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Denial of atrocities against Indigenous peoples are present or historical claims made by public figures, organizations or states that deny any of the multiple atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples when academic consensus or present state policy that acknowledges that such crimes occurred. The atrocities include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Denial may be the result of the Indigenous peoples' minority status, social segregation, low population size and lack of visibility. Further factors include marginalization, the lack of political representation, and lower economic or social status.

During the age of modern colonization many empires colonized territories that were inhabited by the Indigenous peoples. In most cases, the new polities included the surviving Indigenous peoples within their new political borders. In the process of expanding their frontier, there were a number of atrocities committed against Indigenous nations. While Indigenous scholars have been doing so since these events occurred, non-Indigenous scholars are now increasingly examining the impact of settler colonialism and internal colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous peoples. The atrocities against Indigenous peoples include forced displacement, exile, introduction of new diseases, forced containment in reservations, forced assimilation, forced labour, criminalization, dispossession, land theft, compulsory sterilization, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, separating children from their families, enslavement, captivity, massacres, forced religious conversion, cultural genocide and reduction of means of subsistence and subsequent starvation.

Background

In comparison with the legal definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention that has been used in actual litigation, additional scholarly definitions have been used to examine the diverse history of genocide, including those that include cultural and ethnic genocide as per Raphael Lemkin. For example, genocide scholar Israel Charny has proposed a definition of genocide: "Genocide in the generic sense is the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."

Khoekhoe prisoners of war in German South-West Africa, 1904

According to Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, who wrote about the ten stages of genocide, the final stage of a genocide process is denial. In this stage, the perpetrators minimize, negate, lie or conceal information about events. Victims are blamed and deaths are attributed to side factors such as disease or starvation. According to sociologist Daniel Feierstein, the genocide perpetrator implements a process of transforming the identity of the survivors (if there are any) and erasing the memory of the existence of the victim group. According to historian Norman Naimark, during a genocide or ethnic cleansing process, there may be destruction of physical symbols of the victims including temples, books, monuments, documents, graveyards, arquitectural heritage, heritage sites and Indigenous names: "Ethnic cleansing involves not only the forced deportation of entire nations but the eradication of the memory of their presence."

Ward Churchill explains denial of genocide in terms of the politics of genocide recognition. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have argued that the attention given to issues is the product of mass media, as they mention in Manufacturing Consent: "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy!" Thus, Chomsky views the term genocide as one that is used by those in positions of political power and media prominence against their rivals, but the avoidance of using the term to describe their own actions, past and present.

Human rights and genocide are issues of international concern as the alleged perpetrators can be state agents themselves, while some states argue that internal matters are an issue of sovereignty, independent of any external influence. Hitchcock and Twedt say that even though many countries have committed genocide, many times other countries and even the UN avoid criticizing their internal affairs.

An 1888 drawing of a massacre by Queensland’s police at Skull Hole, Mistake Creek, near Winton, Australia.

Unfortunately, many states do not respect the rights or even the lives of Indigenous peoples which exist within their political borders. These borders themselves do not predate the communal territories of Indigenous peoples and may be the result of a settler or exploitation colonization process. For example, Britain and France traced close to 40% of the entire length of the world's international political boundaries as of 2014. In the latter part of the twentieth century the genocide of Indigenous peoples attracted more attention from the international community including scholars and human rights organizations.

Indigenous peoples (also known as First Peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal Peoples, Native Peoples, Indigenous Natives, or Autochthonous Peoples) are the earliest known inhabitants of a territory, especially a territory that has been colonized by a now-dominant group. Ninety of the world's countries contain a combined amount of more than 5,000 Indigenous groups, speaking 4,000 languages. This fact and the age of colonization gave rise to many instances of atrocities perpetrated on both sides as settlers expanded. Self-identification is a core concept in the definition of Indigenous peoples. Article 33 (1) of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples (2007) also refers to the self-identification of Indigenous peoples: "Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions." In 2007, 144 countries voted for the Declaration, 11 abstained, and 4 (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States) voted against it. All four countries have reversed their positions and officially endorse the Declaration.

Some of the main reasons for denying genocide are to evade moral or even criminal responsibility, as a form of hate speech, to avoid retribution, restitution, and compensation, and to protect the perpetrators' reputation.

J. Ross Browne, "Protecting the Settlers." From Browne, "The Coast Rangers: A Chronicle of Events in California," part II: "The Indian Reservation," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 23, no. 135 (August 1861): 313. This image accompanied an article by Browne in which he described the killing of Yuki people at Round Valley, California.

Atrocity acknowledgement

During colonization, many European officials expressed concerns, enacted laws to protect Indigenous peoples, and even punished a few colonial agents for some of their atrocities. Widely known examples are the Laws of Burgos and the New Laws in the Spanish Empire, which were poorly implemented. However, in some cases, the same government agencies that were supposed to protect Indigenous people committed atrocities, as is the case of the Indian Protection Service in Brazil as described in the Figueiredo Report, or the Office of Indigenous Affairs in the United States who acknowledged its systemic shortcomings.

