Talk:Genocide of Indigenous peoples/Archive 5

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Systemic Anglo Bias, Fringe theories, Black legend and outright lies and manipulation directly contradicting modern academic consensus

The idea that the encomienda led to the genocide of millions is not just laughable but it is literally a ludicrous fringe theory. Whoever postulates such a moronic statement should not be quote in this article, so I am removing it. I see I'm not the first person who has brought up the crazy state of this article. Its time to bring some historical accuracy here. Filologo2 (talk) 17:12, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

An alternative is an extremely long and well sourced section detailing the genocide myth fabricated in the Anglo-Saxon world over the past three centuries. A lot of material, dozens of academic sources, certainly more relevant than the ignorant statement from that guy from Hawaii university.Filologo2 (talk) 17:16, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I just restored it because David Stannard is a respected academic and his work was published by a major university press (Oxford), and is a significant addition to scholarly studies of genocide in the New World, which has been supported by other academics. Accusations of "fringe" fall flat.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:17, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I was about to do likewise - the statement was attributed to him, and referenced to an academic book published by OUP. Strong evidence would be needed to characterise that as a fringe theory. Filologo2, you've been making some substantial changes to the meaning of sections in this article, but you haven't brought any new sources. Are you sure the existing sources agree with the way you have worded things? GirthSummit _(blether) 17:23, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

::::::::Ok I'm just have to going to have to write an entire sourced section on this Genocide BS. Its been on Wikipedia long enough. Its ahistorical and just reflects bad on the project as a whole. Filologo2 (talk) 17:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Not only is your revert of my addition not supported by your accusations of WP:fringe, but your previous additions are not supported by your claim that you were "Fixing as per tallk". This should also be reverted IMO. And any rewrite of long-standing materials by someone with a clear axe to grind probably won't stand, especially given what you've been doing on Wikipedia thus far.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

:::::::::::C.J. Griffin As per YOUR version of this article it currently claims that the Spanish committed pre-meditated genocide, i.e. an intentional act to destroy a people, killing millions in the process. This is a lie which you have introduced in this article and is not supported by ANY source. The academic consensus is that the vast majority died of old world diseases. Even your tinpot Hawaii academic doesn't dare to contradict this.Filologo2 (talk) 23:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

This is not MY version of the article, but the consensus version before you started introducing your POV and other additions which all constitute original research.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 01:54, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Wow - WP:TLDR. I skimmed it quickly, and see that you did not include any sources here, or any specific points about improving the article - you appear to be using the talk page for outline your own understanding of the history, rather than discussing any of the specific points or sources in the article.

I am going to revert the changes that you made to the article now. I'm not saying that there can be no changes, but you have introduced a lot, and it does not appear to be well-sourced to me. Some specific concerns:

• 'Certain historians...' - see WP:WEASEL
• changing 'wrote' to 'claimed' - see WP:CLAIMED
• addition of '(unintentional)' - does the cited source use this word, or one like it? Or is this your own qualification?
• 'leveraged by Anglo-Saxon historians to...' - I find it hard to believe that the source supports that wording; even if it did, it should be attributed to the source, not presented in Wikipedia's voice, but I suspect this is your own analysis
• '...before abolishing it in 1546...' - this is not fully supported by the cited source - it doesn't say anything about executing conquistadors or guaranteeing rights and freedoms, just says that reasonable tribute could be collected, additional work had to be paid for, and abusers could lose their encomiendas. I wouldn't argue against clarification or expansion here, but it needs to follow the sources.
• removal of sentence on Sierra - you know who wrote that 'bullcrap', because the sentence was referenced to a cited source. If you have issues with the source, or how it is summarised, please discuss them.
• The text added in this diff is a straightforward copy/paste of a whole section from Black legend. A lot of it is off topic (this section is specifically talking about Spanish colonisation, so it's not clear why the first paragraph starts out talking about wider European activities, which are discussed elsewhere in the article); there are also questions that could be raised about the sourcing - for example, the entire first paragraph seems to be sourced entirely to a blog post written by a legal information analyst with a background in Spanish literature. I don't see a justification for simply inserting this here.

I don't object to you re-inserting the relevant tags to bring more eyes onto the page. Please do not restore any of the content discussed above, however, without gaining consensus here to do so. GirthSummit _(blether) 10:31, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Completely agree here. I was going to revert his sweeping changes myself, but didn't want to trigger an edit war.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 12:54, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

::: Understood. I understand a lot of this reticence is driven by lack of historical knowledge so I will try to be more conciliatory.

• The Anglo-Saxon black legend regarding Spanish America is supported by a wealth of academic sources. This is not my own analysis. Do you need me to point them to you? When a core tenet of the black legend is false accusations of genocide, do you honestly believe it is not relevant to this article?
• Do you support the thesis that Spain committed intentional genocide in the Americas of millions of people as the article not just implies but plainly states? Do you know any source which claims that Spaniards engaged in wanton and intentional genocide of Native Americans or that this was ever even an objective, let alone carried out?
• Do you agree that the article in its current form speaks in the voice of Wikipedia that the Spaniards committed genocide as fact rather than a claim?
• Do you find it neutral image from a Dutch propaganda pamphlet be presented as a real depiction of Spanish behavior in the Americas?
• Can we agree on a definition of genocide? Is it as per the relevant article on Wikipedia?
• Are you aware of the revolt of the encomenderos in 1544 against the Spanish decision to liberate Native Americans which resulted in the execution of Gonzalo Pizarro among other conquistadors?
• Do you believe, as the article states, that Junipero Serra who devoted much of his life to defending Native American communities was involved in "Genocide"?
• Do you think that academic discussion on the "genocide" slander is relevant to this article unequivocally and falsely claiming the Spaniards committed it? If not, how and why is it off-topic?

Clarifying your position on these points will allow us to proceed with this discussion more effectively. In the meantime, it is clear that systemic bias and disinformation permeates this entire article. If you need to become more informed on the history of the Americas and would like me to point you to sources, let me know. Filologo2 (talk) 13:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Filologo2 - first off, I've hatted your extended commentary above. I hope that's OK with you - it makes the section rather difficult to navigate, and I doubt anybody will read a comment that long. The content is all still there should anyone want to review it.

