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While that may be true, it’s only part of the situation here. Residential schools in Canada were part of a system by the gov of Canada to eliminate/assimilate t

While that may be true, it’s only part of the situation here. Residential schools in Canada were part of a system by the gov of Canada to eliminate/assimilate the First Nations people. Many argue this was genocide.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
The slash between "eliminate" and "assimilate" is doing a lot of work. It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". You're right regarding the history, of course. Also sadly, one has a way of turning into the other. Well, both are sad anyway.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". “Killing a people” is genocide. “Killing people” is murder, mass murder if it is lots of people. The latter is sometimes part of the mechanism by which the former is achieved, but there aren’t “two different meanings of ‘genocide’” involved.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    > “Killing a people” is genocide. But people do change their identities all the time. And sometimes the destruction of one identity leads to the creation of a new one. This has been a key part of all nation-building exercises. It is a purpose of education and mass-media. Is the unification of tribes, the destruction of difference, necessarily "genocide"? Also, if you can speak of the "death of a people", surely you can also speak of a "birth"? What is the source material of the new group? A grouping is an abstract concept. Individual people have a right to exist, but do abstract groups, just because we anthropomorphize them? Any adjective is an abstract grouping of all nouns to which it'd apply.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > But people do change their identities all the time. People die all the time, and its not murder. A deliberate campaign to kill a people is genocide. A people dieing by processes that don’t involve a deliberate campaign is not genocide.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      The attempted unification of tribes by removing their identity is different than unification. Unification is only so if whatever happens is a joint proposal of some sort
      - SZJX 5y ago
        This distinction sounds quite contrived to me. Surely you could see that, in most cases throughout the history, when a united identity emerges out of several different tribes/groups whatsoever, there would be a leading group that exerted greater influence either by force or by (economic etc.) strength. Seldom is the case that all tribes decided that they were absolutely equal and would form a joint entity with the same amount of voluntariness from each side.
        brailsafe 5y ago
        I don't think you'd need absolute equality, influence, or perfect agreement, you'd just need it to facilitate somewhat voluntary cultural diffusion to decrease the level of conflict. In the context of the thread, it's historically accurate that this was already present in some ways during the centuries preceding Canada and the US' founding, but fell apart quite dramatically.
  - kyralis 5y ago
    I suspect you'll find relatively few people who will use "genocide" to refer to the eradication of a culture without concurrent mass killing of the members of that culture.
    - maximilianburke 5y ago
      I think the most notable genocides have involved murder, but that doesn't mean they all have. Look at what is happening to the Uyghur people in China; it appears to be more of an operation to destroy their culture and identity than to slaughter the people, at least at the moment.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > I think the most notable genocides have involved murder, They usually do, but sometimes the overt murder stops while the genocide continues. If, and this is debatable, an endpoint could be drawn for the Native Ameeican Genocide in the US, its definitely long after outright killing based on being a Native not assimilated into the White society stopped being an organized practice.
        maximilianburke 5y ago
        I totally agree.
      - SZJX 5y ago
        This is also why the current definition by some western governments/parliaments of what's happening there as "genocide" has credibility issues in some eyes. If everybody suddenly agreed that "genocide" means "systematic attempt at cultural assimilation" then fine (would also mean that such "genocides" have been taking place all the time, since group identities disappear and reappear in an endless ebb and flow, maybe not so much in the modern world with all these nation borders, but much more commonly throughout the history), but just as this chain of comment reveals, 1. a more universally accepted term (also in e.g. the Canadian government's own report) would be "cultural genocide" and seldom would people use "genocide" to mean something without actual mass murdering 2. even the idea of "cultural genocide" is to some extent subject to debate.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide? But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state? (Interestingly, little would be so likely to cause such a shared identity to come into existence, as exactly this kind of shared threat.)
    - melolife 5y ago
      No, because it depends on the executioner's intention.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide? Yes. > But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state? No, acts directed at the extermination of a people, not that incidentally cause it, are genocide. You’d still be committing mass-murder-but-not-genocide, not that the distinction is likely to be more than technically significant, unless you are a acting in a context so as to not render mass murder an international crime but only one subject to local jurisdiction. (Genocide is universally subject to universal jurisdiction, while mass murder requires special additional circumstances to rise to an international crime — either a war crime or crime against humanity.) And when mass killing does rise to genocide, its not “instead of” being mass murder, but “in addition to”. Same with deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, enslavement and other “act based” crimes against humanity when done as part of a mechanism aimed at destroying a people. The offenses are cumulative, not alternative.
      - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
        So then the act rises to this special tier because of the belief, in the mind of the actor, that the victims believe themselves to belong to a common group. And the goal, to the actor, is not so much killing, as it is the destruction of the belief in each victim's mind, that they belong to the group. The destruction of the body and mind holding the belief is just a means to this end. This is all very strange.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

The slash between "eliminate" and "assimilate" is doing a lot of work. It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". You're right regarding the history, of course. Also sadly, one has a way of turning into the other. Well, both are sad anyway.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". “Killing a people” is genocide. “Killing people” is murder, mass murder if it is lots of people. The latter is sometimes part of the mechanism by which the former is achieved, but there aren’t “two different meanings of ‘genocide’” involved.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  > “Killing a people” is genocide. But people do change their identities all the time. And sometimes the destruction of one identity leads to the creation of a new one. This has been a key part of all nation-building exercises. It is a purpose of education and mass-media. Is the unification of tribes, the destruction of difference, necessarily "genocide"? Also, if you can speak of the "death of a people", surely you can also speak of a "birth"? What is the source material of the new group? A grouping is an abstract concept. Individual people have a right to exist, but do abstract groups, just because we anthropomorphize them? Any adjective is an abstract grouping of all nouns to which it'd apply.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > But people do change their identities all the time. People die all the time, and its not murder. A deliberate campaign to kill a people is genocide. A people dieing by processes that don’t involve a deliberate campaign is not genocide.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    The attempted unification of tribes by removing their identity is different than unification. Unification is only so if whatever happens is a joint proposal of some sort
    - SZJX 5y ago
      This distinction sounds quite contrived to me. Surely you could see that, in most cases throughout the history, when a united identity emerges out of several different tribes/groups whatsoever, there would be a leading group that exerted greater influence either by force or by (economic etc.) strength. Seldom is the case that all tribes decided that they were absolutely equal and would form a joint entity with the same amount of voluntariness from each side.
      - brailsafe 5y ago
        I don't think you'd need absolute equality, influence, or perfect agreement, you'd just need it to facilitate somewhat voluntary cultural diffusion to decrease the level of conflict. In the context of the thread, it's historically accurate that this was already present in some ways during the centuries preceding Canada and the US' founding, but fell apart quite dramatically.
- kyralis 5y ago
  I suspect you'll find relatively few people who will use "genocide" to refer to the eradication of a culture without concurrent mass killing of the members of that culture.
  - maximilianburke 5y ago
    I think the most notable genocides have involved murder, but that doesn't mean they all have. Look at what is happening to the Uyghur people in China; it appears to be more of an operation to destroy their culture and identity than to slaughter the people, at least at the moment.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > I think the most notable genocides have involved murder, They usually do, but sometimes the overt murder stops while the genocide continues. If, and this is debatable, an endpoint could be drawn for the Native Ameeican Genocide in the US, its definitely long after outright killing based on being a Native not assimilated into the White society stopped being an organized practice.
      - maximilianburke 5y ago
        I totally agree.
    - SZJX 5y ago
      This is also why the current definition by some western governments/parliaments of what's happening there as "genocide" has credibility issues in some eyes. If everybody suddenly agreed that "genocide" means "systematic attempt at cultural assimilation" then fine (would also mean that such "genocides" have been taking place all the time, since group identities disappear and reappear in an endless ebb and flow, maybe not so much in the modern world with all these nation borders, but much more commonly throughout the history), but just as this chain of comment reveals, 1. a more universally accepted term (also in e.g. the Canadian government's own report) would be "cultural genocide" and seldom would people use "genocide" to mean something without actual mass murdering 2. even the idea of "cultural genocide" is to some extent subject to debate.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide? But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state? (Interestingly, little would be so likely to cause such a shared identity to come into existence, as exactly this kind of shared threat.)
  - melolife 5y ago
    No, because it depends on the executioner's intention.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide? Yes. > But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state? No, acts directed at the extermination of a people, not that incidentally cause it, are genocide. You’d still be committing mass-murder-but-not-genocide, not that the distinction is likely to be more than technically significant, unless you are a acting in a context so as to not render mass murder an international crime but only one subject to local jurisdiction. (Genocide is universally subject to universal jurisdiction, while mass murder requires special additional circumstances to rise to an international crime — either a war crime or crime against humanity.) And when mass killing does rise to genocide, its not “instead of” being mass murder, but “in addition to”. Same with deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, enslavement and other “act based” crimes against humanity when done as part of a mechanism aimed at destroying a people. The offenses are cumulative, not alternative.
    - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
      So then the act rises to this special tier because of the belief, in the mind of the actor, that the victims believe themselves to belong to a common group. And the goal, to the actor, is not so much killing, as it is the destruction of the belief in each victim's mind, that they belong to the group. The destruction of the body and mind holding the belief is just a means to this end. This is all very strange.