In recent times, some governments have acknowledged past atrocities or apologized for the policies of previous governments. This has been the case in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, California, Chile, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and United States. In their apologies, state officials do not always agree with human rights organizations' and scholars' characterization of the atrocities. No country has ever voluntarily acknowledged committing genocide.

In the United States, the Apology Resolution of 1993 acknowledged the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in which the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims over their national territory.

In the late 19th century, Europeans began to settle in Dawson Island, Chile. This is a photo of an internment camp for the Selknam and other native people. Armed men hunted down the Indigenous peoples for bounty in the Selk'nam genocide.

Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church's role in colonization and for "crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America". He has also apologized for the Church's role in the operation of residential schools in Canada, qualifying it as genocide. In 2023, the Vatican rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, which formed the basis of territory appropriation by others.

In 2020, the Bank of England apologized for the role of directors in the Atlantic slave trade and pledged to remove pictures and statues of any of the 25 bank leaders that owned or traded in slavery.

In 2022 Justin Welby, the Primate of the Church of England, apologized to the Indigenous peoples in Canada, adding to similar apologies by other churches in Canada such as the Anglican Church of Canada.

Atrocity rationalization

As per Gregory Stanton, in the last stage of genocide, victims may be blamed for what happened to them. In the fourth phase, they can be dehumanized with hate speech. In many cases, members of Indigenous communities have been described by the dominant society with negative stereotypes for generations.

Oftentimes, Indigenous peoples have been described with accounts of generalized practices like cannibalism. Historian David Stannard writes: "...the conquering Europeans were purposefully and systematically dehumanizing the people they were exterminating". Indigenous peoples have been dehumanized in accounts of Western scholars such as Juan Gines de Sepulveda to justify their slavery, oppression and even extermination. Controversial accounts of these peoples circulated in Europe in translations of letters by Christopher Columbus. Sepulveda used references to the Bible and Aristotle to depict Native Americans as natural slaves.

Australian Professor Henry Reynolds says that many genocide scholars have named Tasmania in their lists of legitimate case studies. He claims that Jews were targeted "because they were not human, just as the Tasmanian Aborigines were hunted to death for the same reason".

Genocide scholar Adam Jones proposed a framework for genocide denial that consists of several strategies, including minimizing fatalities, blaming fatalities on unrelated "natural" causes, denying intent to destroy a group, and claiming self-defense in preemptive or disproportionate attacks. The vectors of death raised by forced labor, displacement, slavery, overcrowded housing and schools, famine, and epidemics are downplayed. According to historian Colin Tatz, denial takes several forms: First, the denial of any past genocidal behavior. Second, the counterview that Westerners have been the victims. Third, that in reality there has been more good than bad in race relations. Israel Charny outlines the tactics of genocide denial including: debating the fatality statistics, denial of intent, dehumanization of victims, and claiming presentism.

According to Mahmood Mamdani, in general, Indigenous societies did not necessarily consider land private property. Australian anthropologist Patrick Wolfe said that physical removal from their territory resulted in the loss of means of subsistence, as the land was privatized and off limits to Indigenous peoples. Some Western writers such as Thomas Hobbes rationalized the appropriation of Indigenous territory arguing that the territory belonged to those that 'developed' it but Indigenous peoples had different land management practices.

Rezarta Bilali and others claim that denial is the most common response to the atrocities made by a group to which one belongs. This in-group bias takes place as committing atrocities may have negative legal and moral consequences. Denial protects the national image and serves to put the historical narrative in a positive light, sometimes by historical silence, erasure or revisionism.

Cholula massacre

Nobel Prize in Literature of 1990 winner, Octavio Paz, says that the literature on Spanish and Portuguese colonialism is biased and "is full of somber details and harsh judgments". He said that there were also immense gains:

"Not all was horror: over the ruins of the pre-Columbian world the Spanish and Portuguese raised a grandiose historical construction, much of which is still in place. They united many peoples who spoke different languages, worshiped different gods, fought among themselves, or were ignorant of one another. These peoples became united by laws and judicial institutions, but, above all, by language, culture, and religion. Although the losses were enormous, the gains were immense. To measure fairly the effect of the Spanish in Mexico, one must emphasize that without them—that is, without the Catholic religion and the culture the Spanish implanted in our country—we would not be what we are. We would probably be a collection of peoples divided by different beliefs, languages, and cultures."

On 8 March 1782, militiamen bludgeoned to death and scalped ninety six Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican). The majority of the unarmed victims were women and children. The U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania were under the command of David Williamson, at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio Country.

Denial examples

According to Professor Robert K. Hitchcock, Indigenous peoples have experienced to human rights violations, massacres, and genocides in many countries in which they reside. He said that: "the destruction of Indigenous peoples and their cultures has been a policy of many of the world's governments, although most government spokespersons argue that the disappearance or disruption of Indigenous societies was not purposeful but rather occurred inadvertently."

