did the US government commit genocide on the native americans

p The United States Government

And Native American Genocide

There is some question as to whether the United States Government was responsible for committing a deliberate act of genocide in North American during the 18th and 19th Centuries . During the years between the founding of the United States and the end of the 19th century Native Americans were gradually pushed westward , and eventually became restricted to small isolated reservations that were but a part of their original hunting lands . The Native American population was also greatly reduced as a result of

exposure to European diseases such as smallpox and influenza , and malnutrition caused by a change from their traditional diet

The governmental policies of removal and restriction proved to be as deadly to the Native American tribes of the United States the genocides of the 20th century with their policies of complete extermination have been to people of nations such as Rwanda , and Armenia . According to Lewy , the main result of removal policies , the eradication of Native American Cultures , as well as European diseases and starvation was to reduce the Native American population in North American from an estimated 500 million prior to European colonization to just under 250 ,000 by 1900 (Lewy :2004 57

Charges of deliberate genocide against Native Americans by the United States government began in the 1960 's and 1970 's when the American Indian Movement (AIM ) and other Native American rights groups began to draw attention to the plight of Native Americans throughout the United States . Lewy states , that although the exact Native American population prior to European contact is unknown , it is a fact that once European diseases , and removal , and eradication policies began to affect the Native Americans , their population was reduced by about 74

According to Smallbone the region in which policies of removal restriction and forced integration had the most powerful effect were in the states west of the Mississippi (Smallbone : 2006 :4 ) The United States repeatedly signed and broke treaties with Native American tribes and then broke them . Many of these treaties made the Federal government responsible for maintaining Native American land rights , as well as helping the tribes to maintain their culture and their independence

Perhaps the most detrimental policy surrounding Native American Rights was the restriction of Native tribes to reservation lands . This combined with the forced integration of the tribes by sending them to Federal boarding schools virtually destroyed Native American culture (Smallbone : 2006 :7

These policies although they were racist were not the equivalent of genocide . Unlike the Jews and the Rwandans who were killed directly by their oppressors , Native Americans were merely relocated , and restricted to a set region rather than roaming freely throughout the Western United States . Another key way in which this defers from other genocides is the fact that Native Americans were forced to integrate into mainstream society much as other minority groups in the United States . Other groups that have had genocide committed against them have never had the chance to integrate...