Denial ofgenocides of Indigenous peoples consists of a claim that has denied any of the multiple genocides andatrocity crimes, which have been committed againstIndigenous peoples. The denialism claim contradicts the academic consensus, which acknowledges that genocide was committed.[1][2] The claim is a form ofdenialism,genocide denial,historical negationism andhistorical revisionism. The atrocity crimes include genocide,crimes against humanity,war crimes, andethnic cleansing.[3]
During Europeancolonization, many empires have colonized territories inhabited by what would be known today as Indigenous peoples. Many new colonies havesurviving Indigenous peoples within their new political borders,[8] and in this process, atrocities have been committed against Indigenous nations.[12] The atrocities against Indigenous peoples have related toforced displacement,exile, introduction of new diseases, forced containment inreservations,forced assimilation,forced labour,criminalization,dispossession,land theft,compulsory sterilization,forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, separating children from their families,enslavement, captivity,massacres,forced religious conversion,cultural genocide, and reduction of means of subsistence and subsequentstarvation anddisease.[22]
Non-Indigenous scholars are now increasingly examining the impact ofsettler colonialism andinternal colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous peoples.[27]
In 1948, theGenocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.[28][29]Additional scholarly definitions have been used to examine the diverse history of genocide,[30] including those that include cultural and ethnic genocide as perRaphael Lemkin.[31]
Edward S. Herman andNoam Chomsky have argued that definitions of key terms, as well as the attention a society provides to a specific issue, such as genocide, is the product of mass media, as they mention inManufacturing Consent: "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy".[32] Thus, Chomsky views the term genocide as one that is used by those in positions of political power and media prominence against their rivals, but people in positions of power will avoid using the term to describe their own actions, past and present.[33]
Bradley Campbell has proposed a theory of genocide as a function of minority status, socialsegregation, low population size, and lack of visibility. Further factors includemarginalization, the lack ofpolitical representation, and lower economic or socialstatus.[34]
In the latter part of the 20th century, the genocide of Indigenous peoples attracted more attention from the international community, including scholars andhuman rights organizations.[35]
American academic and activistGregory Stanton has described ten stages of genocide, in which the ninth stage is extermination and the tenth is denial. During this final stage, Stanton argues that individuals and government may "deny that these crimes meet the definition of genocide", "question whether intent to destroy a group can be proven", and "often blame what happened on the victims".[36] The concept of denial as the final stage of genocide has been discussed in more detail in the 2021 textbookDenial: The Final Stage of Genocide?[37] Stanton also indicates that stages often co-occur; the first eight stages include classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, and persecution.[36] Early denial of genocide often occurred through these stages. For instance, American historianDavid Stannard explained that European colonizers "purposefully and systematically dehumaniz[ed] the people they were exterminating".[38]
Further, South African sociologistLeo Kuper has described denial as a routine defense, referring to it as a consequence of theGenocide Convention. He argues that denial has become more prevalent because genocide is considered "an international crime with potentially significantsanctions by way of punishment, claims for reparation, and restitution of territorial rights".[39]
According to Robert K. Hitchcock, editor ofModern Genocide, "the destruction of Indigenous peoples and their cultures has been a policy of many of the world's governments, although most government spokespersons argue that the disappearance or disruption of Indigenous societies was not purposeful but rather occurred inadvertently."[40] In 2013, Colin Leach et al. found that perpetrator groups denied their group's responsibility, showed low levels of collective guilt, and had low support for reparation policies.[41]
According to a survey conducted between 2016 and 2018, "36% of Americans almost certainly believe that the United States is guilty of committing genocide against Native Americans."[54] Indigenous author Michelle A. Stanley writes that "Indigenous genocide is largely denied, erased, relegated to the distant past, or presented as inevitable". She writes that Indigenous genocide is depicted broadly, without touching on the pattern of a series of separate genocides against multiple distinct tribal nations.[54] Seneca scholar Melissa Michal Slocum said thatNative American genocide has been denied by the United States.[55]
According toNorth American Genocides, edited by Clarke et al., many American scholars deny Indigenous genocide in the Americas, despite agreement from international scholars that it occurred.[56] American historianNed Blackhawk said that nationalist historiographies have been forms of denial that erase the history of destruction of European colonial expansion. Blackhawk said that near consensus has emerged that genocide against some Indigenous peoples took place in North America following colonization.[57]
Some historians do not consider that genocide of Indigenous peoples took place in North America, includingJames Axtell,Robert Utley,William Rubinstein,Guenter Lewy and Gary Anderson, although some call the atrocities another name such as ethnic cleansing.[58][59] Other scholars, including Elazar Barkan and Walter L. Hixson agree with the sentiment that those in the Americas deny the genocide of the regions' Indigenous populations.[60][61]
On theColumbus Quincentenary, American historianDavid Stannard highlighted the numerous celebrations and festivities surrounding Columbus alongside "American and European denials of culpability for the most thoroughgoing genocide in the history of the world have assumed a new guise."[62] A similar issue arose whenLynne Cheney, then chair of theNational Endowment for the Humanities, rejected a television project celebrating the anniversary, highlighted the proposal's use of the word "genocide". Cheney stated, "We might be interested in funding a film that debated that issue, but we are not about to fund a film that asserts it. Columbus was guilty of many sins, but he was not Hitler."[63] The comparison tothe Holocaust has been raised by others as well, with American historianDavid Stannard pointing to the Holocaust's prominent position in the public eye compared to the global ignorance of atrocities in the Americas.[64]
Howard Zinn,[65] Susan Cameron,[66] and Kirsten Dyck[67] have claimed that in American history textbooks, America's history of abuse against Indigenous peoples is mostly ignored or presented from the state's point of view.
