The Holocaust vs Native American genocide

[Two Thumbs]

Well considering we could have killed every native and didn't. for a variety of reasons, good and bad.

I'd say the jews had it worse, b/c most thought they were headed for work camps, while the tribes got to fight back.

Hard to beat small pox though.

the cold and flu

VD

ya know, the good stuff.

 

[Douger]

Comparing and contrasting the Jewish Holocaust of WWII and the systematic genocide of native Americans, which was worse?

Discuss

No comparison. Jews in Germany were not hostile to the dominant culture around them and were assimiliated into it. Germany was not a new land in need of settlement.

There was no "systematic genocide" of the American Indian. They just lost the war. The settling of the American West is an enormously complicated topic. It's way too easy to throw words like genocide around, and inaccurate.

Yeah. More of the old "yer eiver wiff us er genst us". murkin logic.

 

[psikeyhackr]

It wasn't just disease, either.

I didn't say it was just disease.

I simply said more died from disease than other causes.

psik

 

[Finn]

Excuse me, most Americans are "part" Indian. It's a running gag in welfare offices that most of our clients, when asked to name their race, always say "well I've got some Indian in me but we're not enrolled or anything".

I rationalize it took me a while to respond to this but:

I'm 1/8th Mi'kmaw. My line is Meuse of Bear River, Nova Scotia (Canada). My uncle is Chief Frank Meuse for clarity. My grandma was one of the children at the reform/boarding schools in Canada and is why we live in America / New York now (Those schools lasted into the 70s/90s), so I personally take offense to you making a joke out of that.

I want you to consider this; a lot of people are only part Indian because their grandparents were raped. A lot of government enforced quantum rules / enrollment programs require the bloodline to be male; maybe that little tidbit of information will open your eyes as to why. The next time someone says that, remember that their is a good chance that someone in their family was raped. Maybe ask them to identify themselves more clearly. I rationalize the frustration of someone saying they're 1/32 or 1/64 or some obscure number like that and don't even know what tribe (I'm actually okay with the whole 1/32 thing, if someone identifies themselves as an aboriginal, then awesome -- but if you don't know what tribe or just shoot off Cherokee or something like that, that is frustrating to me), but keep an open mind.

In any case, what happened to my family has personally affected me so please do not down play it. I never got to reconcile with it either because my mother died in a fire, so it's something I'll have to, for the rest of my life, live in anguish with. But the violence they experienced carries down generations as well, and I can speak of that from personal experience; imagine being dragged down a flight of stairs, by your hair, at the age of 12, 2 months after your father died, because you refuse to get in the car with your drunk mother for example. But at least in my family it ends with me.

There is a lot of ignorance that surrounds the subject of Aboriginals; but the fact is the genocide continues to this day and it's carried out by the very same people who started it. In America, they are still having their land taken away from them. If you take the time to actually go to a reservation or two, you would notice that those that surrendered were put on land that is for the most part unusable. The idea that they get tax free tobacco/alcohol and gambling is another form of psychological warfare -- it's culturally damaging.

For those that claim there was no systematic genocide, you need to take a closer look -- it become very systematic in the late 1800s (It became a very public government goal by both the US and Canada to eradicate all natives at the very least culturally, and they used the Catholic church to do this and was "Pope sanctioned". If you need source material I can provide it. Privately they were still being killed) and was arguably systematic for the length of it. But I'm fairly certain it's common knowledge now that it was systematic, they are teaching it now in schools - at least in New York.

Some things I guess I'll clear up or offer some insight about (Note that I can only speak really for the North American bands/tribes, I don't know too much about the South American and my knowledge is admittedly limited beyond the Mi'kmaq)

Wagon trains for example were exaggerated. There was only some 300 people that ever died during wagon train raids, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands Hollywood likes to represent. It was honestly really rare for Natives to attack wagon trains. The reason they circled them was actually to keep the herd in check or protect against the elements.