Now, I'd like to ask you politely to drop the attitude. Comments like a lot of this reticence is driven by lack of historical knowledge come across as condescending, and are not conducive to collaborative editing. I apologise if anything I have said to you seems similarly condescending - I recognise that you are new here, and I'm trying to help by giving you links to policies and guidelines, I'm not meaning to disrespect you. I'd ask you to do likewise.

Regarding your points above, if a wealth of academic sources say something, then yes I need you to point them out to us - so do our readers. You cannot change article content and just say 'lots of sources say this' - you need to cite the sources, and adhere strictly to what they say, avoiding WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Rather than go through each of your points individually, I'd ask that we start out by you accepting that you need to bring some reliable sources to support the changes you want to make. If you do that, then we can move forward - so far, you haven't mentioned any, so I'm not sure how we can discuss the changes. Please will you do that? Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 14:56, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

::::: I will drop the attitude since at least you guys seem to be talking to be in good faith. And I'm fine with hatting what I wrote so long as you do read it yourself, to see where I'm coming from! I don't want to come across as condescending but you don't know how this has shocked me. I think I would first have to go through each sentence in the most contentious section one by one and explain to you the issue with the sentence. Then after that I could start providing sources. The whole thing is so bewildering to me I don't even know how to start or how to go about this. I think you are not actually seeing what is wrong in term of NPOV issues, even without the need of additional sources. Filologo2 (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, cool, thanks for that. I've been through your previous comments - my thoughts are below:

• The Anglo-Saxon black legend regarding Spanish America is supported by a wealth of academic sources. This is not my own analysis. Do you need me to point them to you? When a core tenet of the black legend is false accusations of genocide, do you honestly believe it is not relevant to this article?

I agree that it is relevant; I also note that it is already mentioned in this section, with a wikilink directing readers to the page. That seems like enough to me, but we can talk about that.

• Do you support the thesis that Spain committed intentional genocide in the Americas of millions of people as the article not just implies but plainly states? Do you know any source which claims that Spaniards engaged in wanton and intentional genocide of Native Americans or that this was ever even an objective, let alone carried out?

I don't agree with your description of what the article says - it explicitly says that they did not set out to exterminate the population.

• Do you agree that the article in its current form speaks in the voice of Wikipedia that the Spaniards committed genocide as fact rather than a claim?

I do not agree with that - I think the article is more nuanced than that. It does describe it as 'the first large-scale act of genocide...', and it provides a reference to a reliable source calling it that, but it then goes on to discuss alternative views, and talks about the fact that it was not an intentional genocide. I agree that it might be possible to further nuance this, perhaps by changing the wording to something like '...what has been described as the first large-scale act of genocide...'

• Do you find it neutral image from a Dutch propaganda pamphlet be presented as a real depiction of Spanish behavior in the Americas?

I actually more-or-less agree with you on this. The image is pertinent, but if reliable sources agree that the image is from a work of anti-Spanish propoganda, then the caption should certainly describe it as such (with a reference to a source).

• Can we agree on a definition of genocide? Is it as per the relevant article on Wikipedia?

We can't define what we mean by genocide here, and exclude anything that doesn't fit our definition - that would be WP:OR. Instead, we should follow the sources, and the article should discuss whatever reliable sources (e.g. established historians writing in books published by OUP) describe as genocide. By all means we can discuss both sides of a debate if it is contentious (which we seem to be doing in this section, and could perhaps expand upon), but it's not our job as editors to decide on what is and is not genocide.

• Are you aware of the revolt of the encomenderos in 1544 against the Spanish decision to liberate Native Americans which resulted in the execution of Gonzalo Pizarro among other conquistadors?

I am not aware of that, and we must assume our readers are not either - that is why we need to cite sources directly supporting any assertion.

• Do you believe, as the article states, that Junipero Serra who devoted much of his life to defending Native American communities was involved in "Genocide"?

My beliefs are not relevant - the only thing that matters is what reliable sources say. The assertion is referenced to the work of a professor of history, writing in an edited collection published by Michigan State University - that smells like a reliable source to me. So either the assertion is not supported by the source (which I confess I haven't checked - have you?), or you will need some equally weighty sources to convince me to doubt its veracity.

• Do you think that academic discussion on the "genocide" slander is relevant to this article unequivocally and falsely claiming the Spaniards committed it? If not, how and why is it off-topic?

Again, I do not believe that the article is claiming what you say it is claiming. I assume that you're referring here to the comments that I hatted above - they were off topic because you weren't saying 'We should change X to say Y, here is my reasoning, here are my sources', which is broadly how talk page discussions are supposed to work. GirthSummit _(blether) 15:47, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for responding.GirthSummit _(blether) I have broken down the sentences one by one below. It is easier to discuss this way. Filologo2 (talk) 16:10, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Spanish colonization of the Americas section

Let's look at each individual sentence in this section:

• It is estimated that during the initial Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era.

Yes. It is estimated that up to eight million people died as a result with contact with old-world disease. Estimates vary but there is consensus it numbered in the millions. Is there consensus they died as a result of violence? No. The consensus is they overwhelmingly died from disease. Is there consensus this was a large-scale act of genocide? Most certainly not. Genocide is defined as an intentional act to destroy a people. Does any source argue intentionality? Is this the academic consensus? This sentence argues Wikipedia's voice to state as fact that the Spanish conquest of the Americas marked the first large scale act of genocide in the modern era. One author cited likens this to genocide in terms of numbers who perished from disease. That is not sufficient to simply make this ridiculous tendentious statement, particularly in the context of the wealth of literature on the "genocide myth" related to conquest. We can equally find sources likening the Black Death in Europe to genocide www.hirhome.com/genocide.htm. But do we? no.

You seem to be arguing against the content of the source - we don't do that. You can argue against the reliability of a source, but given the author, subject and publisher of the book I don't think you'd get far with that in this case; you can also argue that the source does not support the assertion in the article - we'd need to read it to check that. The alternative approach is to present an alternative view - if, as you suggest, the view described in the source is contentious, there will be reliable academic sources criticising it - bring them here, and propose and we can discuss how to reword the content to take both views into account.

