a spectrum of events in history, and those between the two should be updated to be genocides.

Hiromu Koyama

3/20/2018 10:32:33 pm

The treatment of native americans would be the only event classified as genocide. This was the only systematic removal and killing of native americans and therefore is the only one in which the debate for genocide is even present

Alex O'Sullivan

3/19/2018 03:46:28 pm

In your opinion, do you believe that colonists had the desire to wipe out all of the Native Americans in North America because they wanted land, or because they were racially biased against the natives?

Amrita Gokhale

3/19/2018 05:58:31 pm

I feel that the main priority for Americans was to gain more land. Most of the conflicts that Americans have had with Natives was about land ownership. I find it difficult to believe that Americans would try to wipe out Native Americans without any sort of reason or goal in mind. Even if they did believe they were racially superior in comparison to Natives, they would have most likely used other nonviolent forms on interaction, such as assimilation of the Natives.

Shaan Stephen

3/19/2018 08:33:55 pm

I think that it was both. This was extremely fertile land that was filled with plenty of resources, which Americans wanted badly. They were also extremely biased against them as a result of many past wars such as the french and indian war, the war of 1812, and other conflicts. These two reasons led the Americans to invade and take over the land without a second thought.

Colin O'Brien

3/20/2018 12:15:32 pm

The colonists and the Americans did not have the desire to wipe out the Native Americans because of land nor did they have the desire to wipe out the Native Americans because they were racially biased. I do not believe they had the desire to wipe them out at all. They just did what they though they had to do to get what they wanted, which was land. They did what they thought was best to get the land, they didn't have any desire to wipe out Native Americans just the desire to gain the land they had resided on.

Erica Belson

3/20/2018 02:03:37 pm

I think that both played a factor in the motives of the americans' moving westward. They mainly moved into the land because they wanted to conquer it and use it, but they used the idea of being racially superior to make the over taking of land seem right

Joseph Gaitens

3/20/2018 05:41:53 pm

I think it is important to remember that the US was motivated to move west with quite a lot of greed, and I think they were blinded by that. They just had their eye on the prize and were going to get it because they thought it was the right thing to do. Of course, the US didn't particularly love the natives, but I don't think there was any intentional desire to wipe out natives.

Sonu Basnet

3/20/2018 05:48:03 pm

I think both concepts go hand in hand; the natives wanted more land causing them to be biased against the natives. Especially after the idea of Manifest Destiny, the Europeans believed they were destined by God to conquer the continent, and the natives were in the way. Europeans believed they were superior and the land was theirs to conquer.

Yanis Jaoui

3/20/2018 06:31:29 pm

I believe that it was mainly because the settlers wanted land for economic use that they desired to wipe out Native Americans, not because of racial biases against natives. Racial hatred against a certain group is usually not sufficient for the large wiping out of that group, and other factors are generally involved. Despite some notable exceptions, the quest for land ultimately lead to the desire to wipe out Native Americans, since the Native Americans were the ones in the way of acquiring the wealth that many settlers desired. Racial hatred mainly functioned in amplifying the extent to which the settlers killed the natives, but did not serve as the underlying cause.

Ben Taylor

3/19/2018 04:21:20 pm

There is a large debate over whether Americans actually propagated genocidal ideas throughout their population to rid the country of American Indians, but it is also important to address where these culturally-biased ideas originated from. Dunbar-Ortiz quotes a US General, who believes that "‘We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children . . . during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.’” This is a fair representation of the general American sentiment felt toward the Native Americans at that time in history. Based on this, where do you think that the hatred of American Indians that led to these debated acts against the natives by the United States really originated from? Did Americans come up with these more violent ideas based upon their conflicts with them in the early colonization periods in order to survive, later in the quest for more land during westward expansion, or some other time that would have given Americans an extremely negative impression of the Native Americans?

Navami Prabhu

3/20/2018 06:04:26 pm

I think the hatred of Native Americans stems from the era of American colonization, but the active violence undertaken by Americans was primarily in the era of westward expansion.
At the beginning of American colonization, Americans (I'm referring to Americans in the North since that's what the article mentioned) wanted to create a new prosperous society with their own values. They were jealous of the resources, wealth, and power of Native tribes and this jealousy led to an intense hatred of Native Americans.
The violence and genocidal acts were mainly centered during westward expansion. Although there were sporadic acts of violence against Native Americans before this period, there was a major push to drive Native Americans and their culture out of the land to bring a "better culture and people" to the supposedly neglected land.
Overall, I think the genocidal sentiment shared by many Americans during this time was due to the compounding effect of several events throughout American history.

Yanis Jaoui

3/20/2018 06:27:49 pm

I believe that the hatred of Native Americans largely stemmed from the era of American colonization prior to the revolution. During this time period, the native population was still significant enough to be successful in attacks against the colonists, often resulting in massive casualties on both ends. This killing of colonists, although not entirely unjustified, lead to anti-Native American sentiments. However, merely these sentiments did not result in the mass hatred of Native Americans. It was the media, art, and literature that spread these ideas, and gave a largely biased view on Native Americans that made them seem like savages that must be killed.

Ananya Badhri

3/19/2018 04:52:29 pm

Considering the reaction from the natives and overall resistence efforts, do you think it is possible for the natives to have expected the idea of Manifest Destiny? If so, what events or movements could have foreshadowed these events? If not, would the natives have been better prepared for the behavior of the Americans?

Amrita Gokhale

3/19/2018 05:53:57 pm

The author said that native death was unpreventable because westward expansion was unpreventable. In your opinion, would you say that westward expansion was actually unpreventable? And if it was, do you believe that the widespread death of natives was inevitable in achieving these means?

Jon Calabretta

3/19/2018 08:15:34 pm

Western expansion was inevitable. Manifest destiny shows us that many Americans believed their country must span from sea to shining sea. As an example, the British imposed the Proclamation line of 1763, and this was one event that lead to revolution. It is obvious after the Proclamation line that there would be no stopping the American intent to spread into the West. The US government had to work with the people to ensure that they would be able to settle the west. This meant taking land from people such as the French, Mexicans, and Indians. Although we were able to gain the Louisiana territory in a diplomatic way, the French did not have a very big population in North America, so it was not a big problem for the French to sell Louisiana. However, all of the Native Americans were in North America, so expanding west would mean taking the only land that Native Americans have. Because it is human nature not to give up without a fight, it is inevitable that Americans and Natives would have conflicts. Because of American's superior technology, we defeated the Native Americans and caused widespread death, all because of Manifest Destiny and the inevitable westward expansion.

Colin O'Brien

3/20/2018 12:12:38 pm

In my opinion, westward expansion was unpreventable. The Manifest Destiny grew and grew the idea of nationalism and patriotism in the heads of Americans that caused them to have the great desire of expansion. Also I believe it was unpreventable because the United States was growing in size and population and needed land to be able to continue to support all these people and resources. I also believe that the widespread death of Native Americans was inevitable to achieve these means. Since the dawn of time, violently taking land from people through wars and other means had gone on. Also I believe it was inevitable because the Native Americans didn't necessarily listen and did retaliate.

Yanis Jaoui

3/20/2018 06:24:31 pm

Western Expansion was indeed inevitable. The notions and fervor at the time deemed western expansion to be of necessity to America, although this view may be slightly erroneous. It often seen as fundamental to the survival of the United States that consent land was needed in order to maintain the United States government. In addition to nationalism, economic opportunities also made western expansion a necessity as well, as the resources and land available in the land known as the Mexican cession was invaluable, and if Mexico had exploited these lands to their full economic potential, the Mexican government could have become a formidable World leader. This in itself provided sufficient motivation to the inevitable nature of western expansion. I do believe that the death of natives was inevitable as well in achieving the means of western expansion.

Ideliya Khismatova

3/19/2018 06:47:55 pm

In Dunbar-Ortiz's article, she made a valid point about why the Americans kept killing Indians if disease was apparently doing the job. She said, "If disease could have done the job, it is not clear why the United States found it necessary to carry out unrelenting wars against Indigenous communities in order to gain every inch of land they took from them,". Do you think Manifest Destiny played a role in the American persistence? Why weren't they satisfied with the deaths from disease alone? If you consider that the deaths caused by disease led to this situation not being a genocide, why do you think the Americans pursued into more battle?

Coral Aman

3/20/2018 06:13:16 pm

I think Manifest Destiny did play a role. The Americans believed they had the right to spread freedom and democracy west, and the Native Americans stood in the way of this goal. I do not think the Americans intentionally killed so many Native Americans with disease, but I do think they were willing to use violence to expand their settlements. The Americans were willing to use war as a form of genocide. They had the goal to "terminate the natives existence."