Scalping was actually mostly an European practice (The natives did do it as well, but it was very few tribes and selective / ritualistic mostly), and this could have actually been taught by the Vikings original landing. There has been less than 1000 bodies found pre-Columbus that indicate scalping -- it was a multicultural phenomena. I may actually be wrong about the number, it may actually be less than 100 -- I over estimated for safety sake. I believe the locations were primarily "Plains Indians."

The irony with the whole scalping thing is that it was a very popular practice by Europeans, the natives only started doing it so widespread because the Pilgrims promoted it, and it never reached a level that matched the European habitability; prices for scalps (Something like $1000+ by today's standards per scalp) pushed people to even grave robbing. The pilgrims also stuck heads of the natives on stakes (In front of their children no less) and burned people alive for entertainment.

Alcoholism is actually a serious issue on reserves (I wouldn't say so much off the reserves though); granted the stereotype that all natives are alcoholics is uncalled for and not true by any means, it is a serious issue and continues to destroy a lot of families. I gather you're welcome to continue hold this preconception if you have it, but try to look at it differently -- this was an intentional injection into their society to keep them down, and the programs to help them out are not really available. They're better now, especially the locally run ones, but it still needs a lot of improvement.

Many tribes did not actually wear feathered head ware; sadly this fact has been lost on some tribes as well and tribes that never wore feathers began to. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm assuming it is/was some convoluted attempt to reconnect with their history that they lost. (This is a serious problem)

Not all bands had pow-wows.

Not all chiefs or elders were male. Women were highly regarded in Native society, they were "givers of life"

Natives are still forcefully losing their land, primarily in America they are still being removed by the government when the government discovers natural resources on their land.

Undrinkable or land with poor soil (Can't grow crops) is a common problem on reserves. Primarily the only reservations that are successful are those that have little to no US government intervention; the government has a habit of sticking their nose into their business when they don't want it, and when they need basic things like aid / shelter they don't get anything.

Not all natives are "tan" -- there is one tribe I know of that was actually platinum blonde and blue eyed -- the name eludes me as of now though. I believe the Lumbee are actually "black" as well (This is still being disputed/reviewed though, for the sake of transparency). So don't judge someone based on their skin color, like Europeans -- aboriginals came in all colors and sizes. If you're going to judge someone, judge them by their character, which you can't learn until you learn about them.

Not all natives had tomahawks or were war hungry. Most were extremely peaceful with minor exceptions. There were of course more war oriented bands but there is a big difference between aboriginal war and "traditional war". Aboriginals commonly stopped at a certain point because it was expected for those that lost to know that they lost and leave. This actually became a problem because of their expectations that people would move on once they fought back (The Jamestown Massacre for example was not the initial sparking event for the English pilgrims; Aboriginals were already being enslaved, killed and cheated) essentially lead to a large number of unexpected attacks on them; their honor system was completely different, if not admittedly hard headed sometimes. This doesn't apply to all bands/tribes though, every band was different.

Their view of morality/honor was different as well, from the outside this may seem savage but with perspective it's intelligent/rational. There was one story I read about a son killing another native with a knife. The son was forced to dig a grave and bury this person, when he finally did and he was still down in the grave, the sons father planted a tomahawk in the back of his head. The primary reason for this is that they know that the circle of killing/revenge would continue on for generations, which would do more harm in the end; the father sacrificed his own son for the survival of the entire people. For clarity they were smart enough to know that humans are emotionally driven and that the relationship between the two families would lead to a struggle; the father killing his son shows the murdered son's family that he will bear the burden with them.

They did not make a habit of stealing white women; this is a primarily a folk lore in regards to a few instances. White women were more or less viewed as weak or inferior to native women because they couldn't maintain a working/functional pace. Not that this made "white women" bad, it's just their roles in their micro society were different from the needs of the natives. It was actually more habitual for native women to be stolen by whites and used as sex slaves.

