A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust & Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present

by Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present. He frames the matter by examining both "revisionist" denial of the Nazi-perpatrated Holocaust and the opposing claim of its exclusive "uniqueness," using the full scope of what happened in Europe as a backdrop against which to demonstrate that genocide is precisely what has been—and still is—carried out against the American Indians. Churchill lays bare the means by which many of these realities have remained hidden, how public understanding of this most monstrous of crimes has been subverted not only by its perpetrators and their beneficiaries but by the institutions and individuals who perceive advantages in the confusion. In particular, he outlines the reasons underlying the United States's 40-year refusal to ratify the Genocide Convention, as well as the implications of the attempt to exempt itself from compliance when it finally offered its "endorsement." In conclusion, Churchill proposes a more adequate and coherent definition of the crime as a basis for identifying, punishing and preventing genocidal practices, wherever and whenever they occur.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, Politics, Indigenous, American History, Social Justice

531 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Ward Churchill (Keetowah Cherokee) has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues. He was a Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1990 till 2007; a leading member of the American Indian Movement (AIM); and has been a delegate to the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations. He is the author of numerous books, including A Little Matter of Genocide, Fantasies of the Master Race, and Struggle for the Land.

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard of Ward Churchill sometime after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center by al-Qaeda. Churchill, then a professor of Native American studies at the University of Colorado, had called the victims “little Eichmanns” – far from innocent, they actually deserved to die.

Here is the excerpt from his essay accusing the World Trade Center victims of being ignorant of their participation in the evils of U.S. foreign policy:

“… because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

Some years later, Churchill was fired from his job. The “little Eichmanns” comment had led to more attention and outrage than any of his academic writings, spurring an investigation of “academic misconduct” in his scholarship.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times in 2009, Stanley Fish deconstructs the work of the committee appointed to investigate Churchill’s body of work. It is essential reading: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...

Yes, Churchill got some things wrong about this or that historical event. But his firing was a travesty. Had it not been for the “little Eichmanns” comment, Churchill would have remained a mostly unknown (outside of academic circles) scholar writing about subjects most Americans show little interest in.

So, what about Churchill’s work? Should I dismiss him entirely because of his ugly comment comparing stock traders to the Nazi architects of genocide?

First an anecdote:

About ten years ago Naeem Inayatullah, a political science professor at Ithaca College where I took one of his courses in 1996, met me for lunch in New York City. We hadn’t seen each other in years but managed to stay in touch. Instead of spending the hour or so talking about the exciting things that have happened in our lives personally and professionally in the decade since I graduated, we talked about politics. We talked about learning.

Naeem recommended several books he had recently read – about al-Qaeda, the Taliban, U.S. foreign policy, etc. I read them all, and I haven’t stopped reading since.

For years I’ve tried to reach an understanding of what it means to be an imperial citizen. But I never read Ward Churchill, until now – and it was Naeem who planted the seed again.

Churchill’s ‘A Little Matter of Genocide’ is a compilation of essays buttressed by an enormous scholarly apparatus of footnotes and endnotes. Churchill is a force as a writer – backing up his polemic against “respectable scholarship” with prodigious research. Let’s look past his flaws and engage his arguments.

Defining genocide is not merely an academic exercise. In Churchill’s view the prevailing failure to see the destruction of Native Americans by Europeans and their descendants – both biologically and culturally – as genocide is a moral affront as well as a pathway to more genocide.

It truly matters, in Churchill’s view, to understand the difference between mass murder and genocide, and it seems clear to me that Churchill would have little patience with anyone who suggests that it makes no difference to the people who are dying because the end result is the same: they are dead, regardless of what scholars call it.

