Encountering the American Holocaust

I enjoyed reading this chapter because it touches upon a huge part of history that is rarely told or known about. Ward Churchill believes that Native Americans went through a Holocaust that .
The Native American population took a serious plunge since the arrival of European settlers by diseases, squeamishness with settlers for their land, and murders. Their stories remain untold in American classrooms and history books. Only a few authors write American history in the Native American point of view. Churchill makes an interesting point by comparing the Native American holocaust to the Jewish Holocaust that occurred in Germany. The settlers can easily take the place of the Nazis and the Native Americans the place of the Jews. The justification for the stealing of land and mass murders was to ‘end barbarism’ and set up a land of liberty and civilization. Personally, I do not know how that can even pass off as a humane excuse. How do you measure the worth of a human life? However, after examining the early American ideals, anyone who was not white was considered to be not fully human or of a lesser human. I believe that many Americans refuse to see what happened to the Native Americans as tragic because that would go against the country's pride and image. How can the U.S. fight a war against the Nazis when at home there were mass murders of Native Americans and wishes and laws that wished to 'purify' the land?

This chapter reminded me of native Hawaiians and their fight for their land. Like the Native American populations, their numbers plunged with the arrival of foreigners. They too went through reeducation camps which divided their communities. They too face a history that is untold.