Analysis Of Murder State, By Brendan Lindsay

In some schools across America, the mass murder of Native Americans in California during the nineteenth century is taught as an inevitable, necessary evil (Discussion). However, this notion is false. The mass murder of the Native Americans was systematic and calculated, carried out by white settlers through attacks on the lives, livelihoods, homes, and cultures of the natives. According to both Raphael Lemkin and the United Nations, these actions were genocidal. In the work, Murder State, by Brendan Lindsay, Lindsay, using the definitions created by Lemkin and the United Nations, effectively categorizes this mass extermination of the Native Americans in California as a genocide. Both Raphael Lemkin and the United Nations stated that a genocide involves “a conspiracy” or “intent” to annihilate a group of people based on “national, ethnical, racial, or religious” background (“Genocide”, UN). As white settlers emigrated to California, their inveterate fear of the Native Americans, their belief in the “savagery, depravity, and racial inferiority” of the Natives, and their desire for the Natives’ …show more content…
He does so using the definitions formed by Raphael Lemkin and the United Nations. The Native Americans were killed, raped, kidnapped, stolen from, and treated like animals (Lindsay 165, 210). All of this was done by Euro-American settlers to bring about their extermination (Lindsay 165). The Euro-Americans’ intent to kill, desire to extirpate anything or anyone associated with natives, and need to prevent Indians from working demonstrate the genocide Native peoples faced. Although this genocide was one of the most horrific events in American history, the Euro-Americans failed to completely exterminate the Native Americans. Now, Native peoples and cultures across the country are strong, present, and