“It should go without saying that to combat and eliminate any sociopolitical phenomenon – most especially one bearing the malignantly functional utility of genocide – it is first necessary to understand it for what it is.” p. 75

“To those who now move in the opposite direction, seeking for whatever stupid and misguided reasons to diminish and confuse understandings of genocide to the point where it can never be abolished, will accrue the kind of revulsion and contempt among future generations which are now reserved now for the likes of the nazis and their apologists.” p. 437

What is genocide? The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. Churchill cites Lemkin chapter and verse, and then carefully explains the “definitional erosion” that followed the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial.

Lemkin’s broader definition of genocide was institutionalized with the unanimous passage of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 96(I) in 1946: “…the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups… Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred, when racial religious, political, and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part.” (emphasis mine)

In 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention establishes "genocide” as an international crime, which signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.”

It defined genocide as:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Upon first reading, there may seem to be nothing objectionable about the Convention’s definition. But Churchill argues the inclusion of the word intent makes all the difference. He also blames the U.S. and U.S.S.R. for watering down Lemkin’s criteria by successfully working to exclude linguistic groups and cultural genocide (“…prohibition of the use of national language, exile [i.e. mass expulsion], prohibition of the use of the national language, destruction of books, monuments, and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value”) from the final definition.

“The committee’s insertion of the word “intent” was also extremely problematic insofar as it established a predicating requirement for any entity seeking to actually press charges of genocide against another which, on its face, would be virtually impossible to prove.” p. 412

Powerful governments sought to exonerate themselves, in advance, for crimes they would commit in the future, in Churchill’s view.

“…a number of governments had quickly begun to backslide into their prewar postures. Having made grand statements on law and morality against the Nazis, they were having second thoughts about the broader implications of such pronouncements and were busily contriving to protect their own ‘rights’ to engage in variations on the same genocidal themes as the leaders of the Third Reich.” p. 410

The results are in. The past half century has seen many genocides accompanied by a denial of all genocides except one: the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II. This is where Churchill fires repeated broadsides at whom he derisively refers to as “respectable scholars.” To wit: Historians who insist on “Jewish exclusivism” – the Holocaust stands as a unique event against which all other alleged genocides must be measured – are engaging in the same denial as neo-Nazis who say the Holocaust never happened.

Really? What a cheap shot. But Churchill says this is no honest debate among scholars. He accuses his opponents of dishonesty.

The most important essay in this book covers 160 pages, titled ‘The Extermination of North American Indians, 1607-1996.’ Churchill cites episode after bloody episode of massacres, one-sided wars, disease epidemics deliberately spread by Europeans among Indians, famines, forced marches, internments, and the wholesale theft of land, etc., etc. He cites the writings of the European settlers, then American leaders, to prove they sought to “extirpate” entire groups of people. In Churchill’s telling, the Indians largely come off as helpless, defenseless victims with no agency of their own. His is not a nuanced study of the tragic history between white settlers and Indian tribes.

Still, it is effective. Whether one agrees with Churchill’s thesis or not, there is no denying the cruelty, murder, and thievery inflicted upon the Indian tribes by the more powerful European settlers, then by the U.S. government. We are here today because those people are no longer here. There could be no United States as we know it today without this indelible mark on our history. The extermination of Indians and enslavement of Africans are two pillars of the greatest nation on earth.

Was it genocide? I opened this book doubting that. But now, having engaged Churchill’s arguments, I lean toward his position, and the more I think about it the more I am convinced.

There are a lot of things you can do with this book. You can ignore it entirely. You can throw it against the wall while reading it. You can loathe the author for his “little Eichmanns” slur.

My suggestion is to read it with an open mind, and allow yourself to come to terms with our own nation’s culpability in the “malignantly functional utility of genocide.”

[d · Rating 5 out of 5]

A provocative, well-researched and very original collection of essays! It provides a very good history of the American Indian holocaust, but the philosophic and legal reflections on genocide are even better.

