أميرة’s Reviews > Canadian History For Dummies > Status Update

The term genocide is very specific. Indigenous peoples were treated brutally but the actions are consistent with ethnocide rather than genocide.; two very different definitions.

Matal “The Mischling Princess” wrote: "The term genocide is very specific. Indigenous peoples were treated brutally but the actions are consistent with ethnocide rather than genocide.; two very different definitions."

Hi Matal, thanks for the comment. I'm just gonna quote this part for you from pp. 47-48 in the book:
"Calling it genocide makes some people queasy, because the word conjures up Nazi death camps and official government pogroms. Fine. Let us define our terms then:
The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention states that “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime punishable under international law.” Article Two of the convention reads:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:
(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.
By current war tribunal standards, the settlers in Newfoundland who took part in the ongoing harassment and violence against the Beothuk would have been indicted."

And this part here: "In 1823, three Beothuk women — a mother and two daughters — surrendered to white settlers. They were starving and were, perhaps, the last of their people. The mother and one of the daughters soon died, leaving only Shawnandithit, who comes down to us as the Last of the Beothuk. She left behind a small collection of sketches and notes, painfully remembered and related to William Cormack, a man who set up the Beothuk Institute to “preserve and study” the Beothuk — should any still exist aside from Shawnandithit. (In 1822, Cormack had walked across the island in search of Beothuk to “preserve,” but the interior was eerily empty, and he succeeded only in being the first white man to traverse Newfoundland.)
Dying from tuberculosis, Shawnandithit struggled to relate the story of her people and their passing. It was a tale that always ended with her capture, and here, Cormack writes, “ends all positive knowledge of her tribe, which she never narrates without tears.” The Beothuk were gone forever. An entire people destroyed.”
It's a great book. Worth every minute, really!

This does sound like a really interesting book! Because I lived on the reservation (in Canada, they’re called reserves), for years I was fascinated with history. At the university I often lectured on the history of indigenous peoples within an anthropological framework. While the book may claim what happened as “genocide,” it was in fact ethnocide, a different concept and definition—though no less brutal and demeaning.

“… A pogrom refers to large-scale destruction of a particular minority as state authorities look on, if not encourage it. A genocide is more systematic and involves incarceration and quiet execution. Ethnic cleansing is a more umbrella term but refers to efforts to ethnically homogenise a geographical area through forceful displacement, mass killings or both...” (The Print, 2020).

These definitions contrast with the definition of ethnocide:

“… Ethnocide refers to the destruction of a particular ethnic group's culture or, in some cases, the direct killing of its members. The term encapsulates two main definitions: one focusing on the eradication of cultural practices and identities, and the other on violent acts aimed at specific ethnic communities. Historical examples include the forced assimilation of Native Americans in the United States through boarding schools, designed to strip individuals of their indigenous cultural identities. Ethnocide can also manifest in more violent forms, resembling genocide, where one ethnic group systematically targets another, as seen during the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide in 1994, where the Tutsi population faced mass extermination...” (EBSCO, 2025).

I’m placing this book in my to read list! 😀

Hmmm... very interesting!
I think what the book is trying to do is use the UN's definition of the term genocide to describe what happened to the Beothuk in particular since they were completely annihilated. The term ethnocide might have been avoided because Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term in 1944, defined it as the destruction of culture while keeping the people, and that's the definition adopted by several dictionaries as well. It might also be because "Within the international legal community, the concept of ethnocide became subsumed into genocide because when a people are exterminated or forcefully removed from their home, their culture also dies with them" (American Bar Association, 2025) -which is not bad at all for a book from the Dummies series to be honest. I found it to be quite informative, introductory as it is! :D
If you know of any interesting books on the topic, please do share :)
~Amira

أميرة wrote: "Hmmm... very interesting!
I think what the book is trying to do is use the UN's definition of the term genocide to describe what happened to the Beothuk in particular since they were completely ann..."

The main difference between anthropologists and lawyers: anthropologists study human society (people) and lawyers study laws (words). It’s easy to debate law and definitions in the safety of the UN, especially for those who have never set foot in Indian Country (and likely never will!).

And there are a TON of books on this topic! We could spend years reading and discussing them. We could make a group on here to do that specific to the discussion. I haven’t checked (yet!) if there are any already.