Sofia Mariano

3/20/2018 07:58:36 pm

I think that Manifest Destiny did play a role in American persistence. I think that they weren't satisfied in the deaths from disease alone because they wanted to claim new land for themselves as soon as possible and I think that they saw Native Americans as an obstacle to achieving their goal. Although I believe that this situation could be considered a genocide, I think that Americans pushed for more battles as a way of showing off their new strength and abilities with a population they knew wouldn't fight back a lot. Like they were trying to prove themselves and that they were able to compete with European countries without actually competing with any of them.

Kate Brown

3/19/2018 07:03:02 pm

I do not think that the population reduction of the Native Americans was an example of genocide. As mentioned by the article, nearly 90% of the Natives were killed by disease, not direct violence by Europeans. Also, genocide is defined by Merriam Webster as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." Any killings of Natives were not systematic- they were simply due to the fact that Europeans wanted their land. What happened to the Native Americans was terrible, but it was not genocide because they weren't killed simply for being Native Americans. Those killed directly by Europeans and not by disease suffered as such due to the desire of the land that they occupied.

Kohl Abrams

3/19/2018 07:53:30 pm

We discussed in class that the Indians could not leave the reservation to make a better life for themselves due to the fact that they are culturally tied to the land. However, what would make them tied to the land that the Americans forced them to live on?

Joseph Gaitens

3/20/2018 05:43:15 pm

They had ties to the land due to their religion and their belief system. They were very land and environment oriented, and the land was sacred to them. It also provided them with space of their own, food, shelter, and a home.

Kohl Abrams

3/19/2018 07:55:53 pm

Do you think that your opinion would have changed if we were given a piece of writing that had a better formatted argument towards the side of not calling it a genocide, rather than the piece we got that was very poorly written and made nonsensical points?

Lauren Medlin

3/19/2018 08:44:13 pm

I think it would be interesting to have read a stronger argument for that side of the debate. Personally, I can see how people may argue that the Native Americans were not victims of genocide, but I would certainly like to see some form of solid evidence to support that view. Nonetheless, I'm not quite sure that it would change my opinion, especially if the article we read consisted of the only concrete arguments that can be used to corroborate that claim.

Brogan Turner

3/20/2018 03:33:54 pm

Yes, I think that the format of the argument and its many flaws greatly affected my ability to side with the author. The lack of solid evidence and on overage of counterpoints severely hurt the argument's ability to persuade anyone. If someone were to have written a well put together argument with strong evidence to support how it was not a genocide I could see my opinion being different. The fact that there was poor structure and the way that the argument was put together it almost provided more evidence for why it was a genocide than for why it wasn't, leading us to the same conclusion with both articles.

George Lever

3/20/2018 09:00:50 pm

I think that the article not calling it a genocide served its intended purpose. It was a direct rebuttal to the main points made in the first article. The format was good for that type of argument, because it assumed that the reader was familiar with the article that it is based on. It would have been more interesting to read an article that wasn't so tied to opposing arguments, so that there would be more original ideas. I think an unrelated article could have made the point better than the one we read.

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 11:14:06 pm

My opinion would not have changed if we were given a piece of writing that had a better formatted argument of it not being a genocide. I recognize that the document advocating that it wasn't a genocide was poorly written, but I still feel that is was clearly a genocide of an innocent group of people. Regardless of writing quality, the facts supporting that it was indeed a genocide are too overwhelming to change my opinion.

Lauren Medlin

3/19/2018 08:34:16 pm

If the treatment of the Native Americans is deemed a genocide, it has only been recognized as such for a short time. Could it be possible that history has overlooked other genocides, labeling them as wars or simply mass murders? If so, are there some examples of other debated genocides or mass killings of groups of people that have been denied the label of "genocide"?

Sofia Mariano

3/20/2018 07:50:27 pm

I think that it is definitely possible that history has overlooked other genocides. While I believe that some may not have been overlooked as much as hidden from history, I think that some examples of genocide would have been other Native tribes in the New World as Europeans came to the New World. Although it is without a doubt certain that Native tribes were wiped out by the spread of disease that was unintentionally brought over by European explorers, there are instances in which entire Native tribes are wiped out not only by disease, but by wars and mass murders committed by European troops.

Shaan Stephen

3/19/2018 08:50:26 pm

Most of these arguments focus on how we perceive these actions today. How do you think Native Americans back then would have seen this argument, and how they would have responded to it? Keep in mind that there were many Native American groups that integrated or tried to integrate with the Americans. Do you think that different groups would have a different response?

Christopher C. Green

3/19/2018 11:45:30 pm

Just from the traumatizing events of some Indian's watching their family or friends get persecuted or killed, would definitely make them a lot more hostile towards those who don't believe they went through a genocide. This is understandable due to the discrimination experienced, but the "genocide" should I say, occurred over a super long time span. Americans never had any purely evil intentions of just wiping out mass groups of Indians, but they did make the lives of Natives much harder. The Native Groups trying to fit in with Americans would most likely stick to supporting it being the non-genocide notion. Theses Natives likely so that have adapted to American society and culture are eventually going to think like Americans as well. It's a cause and effect situation.

Cameron Peele

3/19/2018 10:31:05 pm

Genocide was not formally defined until after World War 2, if a formal definition of genocide had existed back in the 1800s, do you think the treatment of natives by Americans would have been different? Why or why not? How do you think other world powers like England, Spain, and France viewed American violence toward Native Americans at the time?

Colin O'Brien

3/20/2018 12:04:56 pm

If a formal definition of "genocide" had been existent back in the 1800s, I don't think that the Americans would have treated the Native Americans differently. Although it may have been wrong to push them out of land, the Native Americans were not deliberately killed and had places to go, where they were welcomed. Besides Spain, I don't think that other world powers took much interest in the treatment of Native Americans by Americans, because Spain incorporated them into life.

Brogan Turner

3/20/2018 03:36:46 pm

I believe that if there had been a formal definition of genocide back in the 1800's it would have changed how the Native Americans were treated, assuming that definition lines up with the one we have today. If not for simply knowing how horrific the actions they were taking were, they would also have to worry about their public relations after openly committing a genocide and having people be aware of what was truly happening. If people had seen the US as taking action to eliminate a race, I feel that would have a profound effect on how they had handled the whole situation and could have greatly worked in favor of the Native Americans.

Colby Francfort

3/19/2018 10:51:45 pm

My personal belief is that the Native Americans did not go through genocide. This is due to the fact that the Americans did not go out purposely to kill the natives or change there way of life. The goal of the American people was the expand not to destroy other cultures.

Christopher C. Green

3/19/2018 11:41:08 pm

Yeah the Americans were not intentionally aiming to just kill off and wipe out native Americans. In fact although some Americans had racist opinions on various Native groups, they sometimes relied on them for resources. The Americans would convene in trade or weaponry, and different agriculture. Most especially Americans used Natives to work for them until they could no longer continue to work. The focus shifted to African Americans eventually, but yes, most Americans aimed to expand the country.

Erica Belson

3/20/2018 02:01:25 pm

Although they might have not been intentionally killing them, they killed them through the way of disease they spread to them and when they moved them out of their home and place many starved. The movement and harsh treatment of the native americans caused many to die which was due to the american moving into their land.

Makena Napier-Rowell

3/20/2018 05:25:09 pm

The Americans did not intentionally kill the Native Americans in some aspects, but they did try to change their way of life. Native Americans children were taken to schools where they would learn the "American way" and no longer believe in the culture that they were born into. Some natives were forced to change, while others converted without opposition. Those who kept their culture were not welcome and were sometimes killed.

Anna Stotka

3/19/2018 11:09:02 pm

In Guenter Lewy's writing, he refutes many known and accepted points, such as that small-pox infested blankets were distributed to the Indians on purpose. Lewy, however, disputed this claim to say that it was not an intentional use of items to murder the Indians. Why do you think that Lewy proposed this, and is there any historical evidence to back up his other claims?

Megan Nickel

3/20/2018 05:24:32 pm

I think that Lewy proposed this because he was trying to be logical in his argument. People can agree and it can be proven that there was little knowledge of medicine and disease during this time. Although he noted that there have been letters which hinted that some may have suspected that they could use disease as a weapon, the number of DELIBERATE deaths by disease would still only account for a small fraction of the total number of deaths by disease. In his article he says that, “It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers...The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them.” Lewy probably proposed this to bring to question what percent of deaths of the natives can truly be considered genocide, if genocide is, by definition, deliberate.

Daniel Pearce

3/20/2018 06:46:53 pm

I actually don’t think the notion that Europeans purposely distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans in an attempt to kill them is historically well established at all. Rather, it is a oft-referenced claim that has pervaded our perceptions of Native American relations despite there being a lack of historical evidence to support it. Lewy explains this point in his article by stating that there are only two primary accounts of Europeans planning to give blankets to Native Americans and that the credibility of these accounts is dubious, as there is no evidence that Europeans actually went through with distributing the blankets or that they were used intentionally to spread disease. While it is certainly possible that there were in fact Europeans that purposely gave smallpox blankets to Native Americans, it is certainly possible that they didn’t at all. In addition, there is not a large enough base of evidence to suggest that similar acts were widespread during the time period, meaning that these actions by themselves should not be considered genocidal.