In Ch. 1 and 2, Churchill convincingly and devastatingly shows how ‘Jewish exclusivism’—saying the Nazi holocaust was the only holocaust—is a form of holocaust denial. After all, when Deborah Lipstadt or Elie Wiesel urge us not to compare the Nazi holocaust with others, then this implies that the atrocities committed against American Indians didn't amount to genocide. If we are to call the Nazi holocaust unique, then why bother studying it and why bother saying 'never again'? Churchill has plenty of damning examples of the exclusivists' hypocrisies, such as their exclusion of Roma from the US Holocaust Museum and their indifference at contemporary oppression and deportations of Roma in Europe. Despite what other reviewers may say, anyone who reads the book will clearly see Churchill is not a holocaust denier or an anti-Semite. He is in fact very outraged at the Nazi holocaust and he briefly but helpfully argues that the total victims numbered not 6 million but 26-31 million, when you count Jewish, Roma and Sinti, and Slavic casualties all together. Those who say the Jews were the only victims ought to read these chapters, which quote for instance Heinrich Himmler ordering the elimination of Poles: "all Poles will disappear from the world...It is essential that the great German people should consider it as a major task to destroy all Poles" (45).

Chapters 3, a brief rumination on Columbus, seems a little pointless in comparison to other chapters. After describing a number of competing theories, the chapter concludes, "it is patently clear that we really have no idea who Columbus was" (91). Then, what was the point of the chapter? Well, Churchill is right to point out the absurd injustice of Columbus's heroic reputation, considering that his policies decreased the Taino population from 8 million to 3 million by 1495 and to only 200 by 1500. Churchill notes, "the proportion of the indigenous Caribbean population destroyed by the Spanish in a single generation is, no matter how the figures are twisted, far greater than the 75 percent of European Jews usually said to have been exterminated by the nazis" (86).

Chapters 4 and 5 densely outline the history of the American Indian holocaust from 1492 to the 1990s. Churchill describes how the indigenous population within the borders of the U.S. declined from 125 million to 0.25 million from 1492 to 1892, and how indigenous territory went from 100% to nominally 3%. It is dense and not as easy an introduction as, say Gord Hill's '500 Years of Indigenous Resistance' or the relevant parts of Zinn's People's History. Yet it is useful as a reference. We read, for instance, of the colonizers' knowledge of the smallpox and other diseases they are introducing it to native populations (139), about the ethnic cleansing typified by the 1830 Indian Relocation Act, Trail of Tears and Long Walk, the forced privatization of collective property under the 1887 General Allotment Act, the outlaw of spiritual practices, the boarding schools and sterilizations.

I wish Churchill had spent more time on indigenous resistance. There is mention of the 1886 Red Cloud's War, which secured a decade of peace and security for the Ogala and allies, and the subsequent 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn which was a major victory against the U.S. government. There is mention of the Semionle Wars, which united the Seminole and escaped African slaves, and of the American Indian Movement that Churchill is active in. But he does not dwell or even provide a basic history of the resistance beyond simply mentioning it. His focus is on the genocide, and he unfortunately misses an opportunity to provide much historical background and reflection on indigenous resistance, which would have been great supplemental reading to Churchill's own 'Pacifism as Pathology'.

Churchill's figures appear to be an outlier in the scholarship, as he admits in the text. Because I do not have JSTOR access to Dobyn's unusually high estimate of a 112 - 125 million pre-Columbus population (which Churchill cites with approval), and I haven't read Russell Thorton's more mainstream estimate of 9 - 12.5 million, or the rationale behind the Smithsonian Institute's conservative estimate of 2 million, I can't really comment on who I agree with. In any case, Churchill is courting controversy. His footnotes, which he calls "rich footnotes" following Noam Chomsky, usually list many sources at once and often some useful further thoughts that don't fit in the main text. While I appreciate this format and find it helpful for finding additional reading, it does make it difficult to specifically locate where he got a piece of information.

