Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America

What a timely anthology! In the past few years the field of indigenous genocide studies in North America has grown dramatically, with various worthy titles having been published and a number of exciting contributions slated for publication. Moreover, the concept of genocide is being integrated itself into emerging scholarship such as Native America studies, settler colonial studies, and many other fields. This collection of essays provides some historiography and background of recent developments in the field and showcases new research. Such a survey is useful both for scholars who are fully engaged in genocide studies already and for those who want to consider how the field may apply to their research. More broadly, this volume could be a great benefit to scholars of genocide from outside North America who are looking for an up-to-date overview of the field for comparative purposes.The text is divided into four thematic parts. As with many anthologies that attempt to find common threads to pull the disparate chapters together, the themes are not overly intuitive. Part 1, “Intersections and Trajectories,” features three chapters that showcase the unevenness of colonial processes and relationships. The chapters stretch from the sixteenth century to the twentieth and consider a broad geography in their case studies. Part 2, “Erasure and Legibility,” contains four chapters that examine how colonial genocide erased the complexities of indigenous peoples as colonial powers attempted to assign homogenized identities. The chapters by Benjamin Madley and Gray Whaley focus on interactions along the Pacific coast and are particularly powerful. The third part, “Transformations,” explores how genocide does not simply destroy but also instigates “practices of regeneration, translation, and refiguration” (16). Of the four chapters, Margaret Jacobs’s continued work in indigenous child removal is noteworthy, and Kiera Ladner’s exploration of political genocide, as enacted through legal processes, is particularly provoking and relevant for contemporary issues in Native America. Part 4, “(Re)imaginings,” broadens the volume significantly in its potential impact. Whereas the previous chapters delved into focused case studies, the final four chapters zoom out and consider a number of conceptual questions. How do we talk and write about genocide, how does rhetoric impact indigenous peoples, can environmental destruction deepen our discussion of genocidal processes, and how can definitions inform contemporary reconciliation and biculturalism? Unlike some esoteric fields of study, genocide studies has tremendous contemporary relevance and impact. These final chapters help pull the reader not only toward the present but also laterally within the past to consider how genocidal processes have unfolded.Deepening the contemporary implications of the research in this volume, a poignant foreword by Theodore Fontaine and an afterword by Alexander Laban Hinton ask difficult questions of the societies that emerged from these fraught historical colonial-indigenous exchanges. The necessity for pushing the study of indigenous genocide in colonial North America is rooted as much in the present as the past. Historical trauma is real. Indigenous peoples and settler colonial descendants cannot escape its legacies. The work featured in this volume is important for North Americans and will provide essential comparative content for genocide scholars across the globe.The anthology is interdisciplinary, a great strength. However, some portions are plagued by jargon that does not translate well among disciplines and may deter certain readers. If we look at the book as a resource for scholars rather than for a general readership, though, this may not be an issue

Archaeology · Colonialism · Genealogy · Genocide · Historiography · Indigenous · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Anthropology · Canadian Identity and History · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law