• Acts of brutality in the Caribbean and the systematic annihilation occurring on the Caribbean islands prompted Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas to write Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias ("A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies") in 1552.Las Casas wrote that the indigenous population on the Spanish colony of Hispaniola had been reduced from 400,000 to 200 in a few decades.

I agree that Columbus was particularly brutal with Native Americans. In fact so did the Spanish Crown, which is the reason for which he was prosecuted, imprisoned and disgraced. Systematic annihilation though? Plenty of Latin American sources explaining how this was a myth. Even supported by population genetics. https://www.elnuevodia.com/opinion/columnas/losespanolesnoexterminaronalostainos-columna-2243138/ http://cubaarqueologica.org/document/ra4n2-13.pdf

The first source is an opinion piece on a website - it's not a reliable source, we can't write anything based on it.

The second source looks more promising - it's in Spanish, so I'm not able to read it easily, but it looks like it's from an historical journal which I assume is peer-reviewed - if that's the case, then it's probably WP:RS. What content do you propose be added/changed based on that?

• His writings were among those that gave rise to Leyenda Negra (Black Legend) to describe Spanish cruelty in the Indies.

To "describe"? The definition of the Black legend is not that it "describes". It fabricates and exaggerates. The sentence is seemingly intentionally misdefining the Black Legend. There is plenty of sources on the relevant article explaining that de las Casas exaggerated his accounts and how they were in turn vastly distorted by the English and Dutch Protestants.

How does the Maybury-Lewis source phrase this? We need to stick closely to that, but I wouldn't necessarily be against rewording, so long as we can do it in-line with WP:MOS (for example, we can't use weasel words or scare quotes). Do you not feel that the Wikilink to the Black Legend goes some way to mitigating your concerns here?

• Noble David Cook, writing about the Black Legend and the conquest of the Americas wrote, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact" and instead suggests the near total decimation of the indigenous population of Hispaniola as mostly having been caused by diseases like smallpox.

This is included to create a sense of false balance. The historical consensus is that the Spaniards evidently did NOT kill millions through violence. Yet this Cook guy is included in the sentence to make it seem that "they probably did but there is a chance they didn't". Pretty insidious way this section is crafted. Like saying "it is argued that it is impossible for Typhus alone to have killed so many Jews during the Second World War." It is a strawman with clear intentionality of confusing the reader.

With respect, I strongly disagree with your assessment here. The overall sense I get from the section is that the Spanish did not kill millions through violence - I don't think it's giving a sense of false balance. I actually think that by putting it at the end of the paragraph it actually gives this view more weight.

• With the initial conquest of the Americas completed, the Spanish implemented the encomienda system. In theory, encomienda placed groups of indigenous peoples under Spanish oversight to foster cultural assimilation and conversion to Christianity, but in practice led to the legally sanctioned exploitation of natural resources and forced labor under brutal conditions with a high death rate.

No mention that the Encomienda simply replicated feudal structures existing in Europe and was abolished before the French and British set foot in the Americas - in 1542. That those conquistadors responsible for abuses were executed and/or imprisoned. That their slavery was abolished in Spanish America while it continued in Anglo-America for centuries later. That the New Laws were the first abolitionist and humanitarian law in the modern era. Beautiful manipulation.

OK - do you want to propose an alternative description, based either on the cited source, or on an alternative source?

• Though the Spaniards did not set out to exterminate the indigenous peoples, believing their numbers to be inexhaustible, their actions led to the annihilation of entire tribes such as the Arawak.

Excuse me? A ridiculous statement by Grenke taken as fact and spoken in the voice of Wikipedia? Sounds like the Spanish were happily industrially killing Native Americans like Bison because they stupidly thought there were so many they would never die out? This is what is being conveyed here. Industrial massacres. There was no wanton killing of Native Americans. Not to mention there are plenty of Arawaks. I have met some personally in Colombia who didn't even speak Spanish properly. Someone should tell them they don't actually exist anymore.

I don't (yet) have a very strong view on this source. A quick Google search did not tell me who Grenke is; I did however easily find a reviews of the book in European History Quarterly, so it must have some kind of academic weight. I wouldn't be averse to rephrasing this to attribute the assertions more directly to Grenke, or to changing the wording if the current phrasing doesn't properly represent his work, or indeed to putting an alternative view, provided it is properly sourced.

• In the 1760s, an expedition dispatched to fortify California, led by Gaspar de Portolà and Junípero Serra, was marked by slavery, forced conversions and genocide through the introduction of disease.

Again, really? Junipero Serra, one of the most adamant defendant of Native Americans was now responsible for genocide in California. Was he canonized for his role in genocide then? Or why exactly? When the U.S. took over California from Mexico in the late 19th century there were close to 200,000 native americans. Within 2 years 100,000 were dead and the numbers fell to under 10,000. But Junipero Serra is to blame for Genocide? Really?

I have no idea about whether Junipero Serra is responsible for anything - I'm not qualified to judge. The assertion is referenced to a history professor writing in a book about history from an academic press. Read the source to see whether it says what is being claimed, and/or find sources that put an alternative view. Simply ridiculing the content of the source, with no basis other than your own authority, is not going to persuade anyone here, as discussed above.

