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America’s Holocaust Denial |
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“To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened - a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.”
These were our President’s words at Buchenwald, Germany, earlier this month. It is infamous as a place of torture for more than a quarter-million, and the place of death for more than 50,000.
In 1995 I watched an 4 part PBS documentary, “The Way West.” It chronicled the Europeans steady, determined migration and occupation of the American Indian lands. My heart and passion went out to the Indian’s in every respect. This surprised me since I am a European who never gave Indians much thought.
My only point of reference was negative. We lived in Rapid City, South Dakota when I was ten years old or so. My Dad was a minister there and I recall him often helping out drunken and destitute Indians.
There is a part of me that wished I never viewed the PBS series. Until this time I essentially believed the American fable that we are a nation founded on and committed to the freedom and nobility of all people. The truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes it disturbs, haunts, and invades you like a bacteria that will neither kill or cure you.
The only way I can maintain any integrity in regard to my ancestor’s relationship to the Indians is to call it painfully and regrettably, an American Holocaust.
According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a “vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record.”
By the end of the 19th century, writes David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, native Americans had undergone the “worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people.”
In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr., “there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a ‘race’ of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history.”
I recall a fiery rant from John the Baptist.
“When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’… every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
American translation – “Don’t talk to me about Washington’s freedom revolution or, Jefferson and Franklin’s “all people being created equal.” Own up to who you are, and show that you have changed by your actions.”
I am enriched to hear our Presidents decry and memorialize the Jewish Holocaust. But, if it serves as a smoke screen of self righteousness on how we liberated the Jews, while never looking in the American mirror we will continue to be like the “brood of vipers” John the Baptist called out. And, we will continue to invade sovereign nations to fight our contrived boogiemen like communism and terrorism.
When U. S. leaders and citizens are courageous enough to confront our denial of the American Indian Holocaust, then healing words of Jesus will be released on their path of natural grace. “The truth will set you free.”
thanks for this Chuck. As a kid, I grew up reading romantic tales about the settlement of the west. The reality is, of course, very different. It is painful and hard to face–you’re right to draw attention to this
You guys have a real problem. Trying to compare what happened over a 100 years ago to today%u2019s standards is infantile. Different time, different place etc. Your collective so called Liberal guilt is just rhetoric. Chris, you are probably living on what was Indian land at some time or another. I assume you will assuage your guilt by returning the land to the Indian%u2019s from which it was stolen.. American holocaust? Get real. In fact, perhaps you might also want to check your European ancestry for any appropriation of land in your history. However, I think it%u2019s a moot point%u2014you don%u2019t feel guilty enough to give up your own house%u2014easier to rant as talk is cheap.
There’s an interesting comment about Rev. Freeman’s article “America’s Holocaust Denial” at the following website:
http://pirateballerina.com/
Apparently, Rev. Freeman got caught up in quoting by mistake some highly questionable sources.
Thanks Tip. Even if Churchill et al. are quacks and frauds it is tough to look at the evidence in any objective manner and not refer to what happened to the American Indians as a holocaust.
Soulfully,
Chuck
Thanks for taking the time to read and write. I appreciate your good writing as well!
Soulfully,
Chuck
Only if you don’t know the facts. The truth is that American expansion westward was one of the less violent conquests in recorded history. While there were some terrible massacres perpetuated by Indian and settlers alike, massive violence was the exception, not the norm. Genocide was never, ever the policy of the federal government. Churchill had to resort to deception to say otherwise, and got fired for it.
If you want to wallow in white guilt, consider that what happened to African Americans as a group was far worse than what happened to Indians.
DJ,
What is a good source for better facts? I haven’t read Churchill. He was cited in another article I read. The documentary I saw and the things I have read like “Black Elk Speaks” give me an impression more in the holocaust direction.