Leo Kuper has described denial as a routine defense: "One of the consequences of the adoption of the Genocide Convention is that denial has become a routine defense. This is intimately related to its present recognition as an international crime with potentially significant sanctions by way of punishment, claims for reparation, and restitution of territorial rights... Denial by the oblivion of indifference has also been the fate of many hunting and gathering groups and other Indigenous peoples."

According to professors James V. Fenelon and Clifford E. Trafzer, the historical record is clear: "Euro-American people and governments have committed genocide worldwide against Indigenous peoples...." But many scholars have denied the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the context of the invasion of what would be known as America. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples "have long interpreted the invasion of America as genocide." According to Professor Laurelyn Whitt, the vast majority of North American scholars deny that genocide has occurred on the North American continent during the course of its colonization by Europeans. Meanwhile, genocide scholars outside of North America have mentioned it repeatedly.

Colin Leach and others studied a large number of cases of mass violence and genocide in a context of European colonialism, and found that perpetrator groups denied their group’s responsibility, showed low levels of collective guilt, and had low support for reparation policies.

Bartolomé de las Casas' depiction of the Spanish abuses to Indigenous Americans

Americas

Historian Howard Zinn claimed that in American history textbooks, America's history of abuse against Indigenous peoples is mostly ignored, or presented from the point of view of the state. In his 2003 work, Professor Elazar Barkan claimed that Indigenous genocide has not been given a place in the dominant version of history, particularly in the history of the United States: "Only wide recognition of Indigenous destruction as genocide will acknowledge such opinion as denial. At present, these are more likely uninformed opinions."

Historian Walter L. Hixson says that settler societies such as the United States and Australia deny and distort the history of the violent dispossession of the Indigenous peoples.

Adam Jones said that there is a denialist position on the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the informed sectors of the whole of the Americas. For example, Professor Alexander Bielakowski of the University of Findlay said that "if [it] was the plan" to "wipe out the American Indians ... the US did a damn poor job following through with it." British historian Michael Burleigh questions the disappearance of Indigenous peoples since they are running multi-million dollar casinos. Jones has said that the historical revisionism has been so thorough that in some cases the Americas have been depicted as empty of people at the time of the beginning of European colonization, when in fact the majority of the Indigenous population died during the colonization process.

Custer Massacre at Big Horn, Montana

Historian Andres Resendez has written a book called "The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America" in which he argues that the slavery of Indigenous peoples in the Americas has been "almost completely erased from our historical memory". He compares the thousands of books on African slavery compared to a couple of dozen books specialized on Indigenous slavery. One of the reasons he gives to explain this erasure is that African slavery was legal, so there are many records and documents that provide evidence and data about it, whereas Indigenous slavery was largely illegal, so it is not on official records like bills of sale, wills and ship manifests as in the case of African slavery. The slavery of Indigenous peoples took various forms across time and territory, for example in the form of peonage or the enslavement of prisoners of just wars. Furthermore, most Indigenous nations lost almost all of their ancestral homeland whereas many African nations did not.

David Stannard wrote on the 500 anniversary (1992) of the beginning of colonization of the Americas about denial of atrocities: "Expressions of horror and condemnation over ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina routinely appear on the same newspaper page or television news show as reports of the latest festivities surrounding the Columbian quincentennial. Bosnians and Croatians are worthy victims. The native peoples of the Americas never have been. But of late, American and European denials of culpability for the most thoroughgoing genocide in the history of the world have assumed a new guise." Stannard also interpreted an essay by author Christopher Hitchens, saying that Hitchens was supporting social Darwinism.

Encomienda in Codex Kingsborough

Enslaved natives with a load of rubber weighing 75 kilos; they have journeyed 100 kilometers with no food.

Stannard offers the hypothetical scenario of 1940s Germans making similar statements if they had talked in such a way about Jews after World War II (as Hitchens and others talk about Native Americans) to compare the preponderance of the Holocaust vis-a-vis Native American genocide. Stannard in his essay concludes that the Holocaust has gained a prominent position in the public eye, gathering the attention of the international community, but even though he recognizes the scale and tragedy of the atrocity, he warns the West to not ignore the atrocities in the Western hemisphere.

According to the New York Times, Lynne V. Cheney, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a group of scholars had a dispute over Mrs. Cheney's rejection of a television project celebrating the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the New World. Mrs. Cheney said the proposal's use of the word "genocide" in connection with Columbus was a problem: "We might be interested in funding a film that debated that issue," she said, "but we are not about to fund a film that asserts it. Columbus was guilty of many sins, but he was not Hitler."

According to a 2016-2018 survey, "only 36% of Americans almost certainly believe that the United States is guilty of committing genocide against Native Americans." Indigenous author Michelle A. Stanley writes that "Indigenous genocide is largely denied, erased, relegated to the distant past, or presented as inevitable". She writes that Indigenous genocide is depicted broadly, without touching on the pattern of a series of separate genocides against multiple distinct tribal nations. The inevitability of genocide displaces agency from people to exogenic forces such as "providence, fate and nature". This posture seeks to absolve perpetrators from responsibility of the destruction of Indigenous nations.

