Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America

355 Pages·2014·2.72 MB·English

by  Alexander Laban Hinton

COLONIAL GENOCIDE IN
INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA

COLONIAL GENOCIDE IN
INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA
Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto,
and Alexander Laban Hinton, editors
Foreword by Theodore Fontaine
Duke University Press | Durham and London
2014
© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞
Designed by Barbara E. Williams
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro and DIN Engschrift 1451 by BW&A Books, Inc.
Cover art: Daphne Odjig, Genocide No. 1, 1971. Permission of Stan Somerville.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
Colonial genocide in indigenous North America / Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto,
and Alexander Laban Hinton, editors ; foreword by Theodore Fontaine.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5763-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5779-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1.  Indians of North America—Colonization.
2.  Genocide—North America—History.
3.  Off-reservation boarding schools—History.  
i. Woolford, Andrew John, 1971–
ii. Benvenuto, Jeff, 1984–
iii. Hinton, Alexander Laban.
e77.c69 2014
970.004'97—dc23
2014020685
Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided funds toward the
publication of this book.
CONTENTS
vii Foreword. Theodore Fontaine
1 Introduction. Jeff Benvenuto, Andrew Woolford, and Alexander Laban Hinton
Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America
PART I. INTERSECTIONS AND TRAJECTORIES
29 Chapter 1. Andrew Woolford
Discipline, Territory, and the Colonial Mesh:
Indigenous Boarding Schools in the United States and Canada
49 Chapter 2. Robbie Ethridge
Global Capital, Violence, and the Making of a Colonial Shatter Zone
70 Chapter 3. Christopher Powell and Julia Peristerakis
Genocide in Canada: A Relational View
PART II. ERASURE AND LEGIBILITY
95 Chapter 4. Benjamin Madley
California and Oregon’s Modoc Indians: How Indigenous Resistance
Camouflages Genocide in Colonial Histories
131 Chapter 5. Gray H. Whaley
American Folk Imperialism and Native Genocide in Southwest
Oregon, 1851–1859
149 Chapter 6. Tricia E. Logan
Memory, Erasure, and National Myth
166 Chapter 7. Jeremy Patzer
Residential School Harm and Colonial Dispossession:
What’s the Connection?
PART III. TRANSFORMATIONS
189 Chapter 8. Margaret D. Jacobs
The Habit of Elimination: Indigenous Child Removal
in Settler Colonial Nations in the Twentieth Century
208 Chapter 9. Jeff Benvenuto
Revisiting Choctaw Ethnocide and Ethnogenesis:
The Creative Destruction of Colonial Genocide
226 Chapter 10. Kiera L. Ladner
Political Genocide: Killing Nations through Legislation
and Slow- Moving Poison
246 Chapter 11. Colin Samson
Dispossession and Canadian Land Claims: Genocidal
Implications of the Innu Nation Land Claim
PART IV. (RE)IMAGININGS
273 Chapter 12. Joseph P. Gone
Colonial Genocide and Historical Trauma in Native North America:
Complicating Contemporary Attributions
292 Chapter 13. Tasha Hubbard
Buffalo Genocide in Nineteenth- Century North America:
“Kill, Skin, and Sell”
306 Chapter 14. David B. MacDonald
Genocide in the Indian Residential Schools: Canadian History
through the Lens of the UN Genocide Convention
325 A fterword. Alexander Laban Hinton
Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America:
A View from Critical Genocide Studies
333 Contributors
339 Index
vi Contents
FOREWORD
Theodore Fontaine
“Why can’t Aboriginal people just get over Indian residential schools? Why
can’t they just get on with their lives?” These are two of the most common
questions asked by Canada’s non- Aboriginal peoples when confronted with
the consequences of Indian residential schools as experienced through seven
generations of Indigenous Nations in Canada and the United States.
These questions arise from societal denial of five centuries of coloniza-
tion. History books and governments consistently portray the intent of col-
onization as the “discovery” of new lands, the establishment of agricultural
economies, and the harvesting of natural resources to sustain westward im-
migration in the building of this “New World.” Canadians therefore think
of the Indian residential school policy as merely an isolated era of necessity
to assist Indian people to adjust to a “better” (European) way of life and not
as part of ongoing colonization efforts to rid the “New World” of Indian
Nations, persistent barriers to lands and resources.
However, the consequences experienced by Indian residential school sur-
vivors and their descendants are a complex tangle of political, social, cultural,
economic, mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual harms. The compound-
ing burdens take an ever-increasing toll on the health, well-being, and very
survival of Indigenous people.
I had just turned seven when I was taken to the Fort Alexander Indian
Residential School, and later to the Assiniboia Indian Residential School. My
life was not my own for the next twelve years. Although the Fort Alexander
school was situated less than two miles from my home, I lost my family, my
mishoom (grandfather) and kookum (grandmother), and my community, and
I was lost to them.
Children taken to Indian residential schools were removed from their
families either by force or by threat. We were locked up in these institutions
behind barbed-wire fences, some of us close enough to see our own homes or
our family members walking by on the road. Others were removed hundreds
of miles from their community, not knowing if they would ever see their