Soulfully,
Chuck
Opening America’s eyes and ears to the land theft, cultural disintegration, depopulation, and outright atrocities committed against Indian tribes is extremely important. In places like South Dakota, the harm caused by years of exploitation and neglect are evident in the poverty and destitution of Native people. However, when a white con artist and pathological liar like Ward Churchill bullies his way into the role of a self-annointed “Indian historian and scholar,” mean-spirited propaganda replaces truth-telling, and Indian people’s voices are silenced in the din of outrage that inevitably follows. No one has done more to silence the voices of oppressed Indian people than Ward Churchill. He’s an agent of that oppression.
S. J.
Thanks for your well stated comment. Looks like I would have been well served to learn more about Churchill before quoting him.
Soulfully,
Chuck
Start with David Henige’s “Numbers from Nowhere”, which debunks the demographic fabrications of Churchill and Stannard. Henige demonstrates that you cannot trust much of the Indian history you read.
Thanks DJ. I will check that source out.
Soulfully,
Chuck
Genocide debate
Further information: Genocide in the Americas
A controversial question relating to the population history of American indigenous peoples is whether or not the natives of the Americas were the victims of genocide. After the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust during World War II, genocide was defined (in part) as a crime “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
Historian David Stannard is of the opinion that the indigenous peoples of America (including Hawaii)[29] were the victims of a “Euro-American genocidal war.”[30] While conceding that the majority of the indigenous peoples fell victim to the ravages of European disease, he estimates that almost 100 million died in what he calls the American Holocaust.[31] Stannard’s perspective has been joined by Kirkpatrick Sale, Ben Kiernan, Lenore A. Stiffarm, and Phil Lane, Jr., among others; the perspective has been further refined by Ward Churchill, who has said that “it was precisely malice, not nature, that did the deed.”[30]
Stannard’s claim of 100 million deaths has been disputed because he does not cite any demographic data to support this number, and because he makes no distinction between death from violence and death from disease. Noble David Cook, Latin Americanist and history professor at Florida International University, considers books such as Stannard’s %u2013 a number of which were released around the year 1992 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Columbus voyage to America %u2013 to be an unproductive return to Black Legend-type explanations for depopulation. In response to Stannard’s figure, political scientist R. J. Rummel has instead estimated that over the centuries of European colonization about 2 million to 15 million American indigenous people were the victims of what he calls democide. “Even if these figures are remotely true,” writes Rummel, “then this still make this subjugation of the Americas one of the bloodier, centuries long, democides in world history.”[32]
While no mainstream historian denies that death and suffering were unjustly inflicted by a number of Europeans upon a great many American natives, most historians argue that genocide, which is a crime of intent, was not the intent of European colonization while in America. Historian Stafford Poole wrote: “There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews and Armenians, to mention but two of the major victims of this century.”[33]
Therefore, nearly all mainstream scholars tend not to use the term “genocide” to describe the overall depopulation of American natives. However, a number of historians, rather than seeing the whole history of European colonization as one long act of genocide, do cite specific wars and campaigns which were arguably genocidal in intent and effect. Usually included among these are the Pequot War (1637) and campaigns waged against tribes in California starting in the 1850s.[34]
Tip,
Thank you for your balanced and reasoned response. It is sometimes tough to discern between fact and propaganda.
Soulfully,
Chuck
The whole thing was a quote from Wikipedia. The link didn’t come through. Here it is.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peopl es?t=5.
For me and my peers at least, that “day” has been here for decades.
Year after year of my public education (1980s - Calif.) included segments on this tragedy. My teachers never shied away from our harsh history. We learned all about ‘manifest destiny,’ Jackson’s Indian removal act, the epidemics, the scalp bounties, wounded knee, trail of tears, the disasters of the reservations, and broken treaty after broken treaty.
There is no denial. Maybe some ignorance, but nothing on the level of the WWII Holocaust deniers.
And I take slight umbrage at the comparison (to holocaust deniers), given the thorough job my country has done educating me about its shameful history.