The Illuminations

For the best experience, we recommend viewing this page on a desktop computer. Images may not be available for full display on mobile devices.

Native & Indigineous Populations of North America

Beyond Genocide #16, completed 200X.

“The indigenous peoples in the world today have been described as ‘victims of progress’ (Bodley, 1999)…

Variously referred to as aboriginals, native peoples, tribal peoples, Fourth World peoples or First Nations, these populations have suffered from vicious mistreatment, discrimination, and lack of equal opportunity in employment for centuries. Over the past 500 years, literally millions of indigenous peoples have had to cope with destruction of their life ways and habitats, disease, dispossession, and exploitation…

Many indigenous groups have suffered from the depredations of governments, private companies, and individuals bent on taking their land and resources – forcibly or through quasi legal means such as treaties and agreements…

Indigenous populations frequently have been denied the right to practice their own religions and customs and / or speak their own languages by nation-states, a process describes as “cultural genocide or “ethnocide”…

The protection of indigenous peoples from genocide at the international level has generally been ineffective…. The failure to prevent genocide of indigenous peoples is the result of a combination of factors, including government inaction, bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of enforcement of international human rights law, racism and outright greed.

     Hitchcock, R. K. & Twedt, T. M. (2009). Physical and Cultural Genocide of Indigenous Peoples. In W. S. Parsons & Totten, S. (Eds.), Century of Genocide:
Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (3rd ed.). Routledge.

“Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.” — Tecumseh

     Thornton, R. (1987). American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Oklahoma University Press.