InThe Other Slavery, American historianAndrés Reséndez compares the thousands of books written about the slavery of Africans to the couple dozen books about Indigenous slavery and argues that the latter has "almost completely erased from our historical memory". He argues that African slavery is more widely accepted because it was legalized and therefore recorded, whereas Indigenous slavery was largely illegal; further, because African slaves needed to be transported, settlers kept record of ship manifests.[68]
Canadian political scientistAdam Jones has said that thehistorical revisionism has been so thorough that in some cases, the Americas have been depicted as unpopulated before European colonization.[69]
Other claims against the genocide of Indigenous people of the Americas deal with the natural superiority of the European colonizers. For instance, Stannard has argued that British journalistChristopher Hitchens's 1992 essay, "Minority Report", supportedsocial Darwinism.[70]
Robert K. Hitchcock says that during theCalifornia genocide, "California state legislators, administrators,Indian agents, and townspeople denied that a genocide was happening."[58]
Continuing into the 21st century, Benjamin Madley has stated that the California genocide has "too often concealed, denied, or suppressed".[59] This can be evidenced via social science and history textbooks approved by theCalifornia Department of Education that ignore the history of this genocide.[71][72][73]
In 2015, English writer and political activistGeorge Monbiot argued that when the Catholic Churchcanonized 18th-century Christian missionaryJunípero Serra, who "founded the system oflabour camps that expedited California'scultural genocide", they were, in effect, denying the genocide.[74][75]
Jeffrey Ostler points out that Indigenous genocide has been denied in California, but Ostler places the process seen during theCalifornia gold rush as a genocide given its structural nature.[76]
Despite decades of recognition and acknowledgments denialism claims is a factor within Canadian society.[77][78]
A minority of Canada scholars disagree with use of the term genocide for Canada because of legal challenges associated with provinggenocidal intent,[79][80][81] while most believe using the term genocide is essential to recognize the seriousness of theethnocide suffered, and avoiding it is a form genocide denialism.[82][83][84]
TheCanadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) received criticism upon its opening in 2014 because it did not use the term genocide to describe the history of colonialism in Canada.[85] Two years after its opening, Rita K. Dhamoon critiqued the museum's focus on the Holocaust, frame ofresidential schools as assimilationist and not genocidal, and denial of the genocidal nature of settler colonialism.[86] In 2019, the museum reversed its policy and officially recognizes genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada in its content.[87]
In 2021, SenatorLynn Beyak generated controversy and was accused of genocide denial in the Canadian Indian residential school system after she voiced disapproval of the finalTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the schools.[88][89][90] Similarly, formerConservative Party leaderErin O'Toole said that the residential school system educated Indigenous children,[91] but then changed his view: "The system was intended to remove children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions, and cultures". Former newspaper publisherConrad Black and others have also been accused of denial.[103]
| External videos | |
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 "Push to criminalize residential school denialism in Canada: 'Difference between free speech and inciting hate'" (2024) –Global News (5:35 min) |
In 2022,Gregory Stanton, former president of theInternational Association of Genocide Scholars, issued a report stating Canada is in the "denial stage" of theten stages of genocide.[104] This position was reiterated onNational Truth and Reconciliation Day in 2023, with prime ministerJustin Trudeau stating that denialism was on the rise after disputes regarding the conclusiveness of the evidence ofIndian residential schools gravesite discoveries.[105][106][107] Federal Justice MinisterDavid Lametti said in 2023 that he was open to outlawing residential school denialism.[106] His successor,Arif Virani, has not taken a position on the issue.[108]
Kimberly Murray, from the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor, released a report in 2023 stating: "a core group of Canadians continue to defend the Indian Residential Schools System … some still deny that children suffered physical, sexual, psychological, cultural, and spiritual abuses, despite the TRC's indisputable evidence to the contrary. Others try to deny and minimize the destructive impacts of the Indian Residential Schools. They believe Canada's historical myth that the nation has treated Indigenous Peoples with benevolence and generosity is true."[109] The report promptedLeah Gazan, anNDP Member of Parliament, to introduce Bill C-413 in 2024 that would ban residential school denialism.[110][111]