Ch. 6 focuses on the genocidal impacts of nuclear energy on indigenous peoples. His break-down of the nuclear energy process - mining, milling, weapons research and production, weapons testing, waste storage - is helpful and informative. Some of his sources and information are dated. While he talks in detail about the devastating impacts of uranium mining on the Dine between the 1950s and 1970s, the reader would not know that uranium mining was banned on Dine land in 2005 (to be fair, well after this book was published). Churchill's statistic that two-thirds of uranium reserves are on indigenous land suggests that nuclear energy comes from a 1970s document that I have not been able to find online.

Ch. 7 is a history of the United States' successful effort to weaken the UN's Genocide convention, its refusal to sign onto it until 1985, and its 'reservations' and 'understandings' attached to its signature that basically exempt it from legal accountability. The history is an infuriating example of American exceptionalism, and it matches the U.S.'s refusal to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (371). Churchill clearly outlines the U.S.'s obvious reasons for its reluctance to embrace international law; doing so would hold it accountable for crimes against humanity such as the American Indian holocaust, state-sanctioned violence against blacks and Chinese citizens, participation in wars on Grenada, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Lebanon and Iraq and so on.

Ch. 8, "Towards a Viable Understanding of Genocide" is the most important chapter. It talks about Rafael Lemkin's coining of the term (genos + cide means human group + killing) and elaboration of the concept in 'Axis Rule in Occupied Europe' (which has relevant chapters available online for free). Lemkin's original definition of genocide was broader than the UN's final official definition in many respects. It did not include the requirement of 'intent' which is very difficult to prove and often beside the point (even if a crime’s unintentional, it’s still preventable). Lemkin’s original definition included destruction by cultural means, economic means, social means and other means that goes beyond mass killing and physical disruption of the group. However, as Churchill notes, the UN definition can encompass some of Lemkin's original definition when you interpret clause (b)"Causing serious...mental harm" broadly. Churchill then sketches his theory of genocide, in the form of a proposed UN Convention. It draws on Lemkin's book and Lemkin's original draft to the UN, and makes many welcome additions.

Churchill then offers his own proposal: a new Convention including the categories of Physical Genocide, Biological Genocide, and Cultural Genocide, and also categories of First Degree (intent), Second Degree (reckless disregard), and Third Degree (unintentional) Genocide. It is extremely useful as an analytic tool, and I am not sure why I do not see it cited more often.

An updated edition of this book would likely include the attacks on Ethnic Studies and immigrants in Arizona, the prison-industrial complex and nonprofit-industrial complex, concepts such as 'sociocide' and 'politicide', the ecocide and omnicide caused by fossil fuel extraction and how this extraction and burning often disproportionately harms indigenous people and communities of color. I would like to see him discuss the genocide scholarship of Ed Herman, who has been accused of denying genocide. This book taught me a lot, and I refer back to it often.

[Carolann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genocide is not a word that most people would even consider in relation to American indigenous people. That is likely because few give much thought to the history of the "western hemisphere" from anything but the perspective of "discovery" and "the New World". Churchill offers an alternative viewpoint which has created a good deal of controversy within academic discussion, being dismissed outright by some and diminished by others. While this book is not an easy read, I would recommend it for both academics and anyone interested in gaining insight into the righteous complaints of Aboriginal people.

[City Lights Booksellers & Publishers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present.

He frames the matter by examining both "revisionist" denial of the nazi-perpatrated Holocaust and the opposing claim of its exclusive "uniqueness," using the full scope of what happened in Europe as a backdrop against which to demonstrate that genocide is precisely what has been-and still is-carried out against the American Indians.

Churchill lays bare the means by which many of these realities have remained hidden, how public understanding of this most monstrous of crimes has been subverted not only by its perpetrators and their beneficiaries but by the institutions and individuals who perceive advantages in the confusion. In particular, he outlines the reasons underlying the United States's 40-year refusal to ratify the Genocide Convention, as well as the implications of the attempt to exempt itself from compliance when it finally offered its "endorsement."

