Christopher Columbus: Propaganda and Genocide

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Christopher Columbus acted as a *vocab friend to the Native Americans when he really just enslaved and killed them; that sparking the start of a genocide. Columbus and the rest of the Europeans stumbling upon the Americas in 1492 was just a start of the events the caused this holocaust, also known as the 500 year war, and the longest holocaust in history. Young Americans today are taught that the Native Americans and European colonist were *vocab friendly, while ?he enslaved and caused much harm to the culture, including nearly killing it off (Stannard). Public Schools teach students that Christopher Columbus did a good thing and find our land, just like Hitler used propaganda to brainwash naive citizens into thinking what he did was a respectable …show more content…

Also, Spanish cut the arms or hands off of Natives who tried escaping, while Nazi’s would shoot any prisoner who tried rebelling or escaping. Indians were forced onto reserved territory and to get there they had to walk thousands of miles, also referred to as the trail of tears, comparable to when the Jews had to walk to different camps, known as the death march (Tinker). George Washington thought the most optimal way to solve the “Indian problem” was to civilize them by forcing them into Christianity and basic skills like reading and writing. The colonist eventually, after forcing them off their own land, wanted a peace treaty, while the Natives rejected, causing more of a dispute that will last even longer (History.com Staff).
Today Approximately one third of true Native Americans are residents of reserves today.There are types of “Indian land, one being allotted lands, which is parts of reservations broken up during the allotment period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; another being restricted status, kind of like private land owned by a Native American; and finally state Indian reservations, which are held by a state specifically Native Americans. The largest reservation is in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, called the Navajo Nation with a population of 300,500 …show more content…

Most Natives live in rural and big cities due to the hopelessness of Indian reservations. This could be a factor that shows racial discrimination is still a problem of today. To qualify as a Native American you must get a CIB, or simply a Certification of Indian Blood, you must have one-fourth Indian in your genes. After so many tragic wars, and violence and enslavement they killed off generations of Native Americans, caused over land. The genocide was sort of a stop and start in waves, it was done mostly by biological warfare, starvation, disease, and enslaving them. Most of the harm done by U.S is masked by faux stories and denial, they would blame the Natives for being too violent or ill. In 1890, the U.S government signed a treaty to put an end to the genocide, but of course that did not stop racial profiling. Today, public schools tend to cover up what really happen, or at least cover up the gruesome details of what the government and people did to a culture. This is also the largest genocide recorded reaching a death toll of 95,000,000 to 114,000,000 within 500 years

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