The manipulation in this article is SYSTEMIC. It responds to a very specific political agenda of demonization. Even without adding new sources, which is another requirement, the wording has to change throughout. I have never seen so much bias in my years reading Wikipedia. This is literally the worst article I have ever seen. Filologo2 (talk) 15:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I've put my thoughts on your comments above. I confess that I am no kind of expert on this subject matter - my interest is only in ensuring that we are summarising the content of reliable sources as accurately, and neutrally, as we can. I don't agree with your overall assessment of the impression that the article gives - however, others may feel as you do, and so I have no objection to changing the article, provided that the changes are reliable sourced and neutrally presented. I hope that all makes sense. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:25, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

First of all, there is no Spanish "genocide" section, but a section called "Spanish colonization of the Americas". The sources here are largely academic, and while you have your own interpretation of the events, and for all your walls of text, you have failed to provide the myriad sources which you say reflect some consensus which supposedly rebuts what is stated in the article, aside from a handful of what appear to be opinion pieces and not peer-reviewed scholarship - or people who qualify as notable scholars. These few sources are also in Spanish, so verifiability might be an issue for the English Wikipedia. I would argue that what is stated in the article as it exists largely reflects academic consensus (with some omissions on the New Laws and eventual abolition of encomienda and replacement by repartimiento, which should be added with proper attribution to reliable sources) and is backed by other scholars I'm familiar with, among them the aforementioned David Stannard, a well respected academic you pilloried as a "tinpot" because you don't agree with him, and Jason Hickel (anthropologist at the London School of Economics), whose own work "The Divide" (Windmill Books, 2018) also characterizes the early Spanish conquest in the Caribbean region as a "slow motion genocide". He highlights that indigenous populations were subjected to brutal atrocities, such as "having their hands chopped off" for failing to deliver a certain quantity of gold, and that lethal forced labor killed about one third of indigenous forced laborers "every six months". In the first two years of the Spanish invasion, "some 125,000 people had been killed". And a few decades later, "only a few hundred Arawaks remained alive" (p. 70). This not only corroborates what is said in the body of the section you dispute by Grenke and others, but also corroborates my own understanding of the events as I learned them in my Colonial Latin America class from 2015, which was one of the last courses I took for my BA degree in history. It was these atrocities, as described by las Casas, and the "slow motion genocide" which gave birth to this black legend; it wasn't created out of whole cloth. Sorry, but you have failed to convince this editor of systemic bias in the article, just some additions on the things I mentioned above and other tweaks here and there for balance. It will be interesting to see what other editors have to say about your comments.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:40, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin I'm broadly in agreement with you, but in the interests of fairness I just wanted to note that non-English language sources are permitted per WP:NOENG - English-language sources are preferred, but not required. What really matters is the reliability of the source. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:55, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

You’re right about that of course. But as an editor who does not speak Spanish I’m unable to confirm the reliability of the sources he provided above, which appear to be op eds. What are your thought on them? Edit: sorry, I just now saw your comments above where you discuss the links in question. C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:07, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin I have no issue providing sources, but since sourced text has been reverted I haven't bothered so far. Spanish language Wikipedia has entire articles devoted to this topic and they have a far wider diversity of academic sources and direct quotes. All I have to do is lift them from there. It is clear that, since the 1980s the overwhelming academic consensus is that the reason for demographic collapse was disease and that the use of the term "genocide" is extremely controversial. When you say 250,000 killed in the first few years in Hispaniola (incidentally estimations of pre-contact populations range from 60,000 to a couple of million) do you mean killed as in killed through violence? Because that is what it sounds like. Same as this entire article.Filologo2 (talk) 22:47, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

With respect Filologo2, sourced text has been reverted seems a bit disingenuous. Most of the changes you made were not sourced, or indeed you changed material that was sourced to say something that the sources did not say. The only sourced material you added was directly copied and pasted from another article; it contained material that was not relevant to this specific section, and gave undue weight to one aspect of the subject (which is covered extensively at the article you copied it from, to which this article links) - you must surely see that the reverts were appropriate. By all means, you may use a Spanish article to find sources to add material to this article - but please ensure that you have read the sources themselves, confirmed that they are reliable, and that you only add material that they directly support. Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 09:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

_(blether) The issue is that the starting sentence of the section says Spaniards committed genocide in the starting sentence as a matter of undisputable fact when this allegation is extremely controversial and hardly universally agreed upon. It is, in actual fact, in my opinion. I'm not asking for the entire article to follow my exact views on this topic but at least to not present the arguments of one academic as a historical fact. We know what the definition of genocide is, we know that what happened in the Americas does not fit that definition and there are plenty of academics which explain this in great detail. However, we have an article which states inequivocably that the conquest of the Americas by the Spaniards was the largest genocide in modern history. This is POV and gross manipulation. The article in Spanish language Wikipedia is not particularly pro-Spanish. It gives a lot of space to such arguments, but at least it has a modicum of balance and it does not present minority views as historical fact marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era. Do you find this starting sentence acceptable? Filologo2 (talk) 12:11, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Filologo2 I think that I already said that I would not be averse to some rewording of that sentence, but I've reverted your latest edit because we are actively discussing this, and have not yet arrived at an agreement. I would not object to inserting something along the lines of '...up to eight million indigenous people died in a series of events that have been described as marking the first large-scale genocide...' - that seems to me to be neutral, and to fairly represent the source that supports the sentence. I would be eager to hear what C.J. Griffin and User:Resnjari think of that before making the change though.

With regard to your other comments, I say again that if serious academic works discuss this as a genocide (and it is clear that they do), then we must represent that here. What we can also do is mention the work of scholars who argue that it is not a genocide - I would be very open to presenting that view in the section, but it needs to be sourced. Would you be willing to do the leg work and find some sources that we can use to build some content around? GirthSummit _(blether) 12:59, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't object to the rewording.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:13, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

No one said anything about 250,000 being killed, but 125,000 in two years. And yes, it looks like a good portion (but certainly not all) of that can be attributed to the lethality of the forced labor system, per Stannard, Hickel, and Minster, among others. There is no doubt that disease killed off the vast majority of the indigenous population during the European conquest of the Americas, but some of this itself was deliberate, and welcomed by the European conquerors. What you seek to do is to almost complete discount that the European invaders, most specifically the Spanish, played a role in what are clearly genocidal acts, and you have provided few sources to corroborate you claims that this is nothing but a fiction. Interestingly enough, there are already some dissenting voices in the section itself (e.g., Noble David Cook), which also goes to show that it is largely balanced, with some minor omissions I mentioned previously.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:13, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

By "a good portion" you mean how much? The overwhelming consensus among sources is certainly that a good portion cannot be attributed to the encomienda or any forced labor system, certainly not mass murders of which there is no historical record.