In conclusion, Churchill proposes a more adequate and coherent definition of the crime as a basis for identifying, punishing, and preventing genocidal practices, wherever and whenever they occur.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be taught to every college freshman, if not in high school civics.

[Sara-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays is an invaluable documentation of the disturbing lengths to which we will go to deny histories of systematic extermination, most notably the protracted genocide of American Indians. As he diligently contextualizes Columbus, the history of the term genocide and Nazi Holocaust denial and Jewish exclusivism, churchill argues the multiple ways in which the analogy between what is now the big 'H' Holocaust and the American holocaust is sound, and vital to understand the severity of unexplored iterations. His later essays pick up on this theme to show how the obfuscation of the term genocide after its conception in 1944 was more than a little politically suspect, revealing the duplicity of the grand moral condemnation that immediately followed WWII and culminated in Nuremberg. The US, as always, made the matter of juridical enforcement of the criminality of genocide impossible. For nearly half a century the US evaded signing onto the UN's Genocide Convention, and futzed around with definitions until the potential import was reduced to a mere whimper of its previous incarnation (which in Raphael Lemeke's original definition of genocide included cultural, not only physical and biological genocide). The effect of the US's maneuvering was to near globally render the application the convention moot, conveniently protecting themselves from confrontation of a history of genocidal crimes, and the extremely watered down and domesticated version signed in 1989 served to siphon of the benefits of such a humanitarian gesture without putting their supposed sovereignty at risk.

Churchill deftly exposes all of this but still, the argument for the effectiveness of such an international law, based off of the original rigorous definition, remains confusing for me. I tend to agree with theorists who argue that belief in law's validity and Truth requires the repression of its contingency and, hence, the violence that founds law becomes the positive condition of its functioning, but Churchill doesn't seem to need to confront this, leaving law conceptualized as something relatively unproblematic in itself; for him although it unfortunately usually upholds the status quo it nevertheless retains some pure possibility for justice. Rather then condemning Churchill for this, I'd prefer to focus on how he uses law to engage in immanent critique, as he points out that time and time again, according to our own standards, the United States is an entirely illegitimate outlaw entity–the systematic violation of treaties is in blatant violation of Article 6th of the constitution, to cite only one instance. This is a powerful move that can only be ignored with active evasion and, in the case of Churchill, attempts at eliminating the bearer of the news.

ALso particularly noteworthy was by uncovering documents and providing examples of readily available resources that attest to previous knowledge of the potential effects of the spreading of diseases that began with Columbus’s landing and continued into the Cold War policy of radioactive testing on Native American reservation, Churchill convinces that these are directly genocidal acts, and cannot be regarded as unintentional.

The detail, depth and spirit of his research is incredible, and the footnotes in this book are a real wealth of resources to be mined for the fight. That Churchill was fired is an abomination.

[Patrickj · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a hoot! I found this thing in the dollar bin at a local bookseller, and wondering what all the fuss was about – the scandal that would eventually get him prised from his appointment in one of those trans-disciplinary back-waters – I picked it up. I can’t honestly say that I read it from cover to cover, since it was clear after about 25 pages that I’d just wasted a buck, but skimming was enough to get the gist, which is that Churchill is stunningly ignorant concerning the European conquest of the Americas, and more generally, about human history and human nature. To cite but two examples:

Thirty years ago it was generally thought that 70-85% of the then inhabitants of the Americas were wiped out by European diseases introduced by the early explorers, well in advance of the main pulses of European immigration; but evidence continued to accumulate, especially on the mound-builder cultures, and today that figure has been pushed to 90-95%. This was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies in human history, but it was not genocide. Subsequent warfare was piddling by comparison, and also not genocide; in cold, historical fact, America was the first nation in humankind’s bloody history of conquest to not impose History’s sentence of genocide on a conquered people (note that cultural genocide sometimes took the form of slavery & dispersal, but the end result was the same: the culture was obliterated. The Jews are the only people in history to successfully resist this).