Academic Susan Cameron wrote: "Today, textbooks throughout the country continue to ignore or minimize the brutal treatment of Native peoples, the mass killings and persecutions, the displacement, and the continued struggles in tribal communities".

Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890, South Dakota

Atrocities against the Cinta Larga tribe in Brazil were exposed in the Figueiredo report of 1967. After shooting the head off her baby, the killers cut the mother in half. © Survival

In Paraguay and Brazil, genocide scholar Leo Kuper says that genocide has been denied on the basis of alleged lack of intent to destroy. The case of the Ache in Paraguay has been legally determined to be a case of political persecution, not genocide as per David Stannard.

In Guatemala there has been debate over accusations of genocide, and instead calling the conflict civil war in the case of Guatemala, even though the Guatemalan Truth Commission has reported genocide.

In Argentina, the Conquest of the Desert had been interpreted in war terms, silencing the fact of Indigenous genocide. In the case of the Napalmi massacre, a judge concluded that the massacre took place in a context of genocide. According to Walter Delrio and others, "...the state still denies the existence of genocide and the existence of crimes against humanity with respect to Indigenous peoples."

According to Nadia Rubaii, the mass atrocities in Latin America have been less visible internationally for three reasons. Victim groups have frequently been attacked for their ideological or political differences, leading the international community to consider such atrocities as domestic political issues. Second, perpetrators who damage ecosystems and means of subsistence argue that they are seeking economic development for common benefit and deny the intention to inflict any harm. Finally, if there is academic attention to the topic, it is documented in Spanish, and is not available in English.

Indigenous prisoners of Red River War, 1875.

California

American Progress, by John Gast 1872. Columbia escorts Europeans as they invade Indigenous nations, clearing native peoples and animals.

Benjamin Madley has described the atrocities against Indigenous peoples in California as genocide, as does Mohamed Adhikari, and historian Brendan Lindsay. Benjamin Madley claims that there is denial of atrocities: "Justice demands that even long after the perpetrators have vanished, we document the crimes that they and their advocates have too often concealed, denied, or suppressed."

Despite the well documented evidence of the widespread atrocities of the California genocide, the social science and history textbooks approved by the California Department of Education ignored the history of this genocide. Robert K. Hitchcock says that during the California genocide, "California state legislators, administrators, Indian agents, and townspeople denied that a genocide was happening."

Award-winning journalist George Monbiot said that the Catholic Church´s canonization in 2015 of Christian missionary Junipero Serra: "... he founded the system of labour camps that expedited California’s cultural genocide." is an example of denialism.

Canada

In Canada, Justice Beverly McLachlin, of the Supreme Court, said that Canada's historical treatment of Indigenous peoples was cultural genocide. Professor David Bruce MacDonald argued that the Canadian government should recognize various atrocities committed against the Indigenous peoples in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in the context of the 2021 Canadian Indian residential schools gravesite discoveries. In 2023's National Truth and Reconciliation Day, Trudeau said that denialism was on the rise. Tricia E. Logan wrote that Canada has been in denial of the true costs of its colonial process.

Rita K. Dhamoon has critiqued the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) including the centrality of the Holocaust in the museum, framing residential schools as assimilationist and not genocidal, and denial of the genocidal nature of settler colonialism. The CMHR opened in 2014 receiving criticism after the museum would not use the term genocide to describe the history of colonialism in Canada. In 2019, the museum reversed its policy, and officially recognizes genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada in its content.

Senator Lynn Beyak generated controversy and accusations of genocide denial in the Canadian Indian residential school system and voiced disapproval of the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the schools. Former Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole said that the residential school system educated Indigenous children, but then changed his view: "The system was intended to remove children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions, and cultures". Former publisher Conrad Black and others have also been accused of denial.

In 2022, the Canadian government announced that it would pay C$31.5 billion to reform the foster care system and compensate Indigenous families for its deficiencies. Cindy Blackstock, director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, said the forced transfers of children are a result of discrimination in government policy and inequitable provision of government services. A truth commission report found that Canadian governments and churches pursued policies of cultural genocide throughout the 20th century. The government has acknowledged the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the foster care system.

Scouts Canada has issued an apology for "its role in the eradication of First Nation, Inuit and Metis people for more than a century".

Africa

Prisoners from the Herero and Nama genocide, 1904-1907

In Britain, the Foreign Office kept documents related to the British Empire in a secret archive at Hanslope Park, north of London. Documents in the archive detailed a high level cover up of the deaths of 11 men killed by prison guards during the Mau Mau rebellion. Opinions are divided on whether the government successfully covered up the violence used in the repression of the Mau Mau, with some authors pointing out that documents in Hans-lope Park had already been released in the 1980s. The repression used by colonial authorities had been documented in a number of academic works.

In Belgium, the atrocities in the Congo Free State are not in the public discourse, and the topic is not addressed in education. King Leopold II burned the colonial archive for eight days to cover up evidence of atrocities. The archive of the colony was destroyed and the king said, "they have no right to know what I did there".