Christopher Green

3/19/2018 11:37:09 pm

Do you believe the oppression of the Native American Populous is to be rightfully so considered a mass genocide? I would beg to differ to this on-going question. The Native Americans were not all killed in large numbers at once like we see with the holocaust. The events that took place with the Native Americans took a longer span of time over the centuries. Furthermore, while many tens of thousands of Native Americans died, a lot of it was from inevitable contact which lead to disease which was hard to prevent or have medications for back then.

Navami Prabhu

3/20/2018 06:13:41 pm

I believe that the oppression of Native Americans was genocide.
First, I don't think that time period has an effect on what constitutes a genocide. Looking at the Genocide Convention's definition of genocide, there is no clause describing a time limit of any sort, just a list of actions.
Second, although many Native Americans died due to disease, this number is mainly based on the beginnings of colonialism, not the period we are talking about with the two articles. I agree that the number is disputed, but there was most certainly a genocidal intent to the crimes committed against Native Americans, regardless of the death toll. The efforts to get rid of Native American culture, assimilate children, and sterilize women were specifically targeted to bring about the destruction of not only Native American people, but also their culture and traditions.

Spencer Cowley

3/20/2018 06:33:12 pm

I would disagree and say that it was indeed genocide because of the UN's standards of genocide referenced by Dunbar-Ortiz. Genocide is not defined by the events that occurred during the Holocaust - one of the worst examples of ethnic cleansing in human history - but is when members of a group were destroyed "in whole or in part". Additionally, the UN convention says when "imposing measures intended to prevent births" are enforced or "members of the group" are killed it is considered genocide. Both of these actions occurred through the sterilization of Native Americans and through the battles specifically fought to kill Natives. Disease did play a role but was actually used to kill Natives in some instances as mentioned in Lewy's writing.

Andrew Nam

3/20/2018 11:00:34 pm

Contrary to your argument, Lewy said that the "soldiers did not aim at the destruction of the Indians as a defined group" because Native lives were inadvertently destroyed from nearby battles or especially diseases. None of these diseases that killed the Natives were purposely introduced for the sake of wiping out the Natives in a genocide. He even says that the Genocide Convention does not consider the large epidemic deaths of Natives cannot be considered genocide.

Lauren Bryant

3/20/2018 12:15:07 am

With the original ideas of manifest destiny, and the goal to remove Natives from their land (which unfortunately came true), the larger question is whether or not the Indian reorganization Act was actually benefitted from natives or whites who believed in manifest destiny.

Aubry Dreikosen

3/20/2018 08:33:22 am

Dunbar-Ortiz focuses on specific events that happened that illustrate certain parts of the definition of genocide given by the UN while Lewy focuses on the big picture of what happened to the native americans. Which of these interpretations would be more accepted by the general public?Do you think there is a correlation between the two?

Navami Prabhu

3/20/2018 11:15:07 am

My question: Do you think that this genocide was inevitable? If the widespread violence towards Native Americans was prevented, how would it affect American and Native American relations today?

I think that American and Native American violence was inevitable. The American push for land and wealth left no room for negotiations and compromises that would have led to greater relations between Native Americans and Americans. America's white supremacist sentiments emphasized the necessity of waging a war against Native American people and culture.
If the genocidal acts undertaken by American whites was prevented, the relationship between Native Americans and Americans would be better today.

Patrick Dunn

3/20/2018 09:42:00 pm

I disagree, I think that genocide was not inevitable. I think if the American people had not been so influenced by Manifest Destiny they would not have continued to pursue such aggressive tactics in land acquisition.

Joshua Harris

3/20/2018 11:29:38 am

Both of the documents read in this scored discussion had differing opinions on whether or not this was considered genocide, so how do you think that the upbringings of these authors led them to this opinion?

Destiny Padovano

3/20/2018 12:14:41 pm

I believe that since Dunbar-Ortiz has personal connection to the American Indians she would view what happened to them as extremely hostile and a genocide. While on the other hand, Lewy taught political science and has no personal connection to the situation. This means Lewy could be viewing the killings of the American Indians as not a genocide, unlike Dunbar-Ortiz. I do think that their upbringings greatly impacted the side that their bias fell on.

Anadil SIddiqi

3/20/2018 01:54:40 pm

I believe that because Dunbar-Ortiz was brought up with a more native american heritage, she is perhaps more accustomed to and familiar with the fact that their culture was stolen from them. This could led to her making such a strong argument, but she also backed up each and every one of her points with evidence so she didn't allow her upbringing to form her point completely.

Daniel Pearce

3/20/2018 06:31:53 pm

I think that both Lewy and Dunbar-Ortiz’s life experiences played a major role in their opinions on Native American genocide. Dunbar-Ortiz is half Native American, so she may have been taught about the history of Native Americans and their interactions with European settlers from a pro-Native American perspective, which would have certainly helped shape her belief that Native Americans were victims of genocide. However, contrary to what others have expressed in class and on this discussion board, Lewy is not without his own extremely personal connections to the topic of genocide. He grew up in a Jewish family in 1920’s Germany and witnessed the events of the Holocaust firsthand, as his father was imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp for four months during World War Two. The Holocaust is the most well-known and most severe case of genocide in world history, and many believe events that aren’t comparable to the atrocities of the Holocaust don’t qualify as genocide. Lewy, who was personally affected by the Holocaust, is more likely to sympathize with this viewpoint, which would likely lead him to the conclusion that Native American persecution, which manifested itself much differently than the Holocaust did, shouldn’t be considered a genocide.

Colin O'Brien

3/20/2018 12:00:21 pm

Westward expansion of the Americans and Europeans and the treatment of the Native Americans could not be considered "genocide". Genocide is the mass killing of a specific group of people. The Natives were not necessarily killed, they more so just moved out of the land. Genocide is also the deliberate, or planned, killing of a specific group of people. The Americans and Europeans did not plan out to kill the Native Americans. I believe that the westward expansion was such a strong thought that the Americans and Europeans just did what they had to do and what they thought was best.

George Lever

3/20/2018 09:09:42 pm

I agree with you because a very important thing to consider with genocide is the motive of the people doing it. There were a few white Americans who were quoted saying that they wanted to get rid of Native Americans, but they didn't actually do it. Furthermore, they were actually enemies with the Native Americans at the time, and this would have been a reasonable way to speak of enemy groups in the past without it being genocide. Also, there was not systematic killing of Native Americans, just many isolated incidents of settlers and miners killing a few of them, and not because of their race.

Destiny Padovano

3/20/2018 12:07:05 pm

A quote from Gary Clay Anderson is included in the Dunbar-Ortiz passage saying “Genocide will never become a widely accepted characterization for what happened in North America, because large numbers of Indians survived and because policies of mass murder on a scale similar to events in central Europe, Cambodia, or Rwanda were never implemented.” Do you think this is right or are there other reasons why people don’t consider it genocide?

Sofia Mariano

3/20/2018 07:38:43 pm

I believe that this is true, but there are other reasons why people don't consider it genocide. One reason being that what happened in Europe, Cambodia, and Rwanda were extreme cases of genocide and most people tend to think that an event like what happened with the Native Americans can only be considered genocide if it happened to the scale at which the genocides of Europe, Cambodia, and Rwanda occurred. Another reason why I think that people don't consider what happened to the Indians a genocide is because they don't really want to admit that the United States was wrong in doing this and by doing this action, it would put the United States on par with other European countries as a sort of overbearing power that forcefully imposes its laws on it's native and colonial populations.

Andrew Nam

3/20/2018 10:46:51 pm

I do agree with the quote itself and your reasoning. I can add onto this by saying that the US will never fully own up to these actions of mass genocide because of the result. The result is often what matters at the end to the US and frankly to them, if genocide did happen, then there would be no Natives remaining today. Since there are many Natives still around, a "genocide" never took place in the US' eyes.

Anadil Siddiqi

3/20/2018 01:52:29 pm

The tragedies done to the Native Americans can not be changed, however reparations may be paid to the generation that is living in America today. Many say American's today should not have to pay for the actions of past citizens, however it also isn't fair to leave the remaining Native American's with no satisfaction. What can be done to satisfy both sides?

Daniel Pearce

3/20/2018 06:19:31 pm

I personally disagree with the notion that individuals should pay Native Americans because of the actions of their forefathers. These individuals had no part in the mistreatment of Native Americans in centuries past and the Native Americans who would receive payments were not victims of these acts either. However, it is true that modern Native Americans are, on average, less educated and wealthy than many other ethnic groups, and the plight of their race throughout American history has played a role in this. By that logic, it would seem unfair if Native Americans were not aided in some way by the US government in an attempt to help them overcome their circumstances. The government could help out by providing more funding to Native Americans applying for higher education. This would allow the next generation to be more educated and more equipped to be successful in their careers, which would hopefully increase the income and standard of living of the Native American community at large.