family again. We didn’t know why we were locked up in these institutions or
if we would ever get out. Those who died or were gravely ill or injured simply
disappeared from our ranks; we were never told what happened to them.
Most attention has been given to the physical and sexual abuses that were
common in the schools. Students were assaulted and maimed, resulting in
lifelong deformities and social dysfunctions that often led to widespread
criminalization and incarceration. Through these years of abuse and turmoil,
I was filled with anger and imagined that when I was older I would be free to
seek revenge. I had visions of dying alone, without ever seeing my mom and
dad or grandparents again.
It was not until much later, in my intense discomfort with being an Indian,
that I understood that the government and its agents, the churches, had in
fact been intent on killing me as an Indian person. Their aim was to destroy
the Indigenous Nations by taking away the children, using the tools of racism,
indoctrination, removal, and institutionalization. We would no longer exist
as Indigenous People or as Nations.
Despite what has already been written and published about the experiences
of these child victims, less is understood about the spiritual and emotional
abuses that were endured. Most survivors will not speak about their experi-
ences because of shame and traumatization. Post-traumatic stress disorder is
common among survivors. Untold numbers did not survive the schools or
the devastating aftermath of their experiences.
The children lost their identity, name, home, family relationships, and
sense of belonging. We lost our understanding of who we were, where we
came from, and where we were going. Many never found their way home
again. Many died trying.
The worst thing that was done to us was psychological manipulation. It
was pounded into us repeatedly that Indians are no good, evil, savages, with
heathen languages, no intelligence, no culture, no caring families, and no
reason for existence. We were left, helpless and hopeless, to despise ourselves
and our own people, with only anger, resentment, and deep sorrow over our
abandonment and losses.
No mention of genocide was used by Canada in its reluctant message of
apology to Indian residential school survivors. In response to legal action
initiated by survivors, the government of Canada, very careful to exclude the
term or even the insinuation of genocide, was court-ordered to enter into the
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement with survivors.
The apology in the House of Commons became a feather in the hat of
the government, distinctive in its attention to ceremonial detail yet almost
self-congratulatory for its own perceived success in the removal of First Na-
tions influence and participation in the development of the country.
viii Foreword
Canada’s government was confident that the apology would appear to be
guided by its goodwill, as with all Indian treaties and countless agreements
and commitments, while equally confident that it would control any and
all ramifications. Aboriginal acceptance would be managed with short-term
financial investment and limited, time-controlled programming.
Thus the term genocide was not applied to the deliberate, Parliament-sanc-
tioned action to “kill the Indian in the child,” and the Indian residential
schools policy was portrayed as a well-intentioned though misguided, brief
event in history, while also viewed darkly as a victory in the rape of the lands
and natural resources of Turtle Island (aka North America).
Canada meanwhile lost forever the rich resource of generations of its First
Peoples. The ingenuity and creativity of young minds were extinguished, the
extreme amount of potential and talent were never nurtured or allowed to
flourish, and the character and integrity of an Indigenous society founded on
prized values and principles were almost destroyed.
Some individuals say that the term genocide is appropriate only to con-
vey the complete destruction of a race. Ironically, given that we Indigenous
Nations have inconveniently survived by the threads of our own spirituality,
resilience, and courage, these same individuals use our survival to deny the
truths of our history, whether or not it is called genocide.
There is only now a small, growing acknowledgment in Canada that ev-
eryone in Canada has been, is, and will be affected by the legacy of the Indian
residential schools policy. For those who think of this as “ancient history,”
the last Indian residential school in Canada closed its doors only in 1996.
The documentation and analysis in Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North
America is thought-provoking and compelling. It reaches to the heart, mind,
and spirit. From the voices of these scholars comes a call to every reader to
examine our own awareness, depth of caring, and the integrity with which we
apply our own thought processes and our voices to the lives and relationships
we build, influence, protect, and empower.
In the end we must each make our own informed assessment about colonial
genocide as a descriptor of the history of Indigenous North America and, more
important, as a context for the future we must build together.
For myself, while in Indian residential schools I never did think that I
would be killed there. I knew that my life as I knew it had ended and that I
would never again experience the joy and freedom of my early years, the free-
dom of laughter, love, and security. They say that time heals all wounds, but
that isn’t true. The wounds just become part of you: the fear and frustration,
tears and anguish, and the overwhelming feeling of futility.
At this point in my life I am coming to terms and dealing with what
Foreword ix