In 2022, the Canadian government announced that it would pay C$31.5 billion to reform the foster care system and compensate Indigenous families for its deficiencies.[112] The government has acknowledged the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the foster care system.[113] In 2024, Canada's Indigenous leaders rejected the government's proposal.[114][115]
According to Nadia Rubaii, the mass atrocities in Latin America have been less visible internationally for three reasons:[116]
In Argentina, theConquest of the Desert had been interpreted in war terms, silencing the fact of Indigenous genocide.[117][118] In the case of theNapalmi massacre, a judge concluded that the massacre took place in a context of genocide.[119][120] According to Walter Delrio et al. in 2010, "The state still denies the existence of genocide and the existence of crimes against humanity with respect to Indigenous peoples."[121]
South African sociologist and genocide scholarLeo Kuper says that genocide has been denied in Paraguay and Brazil on the basis of alleged lack of intent to destroy.[122] For instance, the case of theAche in Paraguay has been legally determined to be a case of political persecution.[123]
In Guatemala, debate has occurred over accusations of genocide. TheGuatemalan Truth Commission has reported genocide during the35 year civil war,[124][125] but some Guatemalan politicians have referred to the conflict as a civil war.[126][127][128]
TheHerero genocide is described as the first genocide of the 20th century.[129][130] In 2012, German politicianUwe Kekeritz said Germany needed to move away from "a culture of denial".[131]
Australia has a long history of Indigenous genocide denialism, with the country's treatment of its Indigenous populations being one of the most notorious examples.[132] This denialism has manifested in various ways, from downplaying the severity of the violence to shifting blame onto the victims themselves.[133][134] Debates regarding genocide in Australia have primarily concentrated on historicalfrontier killings and theremoval of children.[135] Since the 1830s, British colonists in Australia have tried to justify the disappearance of indigenous peoples by blaming disease and displacement.[136] Although the term 'genocide' was not used in the 19th century, many colonists called for the extermination of Aborigines who resisted settlement. Awareness of genocide issues was hidden until the 1960s when historians began to explore frontier violence, gaining official support in the 1990s.[136] However, cultural barriers, like 'Holocaust consciousness,' hinder broader acknowledgment of these events, impacting the political understanding of Australia's history.[136] There are still numerous Australian historians who uphold the view that massacres and removal of Indigenous children was neither genocidal nor racist, but instead an action of state intervention.[137]
The Indigenous Australian population experienced the frontier wars, in which there was conflict over territory.Massacres andmass poisonings and theStolen Generations that saw the displacement of Indigenous children.[138][139]
According to Hannah Baldry, "The Australian Government appears to have long suffered a form of 'denialism' that has consistently deprived the country's Aboriginal population of acknowledgment of the crimes perpetrated against their ancestors."[140] This includes ongoing debates about the interpretation of history, including calling Australia's national myth as an invasion or settlement.[146]
Former Prime MinisterJohn Howard refused to apologize in theMotion of Reconciliation, claiming that the program had no genocidal intent.[150] Former Tasmanian PremierRay Groom said that "there had been no killing in the island state".[144]
The Australian literary and cultural journalQuadrant has been considered "a key locus of genocide denial". They included common arguments regarding the definitional status of genocide, including the idea "that 'half castes' could not claim Aboriginal status since they were half-European" and that Indigenous people were to blame for their fate due to "their own backwardness"; other articles argued that "frontier massacres were based on misinterpreted statistics and falsehoods".[151]
A number of states have chosen to take a firm stance against the denial of genocide by enacting laws to criminalize it. The extent of legal coverage varies from one state to another.[152]
Genocide scholars Susan Chavez Cameron and Loan T. Phan see American Indians as having gone through the ten stages of genocide identified by Stanton. Failure to acknowledge genocide has harmful social and psychological impacts on the victims of genocide, and it leaves the perpetrators in positions of power vis-a-vis others in their societies. As Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala points out, denial or negation relating to mass crimes consists of denying scientifically proven historical facts by deliberately concealing them and spreading false and misleading information. She goes on to say that the consequences of negationism are of ethical, legal, social, and political character.