Erica Belson

3/20/2018 01:55:31 pm

On the opinion on if the native american loss was a genocide, there is a quote from one of the articles talking about how even the Jews that died in the ghetto from disease and starvation were counted in the genocide of the Jews. This relates how some argued that most of the native americans died of smallpox and other disease and starvation since the author states how those others in the holocaust counted as well. Overall, I believe it was a genocide and it was a loss in an interesting cultures and beliefs.

Anya Long

3/20/2018 09:22:08 pm

I disagree with this statement because the death was not directed towards the native americans. 70% to 95% of indian deaths resulted in disease. “First, Killing members of the group: The genocide convention does not specify that large numbers of people must be killed in order to constitute genocide, rather that members of the group are killed because they are members of the group. Assessing a situation in terms of preventing genocide, this kind of killing is a marker for intervention.”

Brogan Turner

3/20/2018 03:42:34 pm

Does the fact that events such as the Holocaust have occurred since the alleged "genocide" of the Native Americans helped form a different opinion on whether or not the US committed a genocide based on our common idea of a genocide being something similar to the Holocaust? Also, does the association of the US with genocide make people less likely to support that the Native Americans were victims of genocide because of the potential implications of admitting our country committed such a horrid act?

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 06:27:25 pm

The fact that events such as the Holocaust have occurred since the "genocide" of the Native Americans does not change my opinion. The United States still commited a genocide regardless of when in history it occured or against what people it was placed upon. Simply because we do not want to recognize the dark events of our nations past, the association of the US with genocide definitely makes people less likely to recognize that the Native Americans were victims of genocide. The same is the case regarding Japanese Internment camps. Because, it was a very dark and disgraceful time in our history it is rarely talked about and forgotten by most everyone.

Aakanksha Gundu

3/20/2018 05:00:05 pm

The debate over whether Native Americans are victims of genocide is affected by the definition of genocide. Prior to the Holocaust, the term genocide was not widely known. This brings up the issue of whether or not Americans considered their violence against the natives to be immoral or justified. Today, the UN's definition of genocide fits the description of how Native Americans were treated. I think Native Americans were victims of genocide because the white colonizers in America wished to wipe them out to gain more resources. Immoral acts of violence were carried out against them. This including forcibly sterilizing the women, separating the families, and mass killing with disease and weapons. Why is it difficult for historians to accept that the natives were victims of genocide? Is it still bias or their unwillingness to accept that the Americans made a terrible mistake?

Vennela Gottiparthy

3/20/2018 05:00:16 pm

If the British had supported the Natives more, would the Natives have been able to reside in America with less intervention?

Andrew Jin

3/20/2018 06:14:20 pm

I don't believe so. The Americans were in conflict with the natives due to westward expansion. The goal of many Americans was cited by Dewy as being "extirpating them totally from the face of the earth". If the natives were supported more by the British, then they would more likely have a stronger hold on their land and, therefore, westward expansion of the United States would be more intense. The natives would likely still be pushed out because the US would still likely have more resources, but at a slower pace.

Andrew Jin

3/20/2018 07:50:00 pm

*Lewy
not Dewy

PJ Fenton

3/20/2018 11:02:06 pm

If the British had supported the Natives more, the Natives definitley would have been able to reside in America with less intervention. But the idea of the British supporting the natives with military and monetary forces without wanting to keep any of the land if their efforts were to be successful is very unlikely. The British were just as imperialistic and power hungry as the Americans. If it wasn't for the Americans winning the revolutionary war we would probably be talking about a genocide of Native Americans by the British. Also, the British were too busy colonizing India and exploiting its' people and resources to bother with helping the Native Americans. Theoretically, if the British were to help the Natives they would avoid conflict with the Americans but it wouldn't be long untill the British conducted a genocide of their own.

Megan Nickel

3/20/2018 05:07:45 pm

In Lewy’s article it states, “The torture of prisoners was indeed routine practice for most Indian tribes, and was deeply ingrained in Indian culture. Valuing bravery above all things, the Indians had little sympathy for those who surrendered or were captured. Prisoners.” This quote highlights the savagery of the Indians which colonizers antagonized but also seems to parallel with many instances of harsh treatment of Indians by the Americans. Are the two cultures perhaps more similar than different? To what extent?

Vennela Gottiparthy

3/20/2018 05:39:10 pm

I do not believe that the two cultures are similar because when Native Americans tortured their prisoners, they did not do so based on race, and they were not trying to "eliminate" the people. Also, the prisoners must have wronged the culture or people in some way; however, Native Americans did not hurt or wrong the white people. The Americans were the ones who began to inflict pain upon them, separate their families, and attempt to exterminate the race solely based on their culture and color of their skin.

Coral Aman

3/20/2018 06:19:46 pm

No, I do not think the Native Americans and Americans can be compared in their intentions. The Americans had the one goal to "wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth." They were willing to use any measure necessary to eliminate the Native Americans from the land. The Native Americans used violence in an effort to defend their territory from the white settlers. They were there first and aimed to protect their land. In this case, the prisoners in the Native American culture most likely committed a crime in the native culture. On the other hand, the Americans sought to eliminate the natives with a motive of Manifest Destiny and dominating the land.

Rachel Boling

3/20/2018 09:24:19 pm

I agree with Lewy that both natives and Americans were guilty of acts of violence - neither group was peaceful, and both sides attacked each other frequently. However, I think Lewy's statement that all Indians were "savages" and violent towards prisoners is an unfair generalization - he has emphasized the most violent examples to make it seem like it was rational for settlers to attack natives, since natives also exhibited brutality. In reality, the lack of sympathy on both sides was caused by white supremacy and the native's view of whites as people who had taken away their homelands and oppressed them.

Megan Mollin

3/21/2018 12:58:17 am

When people typically recall the treatment of Native Americans, they picture a peaceful people who were barbarically attacked by the American colonists. Although this is true to some extent, many Native Americans did fight back. However, in my mind, that's exactly what they were doing: fighting back - defending themselves. Although violence went both ways, I think much of it was initiated by the American colonists.

Ali Ahmed

3/20/2018 05:26:14 pm

This event is not categorized as a genocide in United States history and why do you think that is? Is it because the event doesn't fit in the definition of a genocide or maybe is it because of nationalistic pressures for America to seem superior and perfect to other countries?

Andrew Jin

3/20/2018 08:20:44 pm

I think it may have to do with the fact that the United States see this as a blemish on its own history so this particular event would be covered up because of that. I would say that it does fit the definition of genocide as events of that time period do fit the current criteria of genocide.

Yi Liu

3/20/2018 08:56:40 pm

I agree with your point. In Ortiz's article, she pointed out that massacres like the Wounded Knee were officially named battles to glorify them. This was an attempt to hide a stain from the American history.

Jenny Kim

3/21/2018 02:57:29 am

I think the reason why Native Americans are not seen as victims of genocide is the fact that this idea was not brought up until it was too late. The Native American culture had already assimilated into American pop culture, and not as a result of forced integration, but natural. Therefore, it would be hard to conclude whether a cultural genocide occurred with the physical deaths of so many Native Americans, or if a blending of the cultures would have happened anyway.

Sonu Basnet

3/20/2018 05:31:22 pm

In the second document, Guenter Lewy mentioned that "Europeans did not come to the New World in order to infect the natives with deadly diseases." Instead, according to him, "there, at first, the Puritans did not regard the Indians they encountered as natural enemies, but rather as potential friends and converts."
Do you think the Europeans came into the New World with the intention of possibly taking down the whole Native population?

Joseph Gaitens

3/20/2018 05:36:43 pm

When looking at the UN convention on genocide it is clear that the events check all the boxes. However, Lewy still manages to argue against it being a genocide. Which do you think is more factual? Where are potential sources of bias?

Aarati Bothe

3/20/2018 05:50:55 pm

According to Lewy, “the sad fate of the America’s Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and value”. However, Dunbar-Ortiz believes that “US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though often termed “racist” and “discriminatory”, are rarely depicted as what they are” classic cases of imperialism..” Whose point of view do you agree with?

Rachel Boling

3/20/2018 09:33:45 pm

I disagree with Lewy's assertion that the oppression of Native Americans was not a crime, but I do think the enormous cultural differences between the two groups had a large part to play. Besides American's belief in racial superiority over Native Americans, there were core value differences between Native Americans and whites, especially in the idea of land ownership. America and its government repeatedly used the native's belief in a lack of private property against them in court and on the frontier to take native land, and refused assimilation even of the Five Civilized Tribes because of their view of an unsurmountable racial and cultural difference between whites and Native Americans.