• Henry Kamen says that the overwhelming majority of deaths were to disease and the Spaniards had no interest in destroying the natives.
• Argentine Historian Maria Saenz Quesada states there was no deliberate murder or massacres by the Spaniards.
• Investigator Jorge Gelman says "I don't think the term "genocide" is the most adequate.
• David Noble Cook: Cruelty was only a small part of the disaster which affected native America and could not be the reason for the demographic collapse.
• Ruggiero Romano: There is a consensus among geographers, scientists, historians and demographers that demographic collapse can be blamed overwhelmingly on bacterial globalization, accounting for between 75% and 95% of all deaths associated to the conquest.
• Academic Maria Elisa Roca Barea: There was no genocide, death was caused by disease.
• Stanley Payne, there was no genocide.
• Miguel Arenas, the idea of a few Spaniards causing the "genocide" of millions is nonsensical.

I could go on but you get the picture...

This is a quick summary of sources lacking here. I will do the sourcing and add the proper citations for a draft to be incorporated into relevant section.Filologo2 (talk) 14:30, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

It has been acknowledged that disease introduced by the Europeans was responsible for the vast majority of indigenous population decline, (see the link above), but your assertion that "certainly that a good portion cannot be attributed to the encomienda or any forced labor system, certainly not mass murders of which there is no historical record" is not at all accurate. Just because the former is true (i.e, that disease was the primary killer), does not mean that the latter is not true (i.e., the encomienda labor system killed at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of indigenous people through murderous atrocities, deliberate starvation and lethal forced labor). The high death rate is acknowledged in myriad sources. For example, professor Christopher Minster (see link above) says that the "encomienda system was thinly-masked slavery and led to some of the worst horrors of the colonial era" and that "The encomenderos (in Peru) showed an inhuman indifference to the suffering of the families on their encomiendas. They did not change the quotas even when crops failed or disasters struck: many natives were forced to choose between fulfilling quotas and starving to death or failing to meet quotas and facing the often-lethal punishment of the overseers. Men and women were forced to work in mines for weeks at a time, often by candlelight in deep shafts. The mercury mines were particularly lethal. During the first years of the colonial era, Peruvian natives died by the hundreds of thousands." And as Hickel noted in his work (mentioned above but re-adding for emphasis), lethal forced labor killed about one third of indigenous workers "every six months" following the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola. Both sources corroborate what is stated by Stannard in his influential work American Holocaust, that the encomienda was a brutal, murderous and outright genocidal system which "had driven many millions of native peoples in Central and South America to early and agonizing deaths." Now, it is apparent from the sources that lethal forced labor, atrocities and mass murders were an integral part of the encomienda system, undermining your argument that there is no historical record of mass murders. You insisting that disease is the main culprit of the decline of indigenous Americans, which is true, does not change this fact, no matter how many times you repeat it. This is also why your assertions about the section of the article in question, that it contains a "systemic bias" and falsehoods, are not accurate, and why I reject your recent edits to the article.

EDIT: some of the sources you list and their assertions will need to be verified. For example, this "Argentine Historian Maria Saenz Quesada" who you claim states "there was no deliberate murder or massacres by the Spaniards" seems absurd on its face, and if this is indeed his position smacks of revisionism at its worst, kind of like Grover Furr who seeks to prove that Stalin committed no crimes or murders at all. Needless to say, there is absolutely no academic consensus that the encomenderos should be exonerated for the horrific crimes of slavery, torture, mutilation, deliberate starvation and mass murder which they oversaw and are now part of the historical record. Not at all.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:28, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm going to reword the first sentence, based on my proposal above, C.J. Griffin'a indication that they're happy with that - Filologo2, you haven't indicated whether you're happy with the wording, but I'm assuming that it moves in the right direction for you too. C.J. Griffin - you seem to have access to some good sources that would further support the assertion that the events have been described as genocide, it would be great if you'd be willing to add them as citations to strengthen this.

Fililogo2, I think that we all agreed that there were some areas that could be developed if sources could be found - I'm still happy to look at and discuss any proposals you might want to come up with. Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 11:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I added some of the sources I mentioned above per your request.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 12:46, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Girth Summit At this stage any edit is an improvement. It can't get any more biased and divergent from academic consensus than it already is. I have included a correct and sourced definition of Black Legend in the relevant sentence (it was bizarrely defined as a "description" of Spanish behavior) - I can't see how anyone can logically oppose this edit in good faith.

Beyond that I can begin to include the vast body of Latin American historiography here in the talk page but I need to know whether you speak Spanish or not and require assistance with translation. The article still refers to "genocide" as a fact and ignores that the majority of Latin American specialist historians reject this description. We are still facing a major case of systemic bias: Ethnically-cleansed white Anglo-America lecturing on the supposed "genocide" in predominantly Mestizo Latin America. I can start with this source - an Argentine newspaper asks four Latin American historians (Felix Luna, Maria Saenz Quesada, Enrique Mayochi and Cortes Conde), on the use of the term "genocide" and they all denounce it as a fallacy. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/cultura/telam-considera-la-conquista-de-america-el-mayor-genocidio-nid746796 Filologo2 (talk) 13:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Filologo2 I refactored your comment slightly to add the indent, and to remove my signature from your ping - it gets confusing when a signature appears in the wrong place, hope that's OK with you.

I haven't reverted the edit as you made it, but to be honest I'm not sure it's ideal. First off, it's ungrammatical - I think you perhaps meant to say 'which created' rather than 'created'? Also, that's a very old source - a book from the 1950s? Surely there's more recent scholarship we could use. Finally, I think we're going too far in describing how the black legend came about here - jumping into the stuff about English and German propaganda is quite confusing for someone reading this for the first time who knows nothing about the subject. An alternative approach might be to return to the original phrasing, but to use a word like 'demonise' rather than 'describe'? I'm not sure whether the source would support that.

With regard to the bias you describe, I'm afraid that we cannot avoid that, as a matter of policy. Wikipedia aims to reflect what modern scholarship says about a subject: if that scholarship is biased, so are we, by necessity; indeed, if the scholarship is flat-out wrong, we have to be flat-out wrong too. So long as mainstream scholars writing in academic presses say that this was a genocide, then we need to reflect that - we aren't qualified to say that their view doesn't count because they're part of a biased Anglo-centric hegemony. However, if different mainstream scholars writing in academic presses say that it was not a genocide, then we should reflect that as well.

