Benjamin Madley on Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide and other related genocides (2004): “The continuing destruction of indigenous people is a global human rights problem Today, tens of millions of Aboriginal people reside in dozens of countries around the world (Hitchcock and Twedt, 1997, p374). . Whether called native or tribal peoples, First Nations or the Fourth World, many live under the threat of annihilation. During the twentieth century , dozens of states implemented policies intended t physically destroy indigenous populations. In the age of the UN Genocide Convention, signatory countries waged campaigns of genocide against the Cham of Cambodia, indigenous peoples in East Timor, and the Amazon basin,, Iraqi Kurds, the Maya of Guatemala, and others. Today, perpetrators employ sophisticated weapons delivery systems , advanced communications equipment, and overwhelming firepower to kill indigenous people. No evidence suggests a waning fo this trend. Comparing cases of frontier genocide provides information valuable to detection, prevention and intervention as ell as victimized peoples’ land and reparations claims. Just as important, cognizance of common patterns between cases deepen understanding of man’s worst crime: the attempt to obliterate an entire people.
The analysis of the frontier genocides waged against the Aboriginal Tasmanians , the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia reveals a surprisingly congruent pattern despite the fact that the cases took place on different continents, under different regimes, and in different periods. The pattern divides into three phases. Colonists initiate the first by invasion. Economic an dpolirical frictions then develop between the two groups as they struggle for limited resources and political power. Unable to compete with the invaders’ technology, arms, and wealth, the indigenous people find their economy fundamentally threatened and basic political rights denied under the settler regime. Aboriginal people begin the second phase by attacking settlers and their property in an attempt to regain access to economic resources, reclaim lost land, protect political rights, or exact revenge. Settlers and their government then retaliate, but cannot quickly defeat the indigenous peoples’ guerilla insurgency. Out of frustration and expediency, the invaders choose a “final solution: tot eh military conflict. During and after the genocidal military campaign, the settlers’ government initiates the final phase by incarcerating Aboriginal people in camps that bear comparison with the Soviet gulag. In these reservations, settler governments continue genocidal policy through a varying combination of malnutrition, insufficient protection from the elements, inadequate medical care, overwork, unsanitary conditions, and violence.
The lie, the myth, and racism. Genocide in Tasmania, California, and Namibia began with a common lie: the assertion that the land was “empty”, “unclaimed,” or should be “made empty”. The British in Australia employed a doctrine of terra nullius, or ”land where nothing exists,” while in the US settlers and their advocates spoke of vacuum domicilium or “empty domicile,” to justify invasion and expropriation (Stannard, 1992, pp234-235). In Namibia, colonists enacted policies of tabula rasa, or “creating and map scraped smooth,” to facilitate dispossession and ethnic cleansing (Drechsler, 1966, pp168-169)”. [1].
Benjamin Madley, “Patterns of frontier genocide 1803-1910”: the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia”, Journal of Genocide Research, 6(2), June, 167-192 (2004): http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/Madley.pdf .
{Editor note: Indigenous resistance was variously severely compromised by decimation and weakening by introduced disease e.g. as in Tasmania, Australia, the Pacific and the Americas].