Jenny Kim

3/21/2018 02:47:15 am

I also agree with Lewy's point that "the sad fate of the American's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy" because I believe that their race was not the underlying cause for their treatment. It was simply the fact that they had been on the lands that the US wanted, and they were willing to do anything to gain this land space.

Daniel Pearce

3/20/2018 05:59:01 pm

We spent a long time debating whether or not treatment towards Native Americans qualified as genocide or not, but there’s one question we didn’t touch on that interested me: Does it matter what we call it?
It seemed as if both Dunbar-Ortiz and Lewy, despite their different interpretations of the word genocide, agreed that the way many Americans and European settlers treated Native Americans was a gross violation of human rights and equality. If there is agreement on this fact, does it matter whether we call it the same thing or not? Are there more significant historical takeaways from these interactions, or is the debate over how to classify them the most important?

Megan Mollin

3/21/2018 12:53:23 am

I feel like we shouldn't spend so much time trying to shape the events of history to fit perfectly into a certain category (in this instance, the definition of genocide). At this point, we know genocide exists. We know the detriments that it causes to a nationalistic people. We also know the existence of war and crime and the damages they cause. Instead of focusing on unnecessary definitions, we should shift our attention to preventative measures to ensure that events like this don't continue into the future.

Coral Aman

3/20/2018 05:59:48 pm

In the second passage, Lewy states, "The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do. By contrast the Nazis knew exactly what was happening in the ghettos." Do you think this is a valid argument. Did the Europeans unintentionally cause the death of so many natives by disease and violence? Does this differ from the Holocaust when the Nazis "knew what was happening?"

Aryan Anerao

3/20/2018 06:06:40 pm

Do you think current Indigenous cultures around the world have the same risk of becoming victims of cultural genocide like the native americans did.

Aasim Khan

3/20/2018 07:41:35 pm

I do think that many indigenous cultures are at risk of genocide; however, they are not as precariously endangered as the Indians were. Back then, there was little to no international intervention regarding genocide and the intentional targeting of a specific group of people. Today, there are many humanitarian international organizations which would help to soften the blow of racial and cultural hatred.

Ansh Sarkaria

3/21/2018 03:47:27 pm

I don't agree with you that there is a chance because we are the point now where laws prevent any sort of those actions being made without war. Something on a scale of that large could not happen.

Andrew Marshall

3/20/2018 10:28:45 pm

I do not believe that other indigenous cultures around the world are at risk of extreme genocide anymore. The Genocide Convention of 1948 clearly defined genocide, and it is ratified by many United Nations members. This means that mistreatment of native groups will not be tolerated on the international stage, and any attempt to commit genocide will be swiftly punished.

Yanis Jaoui

3/20/2018 06:12:48 pm

I believe that the Native-US conflict was not a genocide for one main reason- initiation of violence. In many cases, there were horrendous acts committed by the United States government and its citizens against the Native Americans. But the same was the case of Native Americans, who also murdered colonial settlers, often without provocation of any kind. Some native american tribes were war oriented and violent and nature, and these tribes often waged total war against US citizens, killing soldiers, men, women, and children. To say that this conflict was entirely one sided is erroneous is incorrect and historically inaccurate. Although some government actions against native americans can be considered genocide, the conflict as a whole to the entirety of the Native American people in all of the US territory is simply not historically accurate. Wide spread genocide was not prevalent against the native americans, albeit some occurrences that by themselves could be considered genocide.

Rachel Boling

3/20/2018 09:40:09 pm

I disagree that a genocide did not occur. Though both sides committed violent acts and at points engaged in total war, it does not change the fact that US treatment of Native Americans meets every criteria on the UN's statement on what constitutes as genocide. Native American treatment of US citizens did include significant violence, especially when settlers took away their homelands. US treatment of Native Americans in the policies enacted against them was deliberately geared to eliminate their culture and their very existence as a people, which is why it counts as genocide.

Andrew Marshall

3/20/2018 10:36:25 pm

I agree that the Native-US conflict wasn't a genocide because of the initiation of violence. Native Americans weren't strictly targeted because of their ethnicity by the US government, and they were often harassed by independent US citizens. Harassment by the United States government could be seen at Sand Creek, where volunteer soldiers massacred Native Americans. However, these soldiers were retaliating about being attacked on the frontier. I also believe that it is unfair to classify this as a genocide because the Genocide Convention had not taken place, which condemned all derogatory action against a specific ethnic group.

Ansh Sarkaria

3/21/2018 03:46:26 pm

Do you think it matters whichever side made the first attack, that the outcome of this situation would still be the same.

Spencer Cowley

3/20/2018 06:50:11 pm

In Lewy's article, he states, "In the end, the sad fate of America's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values". Here he says that what occurred was almost an accident - awful - but an accident and unavoidable. Do you believe it truly was unavoidable? If not, what do you believe must have had to happen to avoid the mass killings of the natives?

Megan Mollin

3/21/2018 12:47:50 am

A large quantity of the deaths of Native Americans stemmed from the spread of disease from the colonists. However, it wasn't the ONLY cause of death. Although I believe the deaths caused from disease were unavoidable, there were many other instances where death was brutally, unjustifiably inflicted onto the Native Americans.

Aasim Khan

3/20/2018 07:39:06 pm

Based on the two articles, is it fair to consider illness and epidemic as the main reason for the loss of Native American culture?

Ansh Sarkaria

3/20/2018 07:58:13 pm

It is most definitely not fair because these are only two things that played into this and are not the sole reasons for a lot of the extinction of natives.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:17:56 pm

I agree with Ansh, that not only epidemic and illness were the root cause of loss of the Native American culture and deaths of the people. Another key cause of the diminishment of native culture and the deaths of natives was the fightings and battles that occurred between US and Indians over land and political issues. And the US kept driving natives out of their land and slowly they had nowhere to go and they kept fighting but many were lost. And this then caused Natives to die and their culture to be slowly lost.

Kritika Bokka

3/20/2018 09:04:52 pm

I believe that illness and epidemic were used as a weapon by the US to removed them from the land, but I don't believe that the disease caused most of the Natives to die. In one of the articles it describes how the US knew about the symptoms and protected their people and used the natives to spread their illness within their tribes since the natives had no idea they had been affected with illness. The war and revenge between the us and natives caused the death of many natives.

Nathan Ho

3/20/2018 10:50:48 pm

This is simply statistically inaccurate. Millions of Natives died due to the inadvertent spread of disease, while actions by the United States government such as the Trail of Tears only resulted in a few tens of thousands of deaths. In response to the orginial prompt, I believe the loss of culture was mostly due to forced assimilation that erased Native American identities.

Pauline

3/20/2018 11:55:24 pm

I agree with Nathan. There wasn't an intentional biological warfare going on against the Natives, but it was very widespread and impact. Assimilation and Americanization really diminished their culture, not necessarily their size as a population.

Pauline Etchi

3/20/2018 11:52:08 pm

I do not believe it is fair, considering the fact that epidemics and diseases are natural causes to the deaths of Native Americans with no concern to their culture. Viruses and bacteria do not choose to infect their host due to the inferiority of their race and the land they reside in. To completely blame disease on this matter is to blindly look for an excuse other than to blame the people that were really at fault.

Sofia Mariano

3/20/2018 07:41:01 pm

In Lewy's article, he implies that a population can be victim to several acts of genocide, but the entire population cannot be a considered a victim of genocide. Do you agree with this? If not, how many acts of genocide do you believe that a population must endure before it is considered a victim of genocide?

Erin McIndoe

3/20/2018 07:45:44 pm

Dunbar-Ortiz brings up the point that the massive amount of death of the natives that occurred may not have been directly done by an American, but may have been caused by the situation that the Americans put them in. Dunbar-Ortiz says, “In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, no one denies that more Jews died of starvation, overwork, and disease under Nazi incarceration than died in gas ovens or murdered by other means, yet the acts of creating and maintaining the conditions that led to those deaths clearly constitute genocide.” Since new people were the ones that brought these diseases to the natives, the new comers were still responsible. Does the idea that the colonizers were the ones in control change aspects of how you view the incidents? Is it more or less genocide?

Ansh Sarkaria

3/20/2018 07:57:06 pm

I feel as if we fully not cannot put the word of genocide on this topic because of the many factors that come into play here. Such as people influencing others to make decisions or attempts of war made by the other side.

Ansh Sarkaria

3/20/2018 07:59:38 pm

As we see in the articles some native tribes were much more prone to attacking and defending themselves which we considered threats and dealt with. Lot of the blame really goes in initiation of violence by the natives.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:22:14 pm

I agree that the term Genocide cannot be placed on this topic and situation. Genocide means the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. And americans and US officials etc. were not deliberant in killing everyone sometimes they were forced to through the battles started by Native tribes. Im not saying that it was all the Natives fault but in my opinion both sides contributed a fair amount to the deaths and unjustness. And their were reasons Americans had in going to battle and vice versa so it wasn't a deliberate considered movement. And so therefore this cannot be considered a mass murderer.

