# How is genocide defined, with an emphasis on cultural genocide? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 13, 2021, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198 "2021-06-13T23:23:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/41 "2021-06-15T01:03:46Z")
Historically, “cultural genocide” was often used alongside and in conjunction with “physical genocide”. They aren’t mutually exclusive: it’s often difficult to actually eradicate a population by murder alone. Instead, you isolate, impoverish, endanger, deny medical care or the protection of law, take away the children. Some people die from direct violence; more die as the inevitable result of the condition you’ve reduced them to. You do the same thing to the children: isolate them, deny medical care, abuse them, put the in dangerous conditions. A lot die. The rest lose their identity. Genocide is always going to be a combination of “physical” and “cultural”. They aren’t in opposition. For example, the most common act of genocide in history is taking the surviving portion of a conquered population and selling them into slavery. Would anyone say that was mere “cultural genocide”? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/42 "2021-06-15T01:20:08Z")
Agreed. And i observe that both the Uighurs and the Canadian children discussed in that other thread seem to have a rather high mortality rate. I don’t think that’s even slightly a coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/43 "2021-06-15T04:05:20Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I have only heard the term “cultural genocide” used by white supremacists, where it alleges that accepting diversity will destroy “white culture.” 😮 _Really?_ i guess it just goes to show that informational lacunae can turn up in the most unexpected of places. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/44 "2021-06-15T05:04:29Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > How do you know that? I wonder if you aren’t projecting. Please, give me a little bit of credit. I’m actually repeating what the people responsible for the system said was the purpose and goals, and what the Truth & Reconciliation Commission said was the purpose and goals. > [@](#): > > When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men." – Sir John Macdonald, prime minister of Canada, 1883 > [@](#): > > If the Indian is to become a source of profit to the country it is clear that he must be amalgamated with the white population. Before this can be done he must not only be trained to some occupation, the pursuit of which will enable him to support himself, but he must be imbued with the white man’s spirit and impregnated by his ideas. The end in view in the policy adopted for the treatment of our wards is to lead them, step by step, to provide for their own requirements, through their industry, and while doing so, to inculcate a spirit of self-reliance and independence which will fit them for enfranchisement, and the enjoyment of all the privileges, as well as the responsibilities of citizenship.–Hayter Reed, Indian commissioner, 1889 > [@](#): > > We must face realistically the fact that the only hope for the Canadian Indian is eventual assimilation into the white race.”–J.E. Andrews, principal of the school in Kenora, Ontario, writing in 1953 They started from the belief that _of course_ the habits and modes of thought of white men (meaning, Western European ideas about capitalism, religion, individualism, private property, the role of women, etc.) were superior. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) itself noted, “The residential school system was based on an assumption that European civilization and Christian religions were superior to Aboriginal culture, which was seen as being savage and brutal.” ([cite, p. 11](https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf)) However, they didn’t think the Indian was disposable or subhuman; they thought the Indian was perfectly capable of becoming a “good” Canadian citizen, as long as he absorbed what they thought to be the correct values, and the schools were designed in theory to teach those values. Now, what the schools actually ended up being was not quite what the organizers and administrators had planned. A system that operated with great power and little oversight is a system almost designed for abuse, and abuse there was aplenty. Some of the staff who worked at the schools and later attended or spoke at TRC events seemed utterly shocked at what the students experienced; at one event, a lady who’d been a student/resident talked about the difference: > [@](#): > > That priest that talked about how loving that Christie residential school was—it was not. That priest was most likely in his office not knowing what was going on down in the dorms or in the lunchroom. –[https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive\_Summary\_English\_Web.pdf](https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf), p. 15 of Introduction > [@MandaJo](#): > > They would never have done it if they thought Indigenous people loved their kids like “real” people do. No, they merely thought that indigenous parents were unfit because they were teaching their children these "inferior’ spiritual practices and strange languages and things like communal agricultural practices instead of the proper each-family-on-its-own-farm system. > [@MandaJo](#): > > We sure as hell know those deaths were actively covered up No, we don’t know that nearly as well as has been presented in some of the press. For example, the fact that Kamloops School had a cemetery, somewhere, was no great mystery; it had been talked about for years, and in fact was found because