And then there are Churchill’s jocose notions about the putative easy-going-ness of the Native Americans concerning race (i.e., “The Lost Colony of Roanoke”). If we were to lead Churchill to some accounts of, say, the treatment of the Hurons by the Iroquois Confederacy (and vice-versa), or the extirpation of scores of cultures in the wake of the southward migration of the Athabascans, from present day southern Canada all the way to present day Mexico, would he read them? Would he gradually comprehend that racism (or more accurately, culturalism), far from being an aberration and “inhuman,” is in fact one of the most distinctive of human traits, and that the names indigenous peoples the world over give to themselves invariably mean “The People” or “The True People,” with everyone else relegated to “highly advanced proto-human” status, and therefore, fair game? Nah; CU’s former token pseudo-native american plagiarist & poseur has his rusty, raggedy-edged axe to grind. It refuses to hold an edge, and so he just keeps grinding & grinding . . .

It would have been nice had his life line crossed that of the late John Greenway, whom Churchill quoted out of context. What fun it would have been to see CU’s wild-man anthropologist/folklorist & polymath make a meal of him.

[Johnny Hess · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've seen this character on TV and he's a physically huge giant who goes out of his way to bully people, then whine that his free speech has been impeded. But look -- he denies the Holocaust. My father was in the out fit that liberated Dachau and he told me eyeball to eyebally that the death camps existed. He saw it himself. Men, women and little children worked down to skeletons, wearing ragged striped overshirts and baggy pants, degraded and dehumanized. My father did more than cry -- he didn't admit it, but I suspect he took part in the "atrocity" there, where dozens of guards were murdered on the spot by both soldiers and freed inmates, but the larger slaughter of over 400 SS soldiers, whose training area was within the camp. I've known people like Ward Churchhill and they are dangerous beyond the telling of it. the one I knew carried a .45 automatic pistol undeer his belt in front, so you could see it. Someone blew his head off in 1997. Ward Churchhill in a beg Charles Manson, and you can be sure dozens of pretty little ignorant chicks follow him around and get their twats reamed doggy-style -- for this guy is a dog!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ward Churchill brings a necessary interpretation of Native American history to the fields of both American Indian studies and U.S. history. This is an underpraised book, even if awkwardly constructed. His writing is heavy, and laden with footnotes, which probably could have been arranged in a way that made the material less cumbersome, but his approach and argument are unique--even if vitriolic. Specifically, he makes linkeages between topics which are needed but underemployed. Broadening the discourse on Indian removal, and showing analogies to well known cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide, helps to situate Indian history into a discussion on oppression, repression and settler violence, rather than the standard metaphysical clash of civilizations which tends to be the overtone of other bodies of work.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is generally pretty dry. Lots of facts and figures. Given the contraversy surrounding Ward Churchill's scholrship I don't really know where to place it. It was an interesting read and provided a lot of perspective to the events that occurred in the are from 1500-1750, a period of time that even in Indian Country is generally less known because of the scarcity of tribes that remain from the NorthEast. The more current data is very heavy. General trends are certainly known and the frustration with the lack of forthrightness on the part f government, private and sometime tribal leaders is clearly seen in the words. Don't suggest it to others but I learned a bit.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. As a Native person it helped me to understand the unanswered, why, what, where, and who questions I carried inside me from the time I was a very small boy. It was nice to see that we do have a history albeit ours is that which most would have us believe is insignificant, irrelevent and worthless.
Just today (03/20/2011) I read an article in the Hawaii StarAdvertiser newspaper with a story out of the Montana/South Dakota area on how many people there are baffled as to why so many Indian youth are committing suicide. The answer to that question IS in this book. Thank you Mr. Churchill. There are not enough or adequate words. Mahalo

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

this isn't my favorite churchill text. the introduction is good, great in fact, but what follows is a collection of essays on the american holocaust. the low point is that there are a lot of repetitions throughout the book. if you read the intro, you get the majority of what follows. i'm glad i read it, but i ended up skimming most of it - again - lots of repetition.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

great collection of essays. subtitle says it all. Useful companion for stannard's American Holocaust and the opening sections of Zinn's People's History, of course.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author in may instances repeats himself which is why the book is so bulky. I wanted to enjoy the book but Churchill's style is so repetative that it's impossible

[Francis Bashore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yep, that'll do.