I do not read Spanish - I have some French and a little Latin (and I can use Google Translate!), so I can make some sort of sense of Spanish sources, but I wouldn't pretend to be able to read them properly. The newspaper source that you have presented could perhaps be used, but it wouldn't have as much weight as, say, a scholarly article in a peer reviewed journal, or a book published by a university press or other academic publisher. If you're just looking to insert a sentence to the effect that 'Some scholars argue that the Spanish conquest of central and south America was not a genocide', and then provide a couple of translated quotes from these people, I imagine that would be OK, but it would be better to have it from a more robust source. Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 16:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Girth SummitI literally copy pasted it from the relevant article though. Any source from the article which defines the meaning of "Black legend" adequately and succinctly I'm fine with it, if you can word it differently using any of the sources from the relevant article I trust you to do it better than me. So long as it is not defined as a "description of behavior". As to the rest, I know I may be sounding a bit conspirationalist or hyper-nationalist, but this is a real issue. I don't want to engage in a war over soundbites from historians with editors here but I think it would be much more productive for everyone on the talk page to agree what the academic consensus is. What is the historical reality that the vast majority of historians agree on. If we all agree to try to come to a consensus on what that is, we could solve this issue quite fast and the article, although not perfect, would not be as terribly problematic as it is now since it would be aligned to that consensus.Filologo2 (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I assume you mean a Wikipedia article - which one did you copy it from?

I'm not sure how we'd determine whether there is a genuine academic consensus is, but I'll say this - if there are tenured professors of history, publishing books in Oxford University Press calling it a genocide, then I am certain that there is no consensus that it was not a genocide. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

The only way to assert there is a consensus is from a reliable, academic source which says as much. And for the record I'd agree with you that Filologo2's recent additions are problematic, even if it is just a cut and paste from another article (which can be problematic in and of itself, especially if the cut and pasted material is not reliable or unsourced). In fact my own education mentioned absolutely nothing about any consensus that current scholarship has completely invented or at least fomented the idea of a completely fictional Spanish genocide, when peer-reviewed scholarship tells us that while the black legend was cynically used by other European powers to justify opposing the Spanish, it wasn't simply made up out of whole cloth. Horrific atrocities and mass killings did occur, which is what paved the way for the New Laws to begin with. It seems to me that this tendency to completely whitewash Spanish history could be part of revisionist effort which could be linked to the revival of nationalism and Francoism in modern Spain, and a resurgence of right-wing ideology throughout Latin America. Just my personal opinion of course.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin There is no need to cast aspersions or to call me or those academics who you disagree with "Francoists" of "fascists". I personally am left leaning, if you really want to know. I simply believe in portraying history accurately not following an ideological agenda. No one is denying that abuses occurred during the colonial period. The academic consensus - at least the mainstream view - in the Spanish speaking world is that abuses evidently did occur and were widespread (we are talking of the 1500s) - particularly in places like the mines of Potosi - but in no way can they be characterized as a genocide or a conscious attempt to wipe out a people. This view is also supported by a wide range of academics in the English speaking world such as some of those I have already mentioned. And I would like to say that Oxford University carries no more weight than any major university in Latin America. In fact on this topic, I would say it carries less weight, particularly in the light of Anglo-Saxon distortion of Latin American history being an established historical fact and Latin Americans have a wide and representative range of views on the colonial period. I find it quite interesting that the only real genocide in Latin America, the Selknam Genocide of Patagonia engineered and largely perpetrated by the British, is omitted from this article. No talk of "Chancho Colorado" Alexander Mac Lennan paying one British pound for each Indian cadaver and half a pound for the ear of each murdered child.

Regardless, should we perhaps make a list here with citations representing the views of each historian on the question of "Genocide" in Spanish America? I don't see any other way to proceed. I would simply request that we don't dismiss academics as "fascists" on the basis of their native language being Spanish and that we don't consider an academic to represent the pinnacle of objectivity because he happens to be English or American. It smacks of ethnic supremacism and rather characteristic chauvinism which will not be conducive to consensus building. Filologo2 (talk) 23:06, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I would like to know, does any modern historian contradict the (apparent to me) historical consensus that the vast majority of Native Americans who died in the first century of colonization did so from the accidental introduction of old-world diseases? If so who and what does he say exactly on the matter? I would like to see the exact quote. As far as I can see the most quoted estimation is 95% dying from disease.Filologo2 (talk) 11:37, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Filologo2 I don't understand you've arrived at the determination that the consensus, or even the majority view, amongst academics is that it cannot be characterized as a genocide. What we have several sources saying that it was a genocide, and the newspaper quoting some historians saying that it wasn't. Where are the grounds for saying that there is consensus on this?

Regarding Oxford University, no-one has suggested that it carries more weight than Latin American universities. What I said was that Oxford University Press is a very well-regarded academic publisher. You don't have to be at Oxford to publish with them, but they have a very rigorous editorial policy, and books they publish are stringently scrutinized by multiple professors from different institutions prior to publication - you can't just brush it off and say that it's unreliable or biased because it's written in English.

With regard to your final point, I don't understand the relevance with regard to whether or not we describe this in terms of genocide - we reflect the sources, nothing more. If historians call it a genocide, then so do we; if they disagree on that, then we reflect that disagreement. GirthSummit _(blether) 12:01, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

