Jeffrey Ostler

To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide.

for many, perhaps most, scholars in these fields, an overarching indictment of genocide seems too extreme.

many scholars not inclined to see genocide as pervasive in U.S. history have said that what happened in California is exceptional and does qualify.

reveals an expansive view of what Lemkin termed a “Spanish colonial genocide.”

Under a strict definition requiring a federal or state government intention to kill all California Indians and an outcome in which the majority of deaths were from direct killing, genocide does not seem applicable.

Under a less strict, though still fairly conservative, definition requiring only settler intention to destroy a substantial portion of California Indians using a variety of means ranging from dispossession to systematic killing, genocide seems apt

some Native scholars have cautioned that writing indigenous histories as genocide risks reinforcing pernicious ideologies of Indians as vanishing and degraded.

Genocide and American Indian History Genocide and American Indian History Jeffrey Ostler Jeffrey Ostler Department of History, University of Oregon

acknowledge the extremes of violence in our own history by calling it what is was: genocide