[Peter Goggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author does an excellent job of dismembering the concept of holocaust exclusivity and illuminating the extermination efforts directed towards other peoples by the nazis. He also argues well his point that the treatment of Native American peoples was an exact precursor -both in intent and execution- to the later genocides that attracted attention in Europe.

Author does include a few essays in this book that I can’t help but criticize - American nuclear policy has precious little to do with the extermination of its native peoples a century prior, and the semantics of treaty language does almost nothing in the realpolitik of genocide.

Illuminating, but some previously written criticisms of the author appear to be value

[Micebyliz]

This book is truly awful. Totally misunderstanding of the scholarship of Deborah Lipstadt, probably on purpose. I checked her blog for her comments and then i read the terrible things people posted after. No wonder lies are so easily believed. No one uses their noggins. Remember this is what happened in Europe that led to the rise of Hitler.
No one is saying that one genocide is worse than another or that anyone suffered more than anyone else. Only that not every genocide is the same. Nuance and actual knowledge is lost on these people.
Please try to learn before making judgements.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most impactful books I've read in a long time. Professor Churchill, whose radicalism has even rubbed progressives the wrong way, has provided a comprehensive exegesis of the importance of clearly defining genocide in a manner that is implementable (ideally) on an international level, something of a revision to a Geneva Convention.

The middle chapters I believe contain the crux of the book: a comprehensive overview of how European settlers decimated Native populations via force, "treaties," and disease. Churchill outlines how Manifest Destiny is rooted in settler-colonialist ideology, stating effusively the case that the eradication of a people needs to be labeled and framed as genocidal. European settlers were awarded bounties for hunting Natives. The chapter on how nuclear waste was purposefully transferred to areas at or near reservations by various arms of mainstream U.S. society (government, business, academia) was very revealing.

Readers might get their heads spun the amount of research done to create this volume: the writing is full of elaboratory footnotes and bibliographic endnotes for each chapter, along with a 60-page or so bibliography at the end of the book ranging from sources in the 1800s to present-day.

While detractors might take issue with a few of Churchill's research methodologies (e.g. I noticed that he might use a secondary source's interpretation of a philosopher's viewpoint, and couch that interpretation as the philosopher's), ultimately this tome is a work worth investigating.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect for brushing up on the extensive documentation of genocide in North America. Important work if you want to thoroughly neutralize a denier. This and Raphael Lemkin's "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" (Lemkin coined the term genocide), are perfect for shoring up your own confidence about what genocide means and that, yes, terribly, it has happened over and over throughout human history.

[maryum · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great, great book tracing how the US has downplayed the genocide of native americans and breaks down the politics in determining what constitutes genocide

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

you should read this.

[Jeffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another view of the the last couple of centuries in North America.

[Rocky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really heavy and I have to read it in small doses. I've learned a lot from it and there are tons of annotations and footnotes to get more info if needed.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative. The information in this book will change your view of the start of America. You will never want to celebrate Columbus Day ever again.

[Jennifer Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why we should never complain. Ever.

[Jigglin]

Churchill's critique of the UN genocide convention is very interesting.

[Chelsea · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is rubbish. He probably didn't even write it.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely devastating. exhaustively researched and cross-referenced. this book will rip america's founding myths from their proud place in your psyche.

[Ganglion Bard-barbarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All those idiots who say 'never again' / should look to where it all began" - Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, The Alamo

[Christina Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the hardest books I ever read, just really tough to get through. Not exactly and uplifting experience. But glad I did it.