User:Girth Summit Those few English-language academics who use the controversial term "genocide", a term widely rejected by a majority of serious historians, do so in a metaphorical way. They do not allege there was an intentional massacre or attempt to wipe out a people. However, this article takes advantage of this colorful language to not imply but to assert this. How are we going to resolve the matter? Why aren't all the dozens of historians explaining how the term "genocide" is completely incorrect included here? Balance is certainly missing. When a term used for marketing purposes lends itself to misunderstanding, as the term "genocide" certainly does here, it should be clarified otherwise we are intentionally manipulating the reader. And there is no lack of sources to do so. Or do you prefer Wikipedians to believe Spaniards went into the Americas and purposely killed millions of people, something which no serious or credible source claims yet this article continues to assert? Filologo2 (talk) 12:55, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Filologo2 I'm concerned that we're going round in circles here. You keep saying that the consensus is that it wasn't a genocide (or words to that effect), but I'm not seeing any evidence of that - where are the references to back that up? What is your basis for saying that it is used metaphorically? Who are the dozens of historians explaining that stuff, and where are the references to their work - so far we've got a newspaper article with some quotes from four historians, none of whom seem to specialise in this period of history (from what I've seen of their work, they appear to be mainly focussed on 19th and 20th C history). Please can you provide references to support these assertions so that we can move forward? GirthSummit _(blether) 13:13, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Let's see. We are indeed going round in circles. I have indeed provided you plenty of secondary sources citing plenty of specialized historians on this period of history agreeing that the Spanish conquest of the Americas did not involve a genocide, i.e. an intentional eradication or attempt to erradicate a people. The article in its current shape asserts otherwise. It continues to refer to the Spanish conquest of America as the largest genocide in history which the vast majority of historians agree it was not. I have provided secondary sources, from articles indeed. If you want I can provide the page number from the books written by historians but it seems like a rather bad faith attempt to discredit every single historian I have cited for you here. I can cite them for you again or we can agree on a more balanced and neutral opening sentence. Whatever you prefer. Claiming Latin American specialists in Latin American history are not specialized in Latin America is somewhat odd. Filologo2 (talk) 13:06, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Here we have a more balanced and perfectly sourced version in Spanish Wikipedia devoid of Anglo-Saxon Hispanophobic bias.

Disputa sobre el genocidio

Uno de los puntos más polémicos en disputa es la dramática disminución de la población indígena en América, ya señalada por Las Casas. A pesar de que la documentación actual no permite afirmar que el objetivo de la Corona fuera exterminar a los indígenas, la tesis del genocidio en América no ha dejado de tener proponentes en historiadores como Laurette Sejourné. Otro proponente de esta tesis es Miquel Izard de la Universidad de Barcelona, que desde el Boletín Americanista ha tratado de desmontar lo que llama «falacias de la "leyenda apologética y legitimadora"», afirmando que los autores que defienden la existencia de la leyenda negra «escamotean o camuflan el pasado» y adoptan actitudes «racistas, etnocéntricas, ecocidas y machistas», siendo las obras de estos autores un conjunto de «alucinaciones, artificios, engaños, fábulas y mitos». Un síntoma de esta discusión es la guerra de cifras sobre la población precolombina, que oscilan entre los 110 y los 7,5 millones; así las cifras altas son defendidas por aquellos que señalan la importancia del «genocidio» y comportamiento «salvaje» de los conquistadores y las cifras bajas por aquellos que tienden a minimizar el impacto del choque entre ambas civilizaciones.

La historiografía reciente tiende a culpar a las enfermedades traídas por los europeos de la drástica disminución de la población americana, más que a las «matanzas sistemáticas» y las «crueldades infinitas» denunciadas por Las Casas. A pesar de que está claro que la acción violenta de los conquistadores, la política de malos tratos impuesta, la exigencia desorbitada de trabajo y tributos, el desplazamiento masivo de comunidades y el desmoronamiento de los sistemas socioeconómicos tradicionales tuvieron una influencia cierta en la caída de la población, sin duda es la «agresión microbiana», que ya habían descrito los cronistas de la época, la causante de la mayor mortandad. Principalmente la viruela, pero también el sarampión, la gripe, la peste bubónica, la tuberculosis, la malaria o la fiebre amarilla fueron responsables de la muerte de hasta un 97% de la población indígena. De hecho, se ha señalado que, sin la ruptura social que supusieron esas enfermedades, la conquista hubiese sido poco menos que imposible. Sin embargo, no por ignorar los mecanismos de transmisión de estas enfermedades se ha dejado de subrayar la responsabilidad de los conquistadores europeos en su extensión. Tzvetan Todorov lo expresa de la siguiente manera:

Pero se podría decir que no tiene sentido buscar responsabilidades, o siquiera hablar de genocidio en vez de catástrofe natural. Los españoles no procedieron a un exterminio directo de esos millones de indios, y no podían hacerlo. Si examinamos las formas que adopta la disminución de la población, vemos que son tres, y que la responsabilidad de los españoles en ellas es inversamente proporcional al número de víctimas que produce cada una:

1. Por homicidio directo, durante las guerras o fuera de ellas: número elevado, aunque relativamente bajo; responsabilidad directa.
2. Como consecuencia de malos tratos: número más elevado; responsabilidad (apenas) menos directa.
3. Por enfermedades, debido al “choque microbiano”: la mayor parte de la población; responsabilidad difusa e indirecta.
   — Tzvetan Todorov, La conquista de América. La cuestión del otro (1987).

Rohingya persecution in Myanmar (2016–present)

Rohingyas are not indigenous people of Myanmar. They are settlers/outsiders without any historical root/ethnicity of Myanmar. Their language, culture & religion is Bangladeshi. Hence it cannot be kept under a Wikipedia topic for the genocide of indigenous people. This seems to be a part of propaganda by staunch Rohingyas against Myanmar. Rohingyas are actually refugees in Myanmar who started insurgency against local buddhist & were kicked out due to violence. Hence, no islamic nation/umma gave them shelter fearing violent history & terror links. There is still a debate whether Rohingyas are muslim terrorist or terrorised... hence such disputed topic without evidence of indegenosity & ethnicity cannot be kept under the topic for "Indeginous People". There is already separate topic 4r Rohingyas in wikipedia.

On 25 August 2017 The Myanmar government announced that 71 people (one soldier, one immigration officer, 10 policemen and 59 insurgents) had been killed overnight during coordinated attacks by up to 150 insurgents on 24 police posts and the 552nd Light Infantry Battalion army base in Rakhine State. The Myanmar Army stated that the attack began at around 1:00 AM, when insurgents armed with bombs, small arms weapons and machetes blew up a bridge. The army further stated that a majority of the attacks occurred around 3:00 AM to 4:00 AM.[109] The ARSA claimed they were taking "defensive actions" in 25 different locations and accused government soldiers of raping and killing civilians. The group also claimed that Rathedaung had been under a blockade for more than two weeks, starving the Rohingya, and that the government forces were preparing to do the same in Maungdaw.