In 1999, Adam Hochschild published King Leopold's Ghost, an award-winning book (and a documentary) about the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State. The American Historical Association has awarded the book and claimed that Belgium has come to terms with this history because of the book.

The Herero genocide is described as the first genocide of the 20th century, and politicians in Germany have said that there was a culture of denial.

Australia

Between 1838 and 1931, Aboriginal prisoners held on Rottnest Island, Australia were held in deplorable conditions and subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment.

During the colonization of Australia, the Indigenous Australian population experienced the Australian frontier wars in which there was conflict over territory. Massacres and mass poisonings have also been carried out against Indigenous people. The Bringing Them Home report highlighted the abuse committed against Australian Indigenous peoples by forceful removal of children from Indigenous families in what is called Stolen Generations. Nonetheless, former Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologize in the Motion of Reconciliation, claiming that the program had no genocidal intent. A scholar that denied genocide in Australia is Keith Windshuttle, who was editor of Quadrant magazine, which produced material criticizing the report. Former Tasmanian Premier Ray Groom said that "there had been no killing in the island state". Dr. Gary Jones, a former labour minister in Australia, has portrayed colonialism as a gift to Indigenous nations. Australian Aboriginal senator Jana Stewart, called such views a denial of First Nations' historical experiences.

In Australia, there are ongoing debates about the interpretation of history, called History Wars, for example, the calling of Australia's national myth as an invasion or settlement. The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by scholars including, Mohamed Adhikari, Benjamin Madley, Ashley Riley Sousa, Robert K. Hitchcock and Thomas E. Koperski.

Historian Jurgen Zimmerer has written that there is denial of genocide of the Aborigines by Australian conservatives. Historian Dirk Moses says that in Australia there were many cultural-linguistic Indigenous groups, so there was not one single genocidal event by the colonizing perspective, but multiple ones: "...many genocides took place in Australia". According to South African historian Colin Tatz, in the 1990s in spite of the apologies and admissions about the past, there were denialists in Australia, such as Kenneth Minogue, Ken Maddock and Ron Brunton and also politicians including John Howard, John Herron, Peter Howson, Wayne Goss, Ray Groom and Bill Hayden. Former Premier Goss insisted on the removal of words as "invasion" and "resistance" from school texts.

According to Hannah Baldry there was ongoing denial: "The Australian Government appears to have long suffered a form of 'denialism' that has consistently deprived the country's Aboriginal population of acknowledgment of the crimes perpetrated against their ancestors."

Russia

Some scholars describe Russia as a settler colonial state, particularly in its expansion into Siberia and the Russian Far East, during which it displaced and resettled Indigenous peoples, while practicing settler colonialism. The annexation of Siberia and the Far East to Russia was resisted by the Indigenous peoples, while the Cossacks often committed atrocities against them. During the Cold War, new forms of Indigenous repression were practiced.

Other denials

In his 1585 Descripción de Tlaxcala, Diego Muñoz Camargo illustrated the book burning of pre-Columbian codices by Franciscan friars.

There are a number of historians that do not consider that genocide of Indigenous peoples took place in North America, including James Axtell, Robert Utley, William Rubinstein, Guenter Lewy and Gary Anderson, although some call the atrocities another name such as ethnic cleansing. Stephen T. Katz has argued that the Holocaust is the only genocide that has occurred in history.

Reactions to denial

Many countries in Europe have laws against Holocaust denial but there are no known laws against Indigenous genocide denial. In Canada, some lawmakers want to criminalize the denial of genocide in residential schools: "They say they're being flooded with emails, letters and phone calls from people pushing back against the reports of suspected graves and skewing the history of the government-funded, church-run institutions that worked to assimilate more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children for more than a century."

Pennsylvania 1793, massacre of the Susquehannock

In 2022, the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect issued a policy paper titled "Combating Holocaust and Genocide Denial: Protecting Survivors, Preserving Memory, and Promoting Prevention" in which genocide denial is often associated with hate speech, specifically when directed to specific identifiable groups. The report gives policy recommendations for states and UN officials in the matter of denial.

Settler colonialism and genocide

Mystic Massacre 1637

There is a number of international scholars whose work established a relation between settler colonialism and genocide, as seen below. Settler colonialism is different from immigration because immigrants often assimilate into an existing society, not to destroy it to replace it.

Ann Curthoys is an Australian historian and academic who wrote about the view of genocide scholar Leo Kuper: "Nevertheless, the course of colonization of North and South America, the West Indies, and Australia and Tasmania, [Leo] Kuper observes, has certainly been marked all too often by genocide." Noam Chomsky has considered settler colonialism to be the most vicious form of imperialism, and describes the lack of self-awareness of the genocide by some Americans.

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Bernard Baylin has said that the Dutch and English conquests were just as brutal as those of the Spanish and Portuguese, in certain places and in certain times "genocidal". He says that this history, for example the Pequot War, is not erased but conveniently forgotten. The different European colonizing powers were all similarly cruel in their dealings with Indigenous peoples.