Every single treaty that has been made with the natives has been broken in some form or another by America/Pre-American colonies, including recent ones. In the past, the breach normally was by killing them in mass numbers during peace time. (The Europeans would essentially sign a treaty, and then a day later or a few days later during the night raid them)

All treaties that were broken, weren't generally out of "evil" (which is, of course, subjective) of the Europeans, some of it was just communication barriers for example. There were a lot of very sympathetic pilgrims, but like we see today on the news, news can quickly change your perception of things even if absolutely false.

The original ideals of American society is actually modeled off band "laws." Specifically, the constitution is actually modeled off the Iroquois Confederacy constitution; Ben Franklin even made this very aware. This is still being disputed, but it's possible that "We the people" is actually a direct copy of their oral constitution. I believe it's called the Great Law of Peace. Information is hard to find on the internet, it's better to read books on it.

I covered this before; but the Natives actually won the war from a military standpoint in most instances (Meaning band to band, some bands lost outright but most actually won), especially in the west. The primary reason they "lost" is from both intentional and unintentional spreading of disease after the fact. There are still some tribes that retain all their original land.

There has been a number of instances of genocide in particular tribes, but I can't speak for all. I covered this, but the Mi'kmaw and a number of other northern bands/tribes through the 1890s into the 1970s-1990s (More prominently in the 1930s) were systematically destroyed. All children were forced into boarding schools. They were burnt alive in ovens, dumped in mass graves by other students, raped, beaten, culturally manipulated to believe they were evil. A lot died from sickness again as well. They're still actually finding the mass graves under the churches and schools today.

The irony of the original question here (The comparison to the Jewish Holocaust and the American Aboriginal Genocide) is that the Catholics and America actually taught the Third Reich how to do it; the church even supported them in the beginning and then stopped when it became public knowledge of what was really happening. (Again you can't blame all Christians/Catholics for the actions of a few though, I absolutely have no problem with religion; I have a problem with the way a lot of people wield it). It's interesting how involved American companies were in it; read up about IBM if you have free time.

The Jewish Holocaust was a little different though because it was definitely more systematically driven from the beginning. But part of the psychology of that is that the lay person has an ability to find historical bits of it on TV an can form their own opinions themselves. The issue with the natives is it's all orally passed and very diluted from all perspectives (Including native), for example I guarantee that 0% of the people that read this post were aware of everything I stated, and maybe 90% were unaware of a good chunk of it. There is a lot beyond what I said, sadly -- it would take me a very long time to cover everything and even I know very little in the grand scheme (The reason I may appear to know so much is from direct experience and I guess "Fruedian" issues [Mom issues; I try to find answers to provide excuses for my mom's actions], so I'm more obsessively driven about it because it's very strong part of who I am today)

On numbers, like I said prior -- the American Aboriginal Genocide is the worst genocide in history. The Mohawk (Kanien'gehaga), only one tribe, lost 1.5 million (And that's probably a low estimate) alone and were left with only a few thousand to my knowledge. I couldn't really say which is worse because I think it's unfair to even suggest the death of someone is more important than the other; but I think they were both worse in their own ways. The biggest difference though is the motive, so I gather that's where you would find your answer; by whether you find humanity to be a problem or humans.

 

[editec]

Comparing and contrasting the Jewish Holocaust of WWII and the systematic genocide of native Americans, which was worse?

Discuss

Worse from what perspective?

From the victims perspective, or from the perspective of the perps?

Looks to me like from the victims perspective the AmerIndians got the worst end of the stick because not only did they lose the vast majority of their people, they ALSO lost the Western Hemisphere. Additionally their genocide is STILL ONGOING on this hemisphere and has been ongoing since 1492

As to which crime against humanity was the worst one?

I'd have so suggest that comparing crimes against humanity is basically a wasted effort.

When an event achieves that level of evil the numbers become mere detail.

 

[blimpo]

There is a small difference:

Jews were killed for who they were.

Indians were killed to take the land. But also for who they were. The British called them savages.