"From Lemarchand's volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor's version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been "hidden" politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power". (p2) ...the U.S. government, for most of its existence, stated openly and frequently that its policy was to destroy Native American ways of life through forced integration, forced removal, and death. An 1881 report of the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs on the "Indian question" is indicative of the decades- long policy: "There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place, to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die." (p3) "As such it is important for the peoples of the United States and Canada to recognize their shared legacies of genocide, which have too often been hidden, ignored, forgotten, or outright denied." (p3) "After all, much of North America was swindled from Indigenous peoples through the mythical but still powerful Doctrine of Discovery, the perceived right of conquest, and deceitful treaties. Restitution for colonial genocide would thus entail returning stolen territories". (p9) "Thankfully a new generation of genocide scholarship is moving beyond these timeworn and irreconcilable divisions." (p11)"Variations of the Modoc ordeal occurred elsewhere during the conquest and colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Indigenous civilizations repeatedly resisted invaders seeking to physically annihilate them in whole or in part. Many of these catastrophes are known as wars. Yet by carefully examining the intentions and actions of colonizers and their advocates it is possible to reinterpret some of these cataclysms as both genocides and wars of resistance. The Modoc case is one of them" (p120). "Memory, remembering, forgetting, and denial are inseparable and critical junctures in the study and examination of genocide. Absence or suppression of memories is not merely a lack of acknowledgment of individual or collective experiences but can also be considered denial of a genocidal crime (p150). Erasure of historical memory and modification of historical narrative influence the perception of genocide. If it is possible to avoid conceptually blocking colonial genocides for a moment, we can consider denial in a colonial context. Perpetrators initiate and perpetuate denial" (p160).
The U.S. government officially recognizes 574 Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 states and Alaska.
In Asia, for example, only one country, the Philippines, has officially adopted the term "Indigenous peoples," and established a law specifically to protect Indigenous peoples' rights. Only two countries in Africa, Burundi and Cameroon, have statements about the rights of Indigenous peoples in their constitutions.
Indigenous populations are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created and current borders defined. They generally maintain cultural and social identities, and social, economic, cultural and political institutions, separate from the mainstream or dominant society or culture.
Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
Imperialist genocide against indigenous peoples was thus of two kinds. It was practiced in order to clear lands that invading settlers wished to occupy. It was also practiced as part of a strategy to seize and coerce labor that the settlers could not or would not obtain by less drastic means.
Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the genocide convention. In the case of the British North American colonies and the United States, not only extermination and removal were practiced but also the disappearing of the prior existence of Indigenous peoples, and this continues to be perpetuated in local histories.
The testimonies on whichRaphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide", the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal", the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.
Since the publication of Wolfe's (2006: 388) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, the idea that settler colonialism is 'a structure not an event' has taken root and is now foundational to scholarship in settler-colonial studies.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
In defining genocide, Madley relies on the criteria of the United Nations Genocide Convention, which has served as the basis for the genocide trials of defendants from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and has been employed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Charny offeres a definition of colonial genocide: "Genocide that is undertaken or even allowed in the course of or incidental to the purposes of achieving a goal of colonization or development of a territory belonging to an indigenous people, or any other consolidation of political or economic power through mass killing of those perceived to be standing in the way."
[G]enocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide - such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.
If the assertions of Ortiz and others regarding the habits of the Indians were fabrications, they were not fabrications without design. From the Spaniards' enumerations of what they claimed were the disgusting food customs of the Indians (including cannibalism, but also the consumption of insects and other items regarded as unfit for human diets) to the Indians' supposed nakedness and absence of agriculture, their sexual deviance and licentiousness, their brutish ignorance, their lack of advanced weaponry and iron, and their irremediable idolatry, the conquering Europeans were purposefully and systematically dehumanizing the people they were exterminating.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)Genocide scholars Susan Chavez Cameron and Loan T. Phan see American Indians as having gone through the ten stages of genocide identified by Stanton. Failure to acknowledge genocide has harmful social and psychological impacts on the victims of genocide, and it leaves the perpetrators in positions of power vis-a-vis others in their societies. As Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala points out, denial or negation relating to mass crimes consists of denying scientifically proven historical facts by deliberately concealing them and spreading false and misleading information. She goes on to say that the consequences of negationism are of ethical, legal, social, and political character.