Slaves in the context of the Putumayo genocide of the Indigenous population of the Amazon at the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Company. 1912.

David Stannard historian and professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii analyzed the genocidal process in two cases of colonization. He said that the British did not need massive labor as the Spanish, but land: "And therein lies the central difference between the genocide committed by the Spanish and that of the Anglo-Americans: in British America extermination was the primary goal." Thus, in British America they would clear the land of Indigenous peoples, and put the few survivors in reserves.

Gregory D. Smithers, a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Aberdeen, has weighed in as well: "Ward Churchill refers to settler colonialism in North America as 'the American holocaust', and David Stannard similarly portrayed the European colonization of the Americas as an example of 'human incineration and carnage'."

Mark Levene, a historian at University of Southampton, linked colonialism and genocide: "In this, of course, we come back to the fatal nexus between the Anglo-American drive to rapid state-building and genocide." Levene has said that the authorities are silent about genocide in the case of the colonization of Australia, even though the press reports described the events.

Painting of Waterloo Creek massacre by the New South Wales Military Mounted Police.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an American historian, professor at California State University, describes settler colonialism as inherently genocidal from the perspective of the terms of the Genocide Convention. She pointed out that genocide does not have to be total to be genocide, as the most famous genocide (the Holocaust) of all was not total.

Stephen Howe, professor in the History and Cultures of Colonialism at the University of Bristol, UK, relates colonialism with genocide and says the case for colonialism causing genocide is very strong.

Academic Ward Churchill argues that in the American continent the Indigenous populations were subjected to a systematic campaign of extermination by settler colonialism: "For Churchill, the greatest series of genocides ever perpetrated in history - in terms of magnitude and duration - occurred in the Americas...". He discusses American policies such as the Indian Removal Act and the forced assimilation of Indigenous children in American Indian boarding schools operating in the mid-1800s to early 1900s. The United States ratified the Genocide Convention forty years later until 1986, and did so with conditions. He has called manifest destiny an ideology used to justify dispossession and genocide against Native Americans, and compared it to Lebensraum ideology of Nazi Germany.

Historiography and Indigenous genocide

Historian Samuel Totten and Professor Robert K. Hitchcock stated in their work on genocide historiography that the genocide of Indigenous peoples became an public issue for many non-Indigenous scholars until after the last part of the twentieth century.

Burning at the stake with Christian priest, 1664

Benjamin Madley highlighted that the Genocide Convention designates genocide a crime whether committed in time of peace or war. He has argued that the violent Indigenous resistance to genocidal campaigns have been described as war or battles, instead of genocidal massacres. He defines genocidal massacres as:

"...massacres are the intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including  women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or other wise. Massacres, when they form part of a pattern targeting a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, are frequently genocidal."

Historian Jeffrey Ostler says that in older historiography, key events in genocidal massacres in the context of U.S. Army missions to dominate Indian nations of the American West were narrated as battles. The concept of genocide has had a modest impact on the writing of American Indian history.

Anthropologists Robert Heizer and Alan Almquist state: “For every white man killed, a hundred [California] Indians paid the penalty with their lives.” Benjamin Madley performed a case study of the Modoc War, comparing details of death tolls in both sides in the conflict, to support this point. He said that throughout the world, groups targeted for annihilation resist, often violently.

US Cavalry attacks Cheyennes in Washita Massacre, 1868.

Benjamin Madley studied two cases of genocide (Pequot and Yuki) analyzing four elements: statements of genocidal intent, presence of massacres, state-sponsored body-part bounties (rewards officially paid for corpses, heads and scalps) and mass death in government custody. He suggests that detailed breakdown of genocide studies by individual nation is a new direction in genocide studies: "...offering a powerful tool with which to understand genocide and combat its denial around the world."

The Canadian Historical Association has maintained that the Canadian historical profession was complicit in denial and also said in a statement: ''Settler governments, whether they be colonial, imperial, federal, or provincial have worked, and arguably still work, towards the elimination of Indigenous peoples as both a distinct culture and physical group.'' Some historians disagreed and issued a letter against and for the claim of broad consensus in the view of this aspect of Canadian history.

German South-West Africa, 1907/8

David Moshman, a professor at University of Nebraska–Lincoln, highlighted the lack of awareness of the fact that Indigenous nations are not a monolithic entity, and many have disappeared: "The nations of the Americas remain virtually oblivious to their emergence from a series of genocides that were deliberately aimed at, and succeeded in eliminating, hundreds of Indigenous cultures."

Indigenous Australians chained in captivity

Julius Popper and the Selk'nam Genocide

Other personalities

Phil Fontaine, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, wrote:

"The Government of Canada currently recognizes five genocides: the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica. The time has come for Canada to formally recognize a sixth genocide, the genocide of its own aboriginal communities;"

Members of the Penobscot Nation in Maine made an educational film about how settlers killed Indigenous peoples during the colonial era:

"The filmmakers say they simply want to ensure this history isn't whitewashed by promoting a fuller understanding of the nation's past."