Hiromu Koyama

3/20/2018 10:15:38 pm

I agree, the situation is much more complicated than the word connotes. There are much more factors to consider, ones that are often overlooked when discussing this topic.

Jordan Barish

3/22/2018 04:48:15 pm

I agree that to label the entire relationship between the natives and the Europeans/Americans as genocide is too broad. There were some instances in history that very easily could be labelled as genocide, such as the forced sterilization of native women. However, there were also confrontation between the natives and Americans that could be argued as being war. The treatment of natives cannot be defined as only genocide when there were other components at play.

Troy Won

3/20/2018 07:59:37 pm

What do you think would be the best way to pay reparations to the Natives? Would paying reparations to the Native Americans mean that America admits that it has committed genocide?

Spencer Cowley

3/20/2018 09:25:47 pm

I believe providing Natives with more land and freedom to practice their culture and religion would be the best way to repay them because Americans took away both of those things. Simply paying them wouldn't do much but providing them with more freedom and sovereignty over their own land might. Additionally, I think it would imply that as a country, we are taking some responsibility for the actions that occurred and that it was indeed genocide. It would likely be good because it would push Americans to be better in the future and avoid repeating their mistakes.

Andrew Jin

3/20/2018 08:04:21 pm

In Lewy's paper, he states that the United States cannot be responsible for genocide because there was no official policy. However, there were also mentions of citizen lead attacks against the natives with clear intent of eradication. Does Lewy's reasoning really exclude America from responsibility in the act of genocide?

George Lever

3/20/2018 09:55:40 pm

I don't think that the United States government is responsible for what its citizens do. That is still clear today; not every murder in the United States is because of the government. The only thing that I think that the United States government was responsible for was the forced sterilization of Native Americans to reduce their population. Even though it fits the technical definition of genocide, however, I think that it isn't right to call something with no systematic killings by the same word as the Holocaust and other great atrocities.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:08:56 pm

The article, "yes, Native Americans..." took the stance of the perspective of the native americans and their point of view. And a lot of the information was biased with the Native Americans and against the US officials and government. While the second article took a more neutral stance describing the situation from both sides and more of a factual informational perspective on all the issues and surrounding topics.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:15:12 pm

The main topic consolidated in both articles is the issue of if the native Americans deaths and cruelties were a genocide. I don't think that these deaths and issues towards Native Americans can be considered as genocide. Because many factors contributed to the deaths. And it wasn't like one of the sides was just killing the other side completely. Both sides were at war for various political and land issue reasons and through these acts many Indians were killed. However in addition many Indians were killed by diseases and epidemics and poor conditions of the time. But the term genocide cannot in my opinion be accompanied to these deaths.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:33:49 pm

A topic that both articles stand beside and argue for is that epidemic and diseases were a big part to the deaths of Indians during the time and the depreciation of their culture. However Ortiz argues that other more Americanized and people who don't consider the Indian deaths as a genocide consider the illnesses as the sole cause of the deaths. And that nothing else occurred. I agree with this because even in the other article the epidemics were a huge talk and a big point stressed in the article on why this couldn't be genocide. I think Oritz is sort of fighting for her ancestors and wants some sort of change or justice for the wrongs that occurred. Oritz writing really spoke out more and was more significant in persuading me but the other article in my opinion was rude and sort of arrogant in his writings.

Britnee Negley

3/20/2018 08:36:27 pm

In class we discussed wether the United States should officially declare westward expansion a genocide. There was much debate over how that could impact the image and reputation of the US and wether or not it would cause more issues than just ignoring the issue and keeping things the same. What do you think the long term ramifications of declaring this a genocide, wether positive or negative, would be? On a larger, less specific scale, is it better to apaologize and try to fix past mistakes or better to try to move forward with the hope that history doesn't repeats itself? Many people were concerned that it would ruin the reputation of the US, but I thought it could be good for the US and show that as a country we are taking responsibility for our actions, no matter how long ago they took place, similar to what Canada did when they recently apologized for their treatment of LGBTQ people. So, to sum it up, would it be good to declare it genocide or bad and why?

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:42:06 pm

I think it would be the right thing and good to declare it as genocide. Becuase it would show that the US is capable of making ammends with past and it will show that they realize their mistakes. It would also sort of be a relieving factor to many people with Native ancestry to know that they have been somewhat justified and recognized. And I believe it would bring together people more and unite more cultures in this display of actions.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:38:19 pm

In the article it says, "Genocide? These actions were almost certainly in conformity with the laws of war accepted at the time.". This shows how life was back then and even though many Natives woman, children, man died it wasn't really considered unjust. And this article talks about how for that time period these acts were sort of justifiable and okay. But nowadays when we look back we see how awful this is and how unjust Indians were treated.

Yi Liu

3/20/2018 08:43:21 pm

In Ortiz's article, she writes, "Settler colonialism requires a genocidal policy. Native nations . . . resisted modern colonialism using both defensive and offensive techniques, including . . . terrorism. The expansion of Europeans further westwards required a genocidal policy because settler colonialism often depends on violence or threats of violence. This genocidal policy was evident in initial settlement attempts made by Europeans onto North American, such as the Spanish who slaughtered many Natives.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:48:10 pm

In the last paragraph of Lewys article he sort of connects with the reader and the Natives by displaying both sides perspectives. And saying that the whites life and the Natives life was a problem which caused all of this. I agree with this statement to some extent saying that both sides contributed to these deaths and cultural decline. However I think that it was majorly the whites fault for believing in racial superiority which was a major cause to many wars, battles, issues all throughout time. I believe that Natives were just doing what they felt was right and defend their land and their culture. Whites were just being ignorant and greedy which caused all of this.

Vivek Ramesh

3/20/2018 08:50:31 pm

Do you guys think that the articles showed bias towards one topic or idea? and which articles information do you agree with more if any at all?

Spencer Cowley

3/20/2018 09:20:58 pm

I believe that there was indeed bias found in both articles. Dunbar-Ortiz is of partial Indian blood and this would have likely have felt greater interest and emotion with this issue than the other article's author, Lewy. However, this does not mean her writings should be discarded. Rather, due to her PhD in history and her teaching of Native American Studies as well as Ethnic and Women's studies, I would trust in her information more than Lewy's. I agree with her information more because of the structure and the citations of the UN convention on genocide.

Kritika Bokka

3/20/2018 08:55:06 pm

In the article it states how some people who were racist decided to execute many natives without showing any mercy to even children. Do you believe it is right to blame all the colonists for killing many of the natives when most of the colonists gave themselves the right to call war without getting any approval because they were biased?

Anya Long

3/20/2018 08:59:35 pm

i think that it is important that US citizens' relations with the Native Americans was more than just a war. The intents for discrimination like the Manifest Destiny and white superiority led to them forcing assimilation on natives to make them more civilized. Jackson's Indian removal, and other historical events also directed to this. Because there were a number of events against them, conflicts can be considered genocidal.

Anya Long

3/20/2018 09:22:59 pm

Were the deaths on both American and Indian sides avoidable? Could the American government sought expansion in a more nonviolent way?

Hiromu Koyama

3/20/2018 10:14:35 pm

I do not believe that the deaths were avoidable. Manifest destiny and whit supremacy made westward expansion excusable and unavoidable. These are philosophies were engraved in american culture.

Hiromu Koyama

3/20/2018 11:01:56 pm

Hiromu your point about Americans at the time using Manifest Destiny and white supremacy as an excuse to expand and remove natives reminds me a lot of the Black Legend which was the belief of the horrors Spanish conquerers put of the people they conquered which the English used as an excuse to colonize the and claim parts fo the New World.

Nathan Ho

3/20/2018 10:47:08 pm

I think that the deaths between American and Indians were avoidable, as the United States made a conscious choice to hurt the Indians through the Trail of Tears. The deaths between the Europeans and Indians, however, were unavoidable because many Indians died through the inadvertent spread of disease.

Carlos Pinel

3/20/2018 11:20:55 pm

I 100% believe that there was a nonviolent democratic way of solving this issue. I do believe that the natives could have realized what was to come and compromised and sold the land instead of losing many lives and all the lands for nothing in the end. With that being said i do believe that the whites didnt look for a dela they just wanted to tske the land as it would have been cheaper and more efficient for them in the end...

Deb Bhattacharya

3/20/2018 09:23:19 pm

One question posed during the in-class discussion was the question of what it means for treatment of Native Americans to be classified as a genocide. If the U.S. were to acknowledge Dunbar-Ortiz's viewpoint and publicly denounce their mistreatment as genocide, what would it entail for Native Americans today? What approaches would work to best ensure that Native Americans are given protection against further damage in their communities, and would reparations play a role? In what ways could the U.S. provide more opportunities to Natives in order to continue to foster their own communities?

