Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide In Native American History By Raphael Lemkin

The act of genocide carried out by a group’s oppressors characterizes itself in the intimate knowledge the oppressor has of the group’s social, cultural, and political institutions. Raphael Lemkin describes genocide as an act of anti-sociology where the perpetrator destroys a group’s societal institutions to destroy them in whole or in part. This destruction is described by Lemkin as an anti-sociology because of its targeting of all aspects of a group’s societal institutions: political, social, cultural, economic, biological, physical, religious, and moral. (Lemkin, Chapter IX: Section 2). Genocide destroys a group’s social, individual, political, and cultural connections as demonstrated by the Armenian and Native American genocides where

Legislators in California created the “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” in 1850 which completely eroded any chances for economic growth amongst the Yuki. In “California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History,” Madley states that between 1850 to 1863, “California Indians could legally be taken and forced to become unpaid servants.” (Madley, 312) Not only did this include many children, but it led to mass abductions as white settlers scrambled to abuse free labor. Ultimately, this contributed to systemically eroding the Yuki population by passing an act that eliminated all their political and economic freedom. Just like how Lemkin mentions food discrimination based on race, the white settlers also affected the availability of food and resources for the Yuki drastically. In the same text, Madley says that the stock grazing that white settlers engaged in “destroyed traditional Yuki food sources while denying them access to what remained.” (Madley, 314) Consequently, the settlement policies, mass murders, and abductions led to the genocide of the Yuki and erased much of their culture. Cultural genocide was also committed toward indigenous Native Americans in the form of boarding schools. In “American Indian Boarding Schools in the United States: A Brief History and Their Current Legacy,” Lajimodiere says that the purpose of boarding schools was to assimilate American Indians and sever their connections to their family and culture. (Lajimodiere, 257) This is a form of cultural genocide because the US wanted to completely erase Native American culture to assimilate them into American society and this greatly contributed to the erasing of indigenous culture and created generational trauma. They were forced to give up their language and religion for basic