Indigenous actor Russell Means wrote in 1992 about denial in the United States, inspiring the title of a book by Ward Churchill:

"...there's a little matter of genocide that's got to be taken into account right here at home. I'm talking about the genocide which has been perpetrated against American Indians..."

In 1973, American actor Marlon Brando declined an Academy Award in protest for the representation of Native Americans in Hollywood cinema, citing killing of helpless unarmed Indigenous peoples and the theft of their territory.

In 2023, Indigenous leaders from Antigua and Barbuda, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines issued an open letter. The signed letter requests King Charles III to acknowledge at his coronation the "horrific impacts" of colonization.

Prevention

Atrocity denial may be reduced by works of history, knowledge gathering, preservation of archives, documentation of records, investigation panels, search for missing persons, commemorations, official state apologies, development of truth commissions, educational programs, monuments, and museums. According to Johnathan Sisson, the society has the right to know the truth about historical events and facts, and the circumstances that led to massive or systematic human rights violations. He says that the state has the obligation to secure records and other evidence to prevent revisionist arguments.

Monument at the Gnadenhutten Massacre Site, located in the cemetery at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, United States.

See also

See also: Outline of genocide studies

• Analysis of Western European colonialism and colonization
• Colonialism and genocide
• Genocide denial
• Genocide of Indigenous peoples
• Genocides in history
• Genocide recognition politics
• Historical negationism
• Historical revisionism
• History wars
• Indigenous survival during colonization
• List of ethnic cleansing campaigns
• List of genocides
• Pseudohistory
• Truth commission

Atahualpa´s execution, by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala

Further reading

• Adhikari, Mohamed (2021). Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-41177-5. Archived from the original on 16 March 2023.
• Anderson, E. N.; Anderson, Barbara (2020). Complying with Genocide: The Wolf You Feed. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-7936-3460-3. Archived from the original on 16 March 2023.
• Anderson, Gary Clayton. 2005. The Conquest of Texas : Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land 1820–1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-806-13698-1.
• Barta, Tony, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 237–251;
• Barta, Tony (2008). "With Intent to Deny: On Colonial Intentions and Genocide Denial". Journal of Genocide Research. 10 (1): 111–119.
• "Introduction. By Jeff Benvenuto, Andrew Woolford, and Alexander Laban Hinton. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America". Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Duke University Press. 2020. pp. 1–26. doi:10.1515/9780822376149-002. ISBN 9780822376149. S2CID 243002850.
• Bischoping, Katherine; Fingerhut, Natalie (14 July 2008). "Border Lines: Indigenous Peoples in Genocide Studies". Canadian Review of Sociology. 33 (4): 481–506. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.1996.tb00958.x.
• Brito, Alexandra Barahona De; Gonzalez Enriquez, Carmen; Aguilar, Paloma, eds. (2001). The Politics of Memory and Democratization. doi:10.1093/0199240906.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-924090-6.
• Cesaire, Aime. (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
• Charny, Israel W. (2003). A classification of denials of the Holocaust and other genocides. Journal of Genocide Research, 5(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520305645
• Chomsky, Noam (3 September 2010). "Genocide Denial with a Vengeance: Old and New Imperial Norms". Monthly Review. 62 (4): 16–20. doi:10.14452/MR-062-04-2010-08_3.
• Churchill, Ward (1998). A Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust And Denial In The Americas 1492 To The Present. San Francisco CA: City Lights Books. ISBN 978-0-87286-323-1.
• Churchill, Ward (February 2000). "Forbidding the 'G-Word': Holocaust Denial as Judicial Doctrine in Canada". Other Voices. 2 (1).
• Churchill, Ward (January 2003). "An American holocaust? The structure of denial". Socialism and Democracy. 17 (1): 25–75. doi:10.1080/08854300308428341. S2CID 143631746.
• Cook, Anna (2016). "A politics of Indigenous voice: reconciliation, felt knowledge and settler denial". The Canadian Journal of Native Studies. 36 (2): 69–80. ProQuest 1938073834.
• Cook, Anna (2017). "Intra-American Philosophy in Practice: Indigenous Voice, Felt Knowledge, and Settler Denial". The Pluralist. 12 (1): 74–84. doi:10.5406/pluralist.12.1.0074. S2CID 151807002.
• Der Matossian, Bedross (2023), ed., Chapter 1: "Denial of Genocide of Indigenous People in the United States" by Robert K. Hitchcock in Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-1-4962-2510-8
• Dudley, M. Q. (2017). A Library Matter of Genocide: The Library of Congress and the Historiography of the Native American Holocaust. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 8(2).
• Fenelon, James V.; Trafzer, Clifford E. (January 2014). "From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas". American Behavioral Scientist. 58 (1): 3–29. doi:10.1177/0002764213495045. S2CID 145377834.
• Hennebel, Ludovic, and Thomas Hochmann (eds), Genocide Denials and the Law (2011), ISBN 9780199738922 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738922.001.0001
• Hinton, Alexander Laban (2014). Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-6162-2. JSTOR j.ctt5hjdfm.
• Hitchcock, Robert K.; Twedt, Tara M. (2004). "Chapter 13 Physical and Cultural Genocide of Indigenous Peoples". In Totten, Samuel; Parsons, William S. (eds.). Century of genocide : critical essays and eyewitness accounts. (3rd ed.). New York : Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-94429-8.
• Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-330-49233-0.
• Kiernan, Ben. (2007). Blood and soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300144253. Archived
• Kiernan, Ben (June 2002). "Cover-up and Denial of Genocide: Australia, the USA, East Timor, and the Aborigines". Critical Asian Studies. 34 (2): 163–192. doi:10.1080/14672710220146197. S2CID 146339164.
• Kuper, Leo (1991). "When Denial Becomes Routine". Social Education. 55 (2): 121–23. ERIC EJ427728.
• Lemarchand, Rene (2011). Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-2263-0. JSTOR j.ctt3fhnm9.
• Mamdani, Mahmood (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02793-7.
• Manne, Robert (Ed.) (2003). "Revisionism and Denial," Whitewash: On Keith Windshuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Melbourne: Black Inc.), 337–370.
• Manne, Robert. (2001). Quarterly Essay: In Denial—the Stolen Generations and the Right. Melbourne: Morry Schwartz, Black Inc., 113 pp.
• McMillan, Mark; Rigney, Sophie (16 March 2018). "Race, reconciliation, and justice in Australia: from denial to acknowledgment". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 41 (4): 759–777. doi:10.1080/01419870.2017.1340653. S2CID 148769763.
• Moses, A.Dirk (October 2002). "Conceptual blockages and definitional dilemmas in the 'racial century': genocides of indigenous peoples and the Holocaust". Patterns of Prejudice. 36 (4): 7–36. doi:10.1080/003132202128811538. S2CID 145222840.
• Moses, A. Dirk (2003) "Revisionism and Denial," in Robert Manne, ed., Whitewash: On Keith Windshuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Melbourne: Black Inc.), 337–370.
• Moshman, David (November 2001). "Conceptual constraints on thinking about genocide". Journal of Genocide Research. 3 (3): 431–450. doi:10.1080/14623520120097224. PMID 19670511. S2CID 2734032.
• Panich, Lee M.; Schneider, Tsim D. (October 2019). "Categorical Denial: Evaluating Post-1492 Indigenous Erasure in the Paper Trail of American Archaeology". American Antiquity. 84 (4): 651–668. doi:10.1017/aaq.2019.54. S2CID 203352706.
• Rubaii, Nadia M., Sebastián Lippez-De Castro, y Susan Appe. 2019. «Indigenous peoples as victims of past and current genocides: an essential topic for the public administration curriculum in Latin America». Opera, n.º 25 (June):29-54. https://doi.org/10.18601/16578651.n25.03.
• Short, Damien (2016). Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-84813-546-8. Archived from the original on 16 March 2023.
• Smith, R. W. (2014). Genocide Denial and Prevention. Genocide Studies International, 8(1), 102–109. JSTOR 26985995
• Slocum, Melissa Michal (30 December 2018). "Introduction: There Is No Question of American Indian Genocide". Transmotion. 4 (2): 1–30. doi:10.22024/UniKent/03/tm.651.
• Survival International (1993). The Denial of Genocide. London: Survival International.
• Synott, John P. (1993). "Genocide and Cover-up Practices of the British Colonial System Against Australian Aborigines, 1788–1992". Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide: 44–46:15–16.
• Tatz, Colin M. (2003). With intent to destroy: reflecting on genocide. New York, NY: Verso.
• Totten, Samuel; Hitchcock, Robert K., eds. (2017). Genocide of Indigenous Peoples. doi:10.4324/9780203790830. ISBN 978-0-203-79083-0. S2CID 152960532.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (1995). Silencing the past: power and the production of history. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
• Whitt, Laurelyn, & Clarke, Alan W. (2019). North American Genocide Denial. In North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law (pp. 8–25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108348461.002
• Wolfe, Patrick (December 2006). "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Journal of Genocide Research. 8 (4): 387–409. doi:10.1080/14623520601056240. S2CID 143873621.
• Woolford, Andrew; Benvenuto, Jeff (2 October 2015). "Canada and colonial genocide". Journal of Genocide Research. 17 (4): 373–390. doi:10.1080/14623528.2015.1096580. S2CID 74263719.

External links

• IWGIA – International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. iwgia.org.
• Cultural Survival. Indigenous advocacy organization founded in 1972.
• Genocide and ethnocide, Encyclopedia.com
• Genocide Watch Founded by Gregory H. Stanton, a genocide scholar and former president of International Association of Genocide Scholars. See report covering denial of genocide in Canada against Indigenous Peoples here.
• International Criminal Court (ICC)
• Survival International
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Calls to Action. Calls to Action, document
• United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect
• Yale University, Colonial Genocides Project, Case Studies, Genocide Studies Program