Anya Long

3/20/2018 09:24:08 pm

There was extreme violence that took place between Native Americans and white settlers whether it was during settlement of the English Puritans or during westward expansion of the United States. White Americans committed many horrors against the Native Americans, but I do not think it can be classified as a genocide. The United States as a whole never had the goal of exterminating the native population. I agree with the point of view of Lewy, in that genocide did not take place. The violence that happened were committed mostly by individuals in battles, the Native Americans were never systematically killed. Also, the Native Americans also killed and committed many atrocities against Americans.

Matt Hayes

3/20/2018 10:56:25 pm

I agree with Anya's position that the violence and oppression inflicted on the American Indians should not be considered a genocide but for different reasons. One of the criteria for a genocide from the U.N. is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". The oppression and removal of Indians didn't have the goal of physically destroying the entire race. The US Government and people wanted to remove the Indians so that they could move into those lands.

Rachel Boling

3/20/2018 09:43:53 pm

What was the most harmful policy or event enacted against native Americans? Was there one particular action taken by the US that, more so than any other, makes treatment of Native Americans into a genocide?

Isabel Gan

3/20/2018 11:36:15 pm

I think the Indian Removal Act enacted by the Jackson Administration was the most harmful policy against Native Americans. The policy essentially asserted that tribes, even the Five Civilized Tribes, needed to get off the land or else the US government would be justified in using force to get them off. This led to the Trail of Tears, the tragic displacement of thousands of Indians to the Western territories.

I believe it constitutes the treatment o Native Americans into a genocide because Jackson wanted them out of "their" land without considering the fact that some tribes there were actually civilized. The Five Civilized tribes practiced Christianity, spoke English, were educated, literate, and more. They could have contributed very much to society staying on the land but Jackson failed to recognize this and expelled them for the fact that they were Indian.

Ben Kurian

3/20/2018 09:55:25 pm

In many other genocides, victims of these genocides have often sought to have the genocide recognized or have the perpetrators brought to justice, like with the Nuremberg trials. Do you think that natives should seek the same trials and compensation from the US government through an international court?

Jordan Barish

3/22/2018 04:52:14 pm

While I think that the Native Americans deserve some sort of compensation for the way they were treated, I think it would be very difficult for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. The Europeans first came to the New World in the 15th century and have been interacting with the natives since. Not every interaction constituted genocide, either. To single out certain perpetrators and put them on trial would be next to impossible based on the expanse of time and the debate revolving around if certain events can even be labelled as genocide.

Hiromu Koyama

3/20/2018 09:55:50 pm

Is the label "genocide" actually an important title? I believe that we can acknowledge the terrible atrocities that were committed against native Americans without debating whether it was a genocide or not.
The word "genocide" connotes much, and regardless of what it actually means, it is naive to assume that every reader will have the correct idea of it. It would be safer to just have the mistreatment of Native Americans uncategorized.

George Lever

3/20/2018 10:01:51 pm

The discussion in our class went to the present day treatment of Native Americans, and it was suggested that the United States government should pay reparations to Native Americans because they were victims of genocide. However, I don't think it is right to penalize people who have no relation to the hardships faced by Native Americans. There should be no collective guilt on modern Americans because of what happened in the past by individuals. One might counter that oppression of Native Americans was actually very recent, and so Native Americans deserve money for what happened in their lifetimes. However, this still does not justify taking money from innocent people. If there are some living men guilty of attempting to eradicate Native Americans, then they should pay the penalty, but nobody else should.

Nathan Ho

3/20/2018 10:39:38 pm

I disagree with this. I do not necessarily agree with monetary benefit to Native Americans, but don't you think it is unfair that Native Americans have been put at a severe disadvantage in society? I think some form of reparation needs to be given to Native Americans to at least put them on level ground with white Americans as the repercussions of actions such as the Trail of Tears have greatly hurte entire Native American tribes.

Imaan Jones

3/20/2018 10:15:22 pm

If the acts committed against the Native Americans were publicly claimed not a genocide, in what ways do you believe this would affect their position in society, and what can we, as Americans, do to insure their safety?

Janvi Patel

3/21/2018 01:42:49 am

If the acts were publicly claimed a genocide this would bring attention to the crimes committed against them, and by accepting that the Americans did commit crimes against the Natives this would bring them some amounts of justice. I believe as Americans we can help them by providing them some kind of payment such as improving their reservations, or helping them preserve their culture to insure the safety of their culture.

Liam McHale

3/20/2018 10:33:14 pm

Do you agree that if the Native Americans were to be white, would the same oppressive actions be put upon them as they were in actuality?

Matt Hayes

3/20/2018 10:49:31 pm

I think that if Native Americans were white they would still face the same oppressive actions. Irish and German immigrants during the 19th century faced prejudice and persecution because of their nationality. White's discriminated against white's as well as Natives and blacks many minorities during the time period. In my opinion, the oppressions and forced removal of Native Americans wasn't based on race. What I mean is that the US wasn't removing Indians because they were Indian. They were removing Indians because they were on the land. If white Irish and German settlers were on this land, the same would've happened.

Carlos Pinel

3/20/2018 11:07:57 pm

I agree with you matt as there are muitple cases of genocide commited on whites as well a sother races. The main example being the Nazi and how they committed genocide in whites and many more. In terms of thise who commit genocide or are looking to commit one i believe they dont need to be a minority as it can be caused and committed by just about anyone.

Andrew Nam

3/20/2018 11:15:40 pm

I partially agree with Matt's point and I will add on by saying that even well after the Mexican-American War and conflicts that surrounded it, American settlers continued to oppress the Natives because of land. Because the Natives had never been integrated as part of the whole of the US, they were seen as an outside force. Such an example of this is during the height of American westward expansion, the Treaty of Ft. Laramie moved Sioux tribes to Black Hills, but shortly after, those same Sioux tribes had been forced to continue west after gold was found in Black Hills. So the Americans really oppressed the Natives due to the land claims. However, there was a relatively important magnitude of racism that came with oppressing the Natives. Like I mentioned before, Natives had always been viewed as an outside force, most likely due to their presence on America before first settlers arrived and their evident different race. Multiple decades of this view may have permeated this view into a common American thinking that Natives were somewhat inferior because of their different race.

Jenny Kim

3/21/2018 02:37:29 am

I do not think that the actions would necessarily change because I do not believe that their race was the underlying cause; whether they were Indian or white, they were on the land that they wanted. Their main goal was to get rid of any hindrance that would prevent them from cultivating the land.

Andrew Marshall

3/20/2018 10:37:51 pm

Do you think looking at the massacre of Native Americans through today’s lense of the Genocide Convention is fair? Would this international law prevent such a tragic event from recurring today?

Jed McKenna

3/20/2018 11:19:37 pm

I don’t not think it would have a effect if looked through today’s lense mostly because there now way a large scale massacre could occur in today’s time

Rahul Padhi

3/20/2018 11:30:17 pm

I don't think this is a fair way to judge the ideals of American Nationalists in the past because they had a different, less globalized and less culturally sensitive upbringing. They had different political views and social pressures around them that we do today. I do, however, believe that is important to look back to the past, if not as a learning experience then at least as a consolation to the descendants of those involved in the terrible ordeal.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 11:41:43 pm

Today when we hear the word genocide we mostly think of Jewish people in Nazi Germany. With this view on genocide it is hard for us to not think of it as direct and mass violence towards huge groups of people. It is not fair to compare this genocide to the genocide of the Indians. Even though both are concidered genocides it is hard to compare such differing events since the Indians were not as publicized or large scale.

Stane Biju

3/21/2018 01:26:28 am

Yes, I think that we should look through today's perspectives on genocide as if we are to judge whether settlement caused genocide or not forces us to view this possible genocide through today's standards. Moreover, i don't believe that there would be much of a differences in the definition of a genocide from today's time and the past.

Matt Hayes

3/20/2018 10:42:51 pm

The term genocide has come to encompass only a few events throughout history because the term now has such specific criteria. In most peoples minds including mine before this discussion, I thought that the term could only be reserved for holocaust level events. Through Ortiz's document, it can be seen that genocide can be include the intention of extinction of a race or culture and doesn't need to end up in any deaths at all.

Jed McKenna

3/20/2018 11:17:56 pm

I disagree because many Native Americans did die and inorder to consider a genocide some people do have to die.

Andrew Nam

3/20/2018 10:52:56 pm

In her article, Dunbar-Ortiz states that “The notion that Settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that violence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes". This showed me that she believed that the fact that no genocide took place because both parties engaged in violence was invalid. It "blurred the nature of the historical processes" and she seems to believe so because she is a sole advocate for believing that genocide did occur to the Natives.

