Never again?
It is a deep wound of the heart of humanity. “Most people see genocide as a crime of vast scale this term loses the sense of the individual human tragedy that takes place countless times as something that would never happen here.” (“Never again”)
The movie “Indian School: Stories of Survival” depicts the events of genocide of Indians, aborigines of Northern America. "Indian War" - each of us have heard these words. In the minds of immediately gets familiar from westerns and other adventure picture: train migrants crossing the vast prairie, Indians attacked. Savages on horseback, dressed in colorful national costumes with painted faces, decorated with feathers, with wild whooping and waving tomahawks fired from hard drives, trying to kill the unfortunate "white man" and remove their scalps.
Eller states “races’ are not ‘real’ or ‘objective’ entities but are rather social constructs” (Eller 2013:102). The history of relations between indigenous peoples of North America and immigrants from Europe wrote, without exaggeration, the blood. Blood indigenous inhabitants of the New World. Who were guilty only that lived in the region with good climatic conditions. We lived on the fertile land on the banks of the clean flowing rivers. It is difficult to determine the number of Indian tribes that occupied the territory of modern USA at the beginning of European colonization (Churchill 23). Researchers call different numbers from one million to five million. While all Aborigines were genetically related to each other, a single nation did not exist. Several hundred tribes populated the current territory of the United States. (Bird 33) Scientists still can not determine exactly how many indigenous people of North America died in the outbreak of white colonization. Killed by swords and guns, of hunger and cold during the various deportations. The most modest numbers - 1 million, although in fact much more. Millions of men, women and children turned out to be the victim of a terrible human vices – greed (Madley 23, Tinker 12). They were killed simply because they lived in the fertile lands, simply because "sitting" on a gold mine, simply because they refused to become slaves on the plantations. (Colwell-Chanthaphonh 13)
There are ways of at least reducing of possibility of the history repeating. Education of people on the subject on the basis of principles of equality, understanding and openness and showing the human respond to every conflict as well.
Works Cited:
Eller, Jack. 2013. Cultural Anthropology. Global Forces, Local Lives. 2nd ed. New York. Routledge.
“Never Again? Genocide Since the Holocaust.” Films on Demand. 2001. Accessed July 25, Plum
Indian School: Stories of Survival http://0digital.films.com.library2.pima.edu/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=50410
Bird, Michael. “Cowboys and Indians: Toys of Genocide, Icons of Colonialism.” Wicazo Sa Review 19.2 (2004) 33-48
Churchill, Ward. “Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America.” Monograph Collection (1994): Web. 25 2015.
Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. When History Is Myth: Genocide and the Transmogrification of American Indians. American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 2005. Print.
Madley, Benjamin. California's Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History
The Western Historical Quarterly, 2008. Print.
Tinker, E. George. Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide. Fortress Press, 2009. Print.