they went looking for what was known to be there. (They didn’t know how many graves they’d find, and the scale of the discovery is what is shocking, not the discovery itself.) Some of the deaths at least were the subject of coroner’s inquests or otherwise appear in official records, others do not appear in known documents, but the state of the documentation is so poor that it is difficult to say how many were actually covered up versus how many simply aren’t listed in extant records but might well have been listed in records that didn’t survive or haven’t been made available. That seems to be true of many of the schools: they opened and closed and moved and burned down and were rebuilt over a period of more than a century, and in general no effort was ever made to preserve in a central repository the records of each. Sometimes the denomination or somebody else has records that are helpful, sometimes they don’t, and it is all rather random and haphazard. The process of finding the truth relies a lot on memories. For the earlier years, however, no one is still alive who remembers, so the archaeologists and other investigators are the only ones who can recover part of the truth. The TRC concluded in 2015 that probably every school in operation before 1950 or so had a cemetery, but the process for documenting the location and providing for maintenance after the school closed was irredeemably broken. In some cases, they don’t even know where the school itself was with any degree of certainty; the first Cecilia Jeffrey School, for example, was in operation from 1902 to 1929 “somewhere on a peninsula between Rice Bay and Shoal Lake” near Lake of the Woods, but the TRC could not identify the exact site from the available records or from satellite imagery. Presumably there is a cemetery close to it, wherever it is. For St. Mary’s Indian School in Kenora, there are photographs of the cemetery in the early 1900s, but when the TRC went looking in 2014-2015, its location could not be identified. The second Cecilia Jeffrey School had two cemeteries, whose locations are known; as of 2014, they were unmaintained and overgrown, nestled close to the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks, with one having no surface evidence of graves and the other having just a few white crosses rising out of the weeds. (See descriptions in Vol. 4 of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, entitled [Missing Children and Unmarked Burials](http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_4_Missing_Children_English_Web.pdf).) ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/45 "2021-06-15T05:12:09Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > You seem to be arguing that the end justifies the means, and that sincere ‘good intentions’ are an excuse for bad actions. They are not. No, I am not arguing that. In fact, you clipped off the very next sentence I wrote, about how the people responsible for the system were hwrong and thereby created an environment ripe for abuse. How is calling somebody “horrifically wrong” the same as “excus[ing]” their actions or somehow justifying anything at all? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/46 "2021-06-15T07:37:11Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > No, I am not arguing that. What you are arguing is that destroying cultures that you perceive as inferior, by forcibly abducting the children and putting them into re-education camps, is not ‘real’ genocide, because of good intentions. As long as you don’t deliberately set out to kill them it’s fine, because you have the good intention of improving them by making them ‘sort of white’. Of course you may kill a lot of them (purely accidently) by not really caring about the conditions in your re-education camps, and you certainly deserve a slap on the wrist because of that. That seems to be your argument. So China putting the Uighurs into ‘Vocational Skills Education and Training Centers’ is also not genocide, because they have the good intention of wiping out Uighur culture and indoctrinating them to be good Chinese citizens who toe the line? It’s people like you who are enablers of genocide. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/47 "2021-06-15T16:59:37Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > As long as you don’t deliberately set out to kill them it’s fine, That is not an argument that has been made by anyone in the thread. I know it’s the Pit, but there may be some useful understanding to be found here, and wholly misrepresenting someone’s position doesn’t move in that direction. ---
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/48 "2021-06-15T17:02:43Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > > [@slash2k](#): > > > > No, I am not arguing that. > > What you are arguing is that destroying cultures that you perceive as inferior, by forcibly abducting the children and putting them into re-education camps, is not ‘real’ genocide, because of good intentions. > > As long as you don’t deliberately set out to kill them it’s fine, because you have the good intention of improving them by making them ‘sort of white’. Of course you may kill a lot of them (purely accidently) by not really caring about the conditions in your re-education camps, and you certainly deserve a slap on the wrist because of that. > > That seems to be your argument. > > So China putting the Uighurs into ‘Vocational Skills Education and Training Centers’ is also not genocide, because they have the good intention of wiping out Uighur culture and indoctrinating them to be good Chinese citizens who toe the line? > > It’s people like you who are enablers of genocide. This is not at all how I would interpret @slash2k’s posts. I read what he is saying as similar to “Manslaughter and murder are different things. Both are horrible for the victim, but murderers intentionally kill their victim while people who commit manslaughter don’t mean to kill the victim. We should recognize that one is worse than the other.” Your argument seems to be “if you refuse to call people who commit manslaughter murderers, you are enabling murder.” > [@MandaJo](#): > > Another thing, somewhat off topic: a really subtle type of racism is the belief that non-white people don’t really love their kids. Which is funny, because by the standards of a lot of cultures, white Americans really don’t love their kids. For example, if you read slave narratives, family separation is always talked about more, and with more sadness, than the beatings, as horrific as they were. And that makes perfect sense: I’d take a beating every day and twice on Sundays before I’d lose my son, and I think that’s normal. But when we talk about slavery today, we focus on the lurid beatings. I think it’s because on some level, even now, we think that family separation wasn’t as bad for “them” as it would have been for white people. We have a vague idea that brown people are like cats. They have kittens, they love them, they get over it. When you start paying attention, this particular racist assumption is worked deep into a lot of racist stereotypes. The removal of native children was like that. They would never have done it if they thought Indigenous people loved their kids like “real” people do. That’s really thought provoking, thanks for sharing that thought. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s incompatible with the theory of the founders of residential schools believing that indigenous people could be “whitened” or “saved” through forced indoctrination, ala @Martin_Hyde 's [post in the other thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-200-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-bc-residential-school/943674/133). ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/49 "2021-06-15T17:11:50Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > That is not an argument that has been made by anyone in the thread. Ok, let me modify that. **slash2k** is arguing that what happened in Canada is not genocide, but a lesser crime, mitigated by misguided good intentions. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/50 "2021-06-15T17:13:47Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > This is not at all how I would interpret @slash2k’s posts. I read what he is saying as similar to “Manslaughter and murder are different things. Both are horrible for the victim, but murderers intentionally kill their victim while people who commit manslaughter don’t mean to kill the victim. We should recognize that one is worse than the other.” How about death during a kidnap, where the kidnapper claims he didn’t really intend to kill his victim, only kidnap and brainwash him? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/51 "2021-06-15T17:17:54Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > > > As long as you don’t deliberately set out to kill them it’s fine, > > That is not an argument that has been made by anyone in the thread. Not in this thread, because he refuses to participate due to the thread being in the Pit, but this is what @DrDeth has been implying of late. ---
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/52 "2021-06-15T17:36:49Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > > [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > > > This is not at all how I would interpret @slash2k’s posts. I read what he is saying as similar to “Manslaughter and murder are different things. Both are horrible for the victim, but murderers intentionally kill their victim while people who commit manslaughter don’t mean to kill the victim. We should recognize that one is worse than the other.” > > How about manslaughter committed by a kidnapper, who claims he didn’t really intend to kill his victim, only kidnap him and brainwash him? I think that’s actually a pretty spot on analogy. The “generous” interpretation might be that the kidnapper thought he was liberating the victim, say kidnapping a Palestinian thinking that you’re saving them from becoming a member of ISIL. Or, if the kidnapper was a member of ISIL, believing that they are putting the victim on a righteous path to salvation. Actually now that you’ve put it that way, I am not sure if cultural genocide is even a “lesser crime” than physical genocide, even though I think they are different things. Similar to rape vs. murder - both heinous crimes but I don’t think you’d get unanimous agreement which is worse. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/53 "2021-06-15T17:38:05Z")
It’s also worth noting AFAIK most of the boarding school separations were not permanent and complete, which complicates comparing it directly to the separation of slave families which were generally permanent and complete. My understanding at least as far as I know about some of the schools (and this remains an area where my knowledge isn’t complete) is the boarding schools had holiday and other period breaks where the students were no longer resident in the schools–not to mention some of the boarding schools had day schools as well. I think there was a decent variance in how the schools were ran. I don’t believe either that the students were ordinarily complete cut off from their parents, I think they were allowed to write, they visited on breaks, and once they were done with education they could obviously move back in permanently with their families. Even after emancipation many slave families could never track down their lost family members because they had been sold and resold, and there was no system of tracking them and they had no means of staying in touch after the separation. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/54 "2021-06-15T18:00:24Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > How about death during a kidnap, where the kidnapper claims he didn’t really intend to kill his victim, only kidnap and brainwash him? You ever seen _Fargo_? How did you feel about William H. Macy, the schmuck who tries to get out from under an impending embezzlement investigation by having his wife kidnapped and held for ransom, as compared to Peter Stormaire, the goon Macy hires, who murders the wife and feeds her into a woodchipper? Macy’s character is 100% responsible for the death of his wife, in both a legal and a moral sense, but I still feel there’s a significant distinction between that hapless fuck-up, and the utter sociopath Stormaire played. Which isn’t to say that the Canadian government were just hapless fuck ups here. I don’t think they were motivated by compassion for these kids, so much as wanting a more exploitable underclass. Natives living their traditional way of life don’t generate tax revenue. Factory workers do. I suspect the government’s interest here was less “We have to give these kids the brightest future possible,” and more, “If you beat them enough, they can learn to run an industrial loom.” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/55 "2021-06-15T18:06:53Z")
This is not true, you are lying. And you know it. True, I do not like the _term_ “cultural genocide” I prefer “Ethnocide” or “Cultural Cleansing.” That is not at all the same as denying Ethnocide or Cultural Cleansing happens or is a serious issue. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/56 "2021-06-15T18:29:18Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > Not in this thread, because he refuses to participate due to the thread being in the Pit, but this is what @DrDeth has been implying of late. I haven’t been in that thread in a few days - but it’s not to whom GreenWyvern was referring. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/57 "2021-06-15T18:31:49Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > This is not true, you are lying. And you know it. > [@I pit DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-drdeth/933971/1023): > > Cultural not Physical. In your own words: as long as they’re not physically harmed… ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/58 "2021-06-15T18:32:35Z")
Right. I read it as you feel the term “Genocide” belongs to you and yours, and nobody else is allowed to use it. It’s special to you, and you don’t like anyone else using the word. We get it. The Canadian government, the Prime Minister of Canada, and many, many others in Canada have called what happened in the residential schools “Cultural Genocide”, so I suggest you continue to have your opinion, and refrain from telling us in Canada what we are allowed to call this Canadian tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/59 "2021-06-15T18:32:36Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > It’s also worth noting AFAIK most of the boarding school separations were not permanent and complete, which complicates comparing it directly to the separation of slave families which were generally permanent and complete. It is not worth noting. You seem to think it’s important for some reason but it isn’t. From Wikipedia: > The school system was created for the purpose of removing Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilating them into the dominant Canadian culture, “to kill the Indian in the child.” That’s genocide plain and simple. It doesn’t matter that the genociders took Christmas off. Genocide denial is an integral part of genocide. People like @DrDeth and @Martin_Hyde who deny the Native American genocide in the US and Canada are not just voicing their (shitty) opinions. They are actively participating in the last stages of genocide. They may be too stupid to realize that that’s what they’re doing, but they are contributing to the genocide nonetheless. Total human garbage the both of them. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198/60 "2021-06-15T18:34:08Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > > > It’s also worth noting AFAIK most of the boarding school separations were not permanent and complete, which complicates comparing it directly to the separation of slave families which were generally permanent and complete. > > It is not worth noting. You seem to think it’s important for some reason but it isn’t. It isn’t worth talking about historical facts? Good to know. > [@](#): > > From Wikipedia: > > > The school system was created for the purpose of removing Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilating them into the dominant Canadian culture, “to kill the Indian in the child.” > > That’s genocide plain and simple. It doesn’t matter that the genociders took Christmas off. > > Genocide denial is an integral part of genocide. People like @DrDeth and @Martin_Hyde who deny the Native American genocide in the US and Canada are not just voicing their (shitty) opinions. They are actively participating in the last stages of genocide. They may be too stupid to realize that that’s what they’re doing, but they are contributing to the genocide nonetheless. > > Total human garbage the both of them. I never denied it was genocide, you ignorant fucking mouthbreather. Offer proof I did or go fuck yourself with your bullshit lies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-genocide-defined-with-an-emphasis-on-cultural-genocide/944198.md?page=4)