Kevin Xie

3/20/2018 11:00:15 pm

Both of the passages written by Dunbar-Ortiz and Lewy use the term genocide as the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it. However, this definition of genocide is decidedly different from the common usage of the term. To what extent do you agree with their decision to use this definition, as opposed to a common colloquial definition of genocide? How does the way in which we commonly use the term affect our understanding of it?

Rahul Padhi

3/20/2018 11:35:54 pm

While I agree with the definition of the term 'genocide' as stated by the UN, I do not agree with the authors' use of this definition pertaining to the subject at hand. I think they are using a definition coined recently on a matter of the past, and the peripherals don't line up. As for the common definition of the word 'genocide', pop culture does have an effect on the term's perceived definition, although does not change it enough to warrant alarm.

Carlos Pinel

3/20/2018 11:05:32 pm

While there are many factors that are taken into consideration to identify what is a genocide, what is the largest factor that contributes to a genocide?

Jed McKenna

3/20/2018 11:13:13 pm

I think the largest factor of Genocide is the forcing movement of a group. Separation of a large group weekens them allowing the to be more easily controlled.

Geshna Aggarwal

3/21/2018 05:09:05 pm

I think that the most important factor to consider when identifying a genocide is intent. If a group intends to wipe out another group or culture, then that classifies as a genocide. Deliberate choices to get rid of another population show genocidal intentions.

Nathan Ho

3/20/2018 11:11:04 pm

Do you think it is fair to compare the deaths of the Native Americans to genocides such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide? I do not think it is necessarily fair because most of the deaths of the Native Americans were by inadvertent spread of diseases, while most of the deaths by the Holocaust and Armenian genocide were systematic killings and were meant to be an ethnic cleansing.

Isabel Gan

3/20/2018 11:29:27 pm

I agree; I don't think we can compare the situation of the Native Americans to the Holocaust and Armenian genocides mainly because of the differences between scale, intent, and time period. We can't really compare these three because there are so many different factors we need to take in when considering genocide and it's hard to come up with one universal definition for genocide. This contributes to the argument that genocide should be considered on a case-to-case basis rather than having individual instances be compared with other genocides or seeing if an instance conforms to one definition.

Jed McKenna

3/20/2018 11:15:57 pm

If you believe the action taken against the Native Americans was an act of genocide, do you think they should have more or less reparations.

Isabel Gan

3/20/2018 11:31:39 pm

I think the US government certainly owes more reparations to modern Native Americans. Their distinctive cultures are fading out and most are often underrepresented in society. Their situation in this nation is dire. With some legislative support I believe that Native Americans can be allowed more land on which to expand and should be given financial support or motivation to go to college.

Pauline Etchi

3/21/2018 12:00:08 am

I agree with Isabel. Natives today are very underrepresented and their cultures have disappeared within the assimilation of the US. The government should really take control in recognizing them as a people, like other minorities in this country.

Isabel Gan

3/20/2018 11:26:12 pm

I think the most important aspect of considering whether or not African Americans were victims of genocide is intent, not direct actions. The definition of genocide, as stated by Ortiz in the beginning of her passage, states a definition for genocide based on intent but is quite vague. Ortiz asserted that, yes, they were victims of genocide because the Americans attacked them with the specific intent of wiping them and their culture out. However, Lewy argued that they were not victims because the Americans' intent was not to wipe them out but rather to just take their land.

However, to determine the true intent of the Americans in attacking Indians is impossible as none of us were there or knew what people were thinking. This is what makes the question so difficult and controversial.

Geshna Aggarwal

3/21/2018 04:54:46 pm

I agree that intent is the most important factor in deciding whether or not it was a genocide. However, I think that although none of us were there or knew what they were thinking, it is clear that some actions had genocidal intentions while others didn't. For example, forced sterilizations of the natives shows an attempt to prevent births within the group. An independent study "found that one in four Native women had been sterilized without her consent." This clearly shows negative intentions.

Adam Gilleland

3/20/2018 11:34:51 pm

When referring to the term "genocide," it generally has an extremely negative connotation; in its association with other major historical events (i.e. the Holocaust). When referring to westward expansion however, and the acquisition of land, why is the term genocide given the same emphasis upon when attributing it to manifest destiny?

Rahul Padhi

3/20/2018 11:37:05 pm

I agree with most of the arguments Lewy makes, such as the difference between mass murder and genocide. The former usually occurs as a result of the latter, but that relationship does not go both ways. I also agree with the fact that disease played the biggest role in the decline of the Native population. As mentioned in the passage, there was no proven medical treatment available to the Indians at the time. What I do not agree with, is the argument that the government had no control over the insurgent groups that performed hate crimes. I believe that the government knew about these groups but chose to do nothing because their effect was minimal, even more so when compared to the American casualties cause by Native attacks. All in all, I believe that both groups had a general hatred for each other, but none took part in actions that could be considered genocidal.

Grace Farrell

3/20/2018 11:37:35 pm

Without the view Americans had that westward expansion was needed for the future of America was there any possiblilties for the Native populations to survive seperatly while having peaceful realtionships along side modern societies today?

Stane Biju

3/21/2018 01:23:48 am

Yes, without the idea of westward expansion, i don't believe that there would be any conflicts between natives and Americans.

Pauline Etchi

3/20/2018 11:58:19 pm

In consideration of the drastic increase and spread of disease in Indian communities by Anglo-Americans, how long would the Native American tribes last if illness was not a factor of the loss of so many Natives?

Stane Biju

3/21/2018 01:22:48 am

I do not believe that the newly settling population of Europeans would have been able to ever overpower the natives because at its heights, some estimates put natives at over 100 million -- a quantity of people too large for a small group of settlers to subdue.

Megan Mollin

3/21/2018 12:44:15 am

A lot of our discussion focused on whether or not the violent actions taken from both sides during the Indian wars were in self defense or fear of being hurt themselves. Although there was fear on both sides, I think the colonists unnecessarily provoked violent behaviors from the Indians for their own personal gain. Although the violence was protected under the laws of war, to what degree was the war itself avoidable?

Geshna Aggarwal

3/21/2018 05:05:29 pm

Many people argue that ideas of Manifest Destiny and American superiority lead to the inevitability of the war. However, I think that these ideas themselves start to show genocidal intentions since they show how one group believed they were entitled to the land since they were simply better. Therefore, these ideas do not make the war and the conquering of land inevitable or unavoidable.

Turanya Ranjan

3/21/2018 01:10:53 am

If the white people had worked with the Indians rather than against them, how would America be different today?

Stane Biju

3/21/2018 01:21:30 am

I do not agree with the point of view or statements presented in Lewy's writing. The author ends by concluding that the Native American population decline is not a crime but a “tragic” side effect of the settlement of the Europeans. In saying this the author does not account for the fact that the Europeans, who were strangers to the land, decided to drive the native population out of their homes. The author does not see the forceful moving of peoples out of their houses as a crime. Moreover, the Natives were physically attacked on multiple occasions by the Americans. The author considers these attacks “genocidal episodes” and there itself contradicts and devalues his whole argument as he states that though genocide was present, its occurrence is not of value as the whole population didn't participate in these genocides.

Janvi Patel

3/21/2018 01:38:09 am

I agree with Ortiz that there was a genocide committed against the Native Americans. They were a group of people that were targeted and killed because of their ethnicity. Americans wanted to expand, and they believed that because the Native Americans were inferior to them they could just take their land. Americans believed that the Native Americans were not deserving of the land because of their culture and race. Some may argue that disease was a reason that a majority of the Native American population was wiped out, however, it does not matter how many people died because of American attacks, the important thing is that they were a group of people that were targeted because of their race.

Jenny Kim

3/21/2018 02:48:58 am

The definition of “genocide” referred to by both historians are defined by the UN. Do you think if the definition was to be re-defined, or altered, the answer to the question of whether the American Indians were victims of genocide would change?

Geshna Aggarwal

3/21/2018 05:14:35 pm

I think it is interesting how this compares to the texts we read for the last scored discussion on the Mexican American War. Even though many Native Americans, specifically the Cherokee, had assimilated to European culture, the Indian Removal Act was still carried out. When conquering Mexico, one of the authors pointed out that the United States didn’t conquer the mainland because they didn’t want the Indians and Mexicans to join American society. Both of these instances show underlying notions of racial superiority. In both cases, the Americans wanted the land but not the people. How do you think this factors into the question of whether or not we should classify this as a genocide?

Jordan Barish

3/22/2018 09:32:43 pm

Often when looking back on past historical events, it can be difficult to view them without taking into account the present environment. In Lewy's article he questions, "Given circumstances, and the moral standards of the day, did the people on whose conduct we are sitting in judgment have a choice to act differently?” We often look back on the treatment of natives in disgust, whether it be the Indian Removal Act or the continuous taking of native land. While the European settlers and Americans often treated the natives horribly, is there a point where we just have to accept that those behaviors were the norm of the time and lessen our judgement?

Scored Discussion #2, Fall 2017

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