"Historical accounts of the European treatment of American Indians are marked by the little noticed phenomenon of dehumanization. A case in point is the way Europeans have treated the original nations and peoples of the geographical region now called California.

In a remarkable book, Domesticate or Exterminate, published in 1975 by Chad L. Hoopes, the following quote from Helen Hunt Jackson appears:

The history of the Government’s connection with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises. The history of the white man’s connection with the Indians is a sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery and wrongs; taught by the Government that they had rights entitled to be respect, when those rights have been assailed by the rapacity of the white man, the arm which should have been raised to protect the Indians has never been ready to sustain the aggressor."

Get the Story:
Steven Newcomb: On Historical Narratives and Dehumanization (Indian Country Today 6/20)

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