Genocide - Hypocracy: many countries have a dark page in their history: Historian Examines Native American Genocide, its Legacy, and Survivors

Genocide documents the murderous intentions that lurked beneath the idealized self-imaging of a young American nation.

“In order to have a ‘land of opportunity’ required space to expand,” Ostler notes. “Early American senses of ‘freedom’ fundamentally depended upon the taking of Native lands—which almost inevitably would lead to the taking of Native lives.”

From the beginning, he believes, US leaders understood and embraced this grim calculus. However, they obscured their true aims with a series of self-serving narratives built around the ideal of “civilization.” At first, this was held forth as a precious and necessary gift the colonizers were offering to Indigenous populations. Later, “defending civilization” would be invoked as justification to kill them.

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