How is genocide defined, with an emphasis on cultural genocide?

[thorny_locust]

@Martin_Hyde

Going back to the “penned” comment above, is one solution to provide funding (through individual grants) to native families that want to relocate off-reservation? There’s probably a non-zero number that are stuck there out of generational poverty that would likely do better living almost anywhere else.

Your solution to community destruction is to finish breaking up the communities?

@Martin_Hyde

Like their material life situation isn’t improved by “awareness” campaigns about bad things that happened 50+ years ago.

And here we go again: the claim that all the active bad behavior was a long long time ago, way in the past, nothing to do with us. Just a matter of ancient history.

@Martin_Hyde

I also think the existing native Americans might care more about actually seeing quality of life improvements.

It’s not an either-or. Rather the reverse: acknowledging why and how the quality of life got bad may essential to get changes that actually are improvements.

And have you asked any such existing people whether they want these discoveries publicized? Or do you prefer to guess without looking?

We seem to be short on such representation on this board; and I’m certainly not qualified to speak with that voice; but there are currently plenty of public statements out there on the subject. Here’s a sampling:

Part of healing is accountability. In that regard, it is imperative that the United States begins to do the hard work of addressing the physical and cultural genocide it has exacted on Indigenous people.

These stories need to be told so that all people here and around the world can understand that genocide has been committed here in Canada.

These hate crimes can never and should never be forgotten.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” stated Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir. “Some were as young as three years old. We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families,

NDN Collective joins the call for continued searches for mass and unmarked graves on all properties of former Indian residential schools across Canada and the United States.

“The discovery of the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada is a sorrowful reminder that the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has repeatedly called for transparency and accountability for the historical and generational trauma caused by Native American boarding schools in the United States. In 2016 and 2017, NCAI called upon the United States government and organizations that operated residential boarding schools to fully account for their treatment of Native children and be fully transparent in providing records related to enrollment and living conditions.