Speaker Asserts Colonization of U.S. was Genocide

Dickinson College and the Clarke Forum hosted Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz to speak on the history of colonialism and genocide in the United States in her talk titled “The Genocidal Foundation of the United States.”

Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of books such as An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in America.

The presentation was opened by one of Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers, John Adenerin ’19, who set the tone for the lecture by discussing the contradictory nature of the foundation of the United States and how the traditional American dream was “a dream that was never intended to be dreamed by everyone.”

The lecture began with Dunbar-Ortiz discussing how “the U.S. policies and actions related to indigenous people are in a lot of times racist [and] discriminatory.” She also said that while there have been some advancements in this area, “they only went so far.”

She then went on to discuss the definition of genocide and colonists. She stated that “the history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism,” and that while colonizing, the “objective of U.S. authorities was to terminate native existence.” She also asserted that a “colonizing regime institutionalizes violence.” Dunbar-Ortiz cited the official definition of genocide, coined by Ralph Lemkin, a lawyer and initiator of the Genocide Convention, to prove that the colonization of the United States of America is, in fact, genocide. Lemkin defines genocide as “any…acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such…Killing members of the group;

…causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group…deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part… imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group…forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Dunbar-Ortiz found instances for every aspect of the definition of genocide, but she stated that for an act to be considered genocide, only one of the causes needs to be committed.

Dunbar-Ortiz also provided numerous instances of genocide against the Native Americans, such as the ways in which government policies forced many to move from their homes, causing many deaths and the sterilization of Native American women without consent in 1974.

The full-house event took place in the Anita Turin Schlechter Auditorium, with over 350 people in attendance. Alexis Scott ’19 thought “it was interesting to think that genocide doesn’t have to be physical; it can also be cultural.”

Alexander Haver ’20 stated that “the lecture was very interesting.”

Unlike Scott and Haver, Marcus Witherspoon ’20 did not enjoy the event so much.

Witherspoon maintains that during Dunbar-Ortiz’s talk, “people were falling asleep, including me.”

Witherspoon was also disappointed in some of the content, or lack-thereof, of Dunbar-Ortiz’s talk.

“One thing I didn’t like was that she mentioned the Carlisle Indian School, [because] all she did was mention it. All she said was ‘I’m not gonna bring it up because you already know about it. But 99 percent of people don’t know about it, they were just there because [they were required to attend],” he says. “If you bring up something that is so significant for our community, then you should talk about it.”