Source: "Deadly clashes erupt in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state". www.aljazeera.com. Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2017.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people : Bengali Muslims from the region that is now a part of Bangladesh. Further, the term "Rohingya" does not appear in any regional text of this period and much later. That term was adopted by "a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals who were direct descendants of immigrants from Chittagong district [Bengal]" in the 20th-century, states historian Aye Chan.

Source: 1) Aye Chan (Autumn 2005). "The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar)" (PDF). SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research. 3 (2): 396–398. 2) Ashon Nyanuttara (2014). A Study of Buddhism in Arakan. Oo Thein Maung. pp. –17, 19–20, 77–78 with footnote 119, 239–240. ISBN 978-0-615-94044-1.

In 1660, Prince Shah Shuja, the governor of Mughal Bengal and a claimant of the Peacock Throne, fled to Arakan with his family after being defeated by his brother Emperor Aurangzeb during the Battle of Khajwa. Shuja and his entourage arrived in Arakan on 26 August 1660.

Source: 3) Manucci, Niccolò (1907). Storia Do Mogor: Or, Mogul India, 1653–1708. J. Murray.

According to Thant Myint-U, historian and adviser to President Thein Sein, "At the beginning of the 20th century, Indians were arriving in Burma at the rate of no less than a quarter million per year. The numbers rose steadily until the peak year of 1927, immigration reached 480,000 people, with Rangoon exceeding New York City as the greatest immigration port in the world. This was out of a total population of only 13 million; it was equivalent to the United Kingdom today taking 2 million people a year." By then, in most of the largest cities in Burma, Rangoon, Akyab, Bassein and Moulmein, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. All of Burma was officially a Province within the British Indian Empire ('the Raj') from November 1885 until 1937, when Burma became a separate Crown colony within the British Empire. The Burmese under British rule felt helpless, and reacted with a "racism that combined feelings of superiority and fear". Professor Andrew Selth of Griffith University writes that although a few Rohingya trace their ancestry to Muslims who lived in Arakan in the 15th and 16h centuries, most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Source:

4) Selth, Andrew (2003). Burma's Muslims: Terrorists or Terrorised?. Australia: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7315-5437-9. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.196.38.144 (talk) 10:12, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Indigenous peoples of Anatolia

It came to my notice that albeit the region of Anatolia meets this article's thematic criteria (was a case where indigenous people were driven away or exterminated after two millenia-old presence here due to policies of the dominant people who came much later to these parts) nothing about it is mentioned on the article. How comes? I found this absence strange, given how the article lists other similar cases to this. Sure, I can try add one or two things about Anatolia, but thought that, given the sensitivity of the issue, I better ask here first if there are any article-specific criteria that do not permit Anatolia's inclusion, that I may be unaware of? --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 14:55, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

@SilentResident: Which event in Anatolia's history are you referring to, specifically? Jarble (talk) 21:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

There are only a limited number of choices in Anatolia. Greek genocide (1913-1922), Assyrian genocide (1914-1924), and the Armenian Genocide (1914-1923). Dimadick (talk) 10:13, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

That is it. These people were indigenous in these parts for 2.000+ years, and were driven away in the 20th Century due to genocidal policies. Since the present article's scope is about indigenous people's genocides, I was surprised to find any info about Anatolian people here completely missing. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 17:41, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Clearly, by definition the genocides of Armenians/Assyrians/Pontic Greeks would belong here (the peoples might not technically be native but they have relative autochthony vis-a-vis Turks -- as with the Cherokee, who were not technically native to upland Georgia/Carolina etc). But this is actually an overall trend on this page, that most covered cases include only cases of Western or Westernized cultures committing genocide against "less Westernized" (politically incorrectly, "less modernized") non-industrial and often non-agricultural societies -- so it covers various Euro-Christian colonial cases, plus Japan, Indonesia and China, which could be considered Westernized (be they capitalist or communist) state actors. The page entirely lacks examples of genocides of indigenous peoples (a) by non-state actors when those non-state actors are "non-Western" [it has some cases of settler violence in the US], (b) when the victim party is of equal level of "Westernization" as they aggressor, or (c) even when the non-state actor is a industrial state actor committing atrocities against a less centralized non-state entity, they are omitted when the latter has a "Europoid" phenotype -- see the well known case of the Circassian genocide for one of those. The Armenian/East Greek/Assyrian cases are missing, as are the numerous Russian and Soviet demographic "cleansing" episodes in the Caucasus (Circassian genocide, Aardakh, etc.), and in Crimea (Crimean Tatars arrived some 800 years ago or so, assimilating the native populations -- making them more 'native' than Apache who are mentioned under Mexico here) etc. Also, some of the inclusions here are much less well accepted cases than others which could be added : the Great Irish famine and Holodomor are more often called genocidal (and Irish/Ukrainians can be considered indigenous as much as the Cherokee if not more) than many entries here. If the Assyrian genocide is included, the Simele massacre should be noted. --Calthinus (talk) 17:15, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

New section

Taking the meaning of genocide to be destroying culture as well as lives might I suggest adding the Okinawan people to the list of Japanese and earlier Chinese genocide. You can argue the United States of America had a genocide of the Okinawan people for a time as well. Has this been considered yet? “Japan and Okinawa.” Google Books, Google, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3RMHt2iLcCkC&oi=fnd&pg=PT10&dq=japan+and+okinawa&ots=yhRRth_lG4&sig=uS1y9uriLS28yBHNx08mqZQKmF8#v=onepage&q=japan and okinawa&f=false.Joshjensen308 (talk) 23:02, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

okinawa

Hey what do you guys think of adding Okinawa to this list. they fall under the cultural side of genocide. They first became the Ryukyu kingdom with china's allowance and got quickly taken over by Japan after being forced to pay taxes to them for decades. They were really the first colonized nation by Japan after Hokkaido. not only were they taken over by Japan butr when the USA started to occupy Japan they kept Okinawa for years, enforcing american law in every detail. What do you guys think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshjensen308 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 4 October 2019 (UTC)