The study of massacres defined here as predominantly one-sided intentional killings of five or more noncombatants or relatively poorly armed or disarmed combatants, often by surprise and with little or no quarter.
The United States had its own long-standing boarding schools for Native American children with a similar extent of abuse. However, the term Education for Extinction is yet to capture public attention as a human rights issue. The American indigenous dilemma is far less central to U.S. mainstream politics than in any of the other ex-British colonies. The notion of genocide, while warranted as much or more than in those other countries, is still confined to radical writers. It is intriguing, indeed, that no mainstream American historians have written about the fate of the Native Americans as genocide. (p131) Thus, the European guilt was at least a collective myopia, a deep failure to acknowledge the equality of indigenous people and the vast number and varied array of atrocities and genocides inflicted upon them. More likely this has been a willful denial of responsibility and guilt, hiding behind the structural explanation of biological agents. It is time to reverse course and acknowledge the responsibility and extent of the destruction purposefully inflicted by colonialism, although not upon all indigenous peoples, and not in similar fashion. (p138-139)
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)Historical distortion and denial are endemic to settler colonies. In order for the settler colony to establish a collective usable past, legitimating stories must be created and persistently affirmed as a means of naturalizing a new historical narrative. A national mythology displaces the indigenous past...Becoming the indigene required not only cleansing of the land, either through killing or removing, but sanitizing the historical record as well.
The willful maintenance of public ignorance regarding the genocidal and racist horrors against indigenous peoples that have been and are being perpetrated by many nations of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States—which contributes to the construction of a museum to commemorate genocide only if the killing occurred half a world away—is consciously aided and abetted and legitimized by the actions of the Jewish uniqueness advocates we have been discussing....and so all people of conscience must be on guard against Holocaust deniers who, in many cases, would like nothing better than to see mass violence against Jews start again. By that same token, however, as we consider the terrible history and the ongoing campaigns of genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere...
From first grade to graduate school, I was given no inkling that the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World initiated a genocide, in which the indigenous population of Hispaniola was annihilated. Or that this was just the first stage of what was presented as a benign expansion of the new nation (Louisiana "Purchase," Florida "Purchase," Mexican "Cession"), but which involved the violent expulsion of Indians, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, from every square mile of the continent, until there was nothing to do with them but herd them into reservations. (Afterword)
Through a devastating combination of genocidal massacre, disease, malnutrition, and slave labor, perhaps ninety-five percent of the indigenous population of the Americas was wiped out following the arrival of Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, Danish, Dutch, and Russian forces. In some places, such as Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the obliteration of the native population – partly purposive, partly unexpected via infectious disease – was nearly total. The killing was rationalized by myths of civilizational superiority and the inevitability of indigenous peoples' disappearance. Sometimes the historical revisionism was so radical as to depict colonized territories as virgin lands, effectively free of indigenous populations at the time of Western 'discovery'.
To Hitchens, anyone who refused to join him in celebrating with "great vim and gusto" the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was (in his words) self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister. People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America's past, Hitchens continued, are simply reactionary since such grossly inhuman atrocities "happen to be the way history is made". And thus "to complain about them is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift". Moreover, he added, such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind, as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans has brought about "a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation".
I contend that the curatorial decision of the CMHR to not use the label of genocide in the title of the core gallery on Indigenous perspectives was specifically a form of interpretive denial.
In contemporary extra-judicial discussions of allegations of genocide, the question of intent has become a controversial issue, providing a ready basis for denial of guilt.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)The coordinator of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical (also the author of this article) held the responsibility of presenting the main findings of the report to the public. For the first time in the history of the country, an official body stated that, according to its judgment, genocide had been perpetrated at certain times in certain places during the civil war.
...the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seized his opportunity. He told a commercial radio audience in Melbourne that the revelation that Lowitja O'Donoghue was not stolen was a "highly significant" fact, one, he implied, which vindicated his government's famous denial of the existence of the stolen generations and his even more famous refusal to apologize... It was the magazineQuadrant, however, under the editorship of Padraic McGuinness, that marshalled the troops and galvanised the disparate voices of opposition to Bringing them home into what amounted to a serious and effective political campaign.
The colonial genocide perpetrated against Aborigines produced within the colonial society a deep and enduring ambiguity about the fate of the original Aborigines and the role of colonists in generating that fate. This ambiguity consisted of a deep-seated moral unease about what had occurred and a culture of denial that was expressed in numerous ways, but most obviously in the myth of inevitable extinction.
