Genocide Files: From Pequots to Palestinians, From “Manifest Destiny” to Gaza Riviera

13.02.2025 09:54

CounterPunch

In 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a famous book under the title Why We Can’t Wait. Besides addressing the crime of slavery and the daily indignities endured by Afro-Americans, Dr. King also devoted several pages to examine what may be termed the 16^th-19^th century “clash of civilizations” between European migrants and the 70-million indigenous peoples who were settled in the continent of North and South America. Columbus did not “discover” America – others had been here for tens of thousands of years. What became known as “America” was not “terra nullius”, but actually belonged to hundreds of distinct indigenous peoples, with their own cultures and languages, the “first nations” of the North American continent.

Some ten million Algonquins, Apaches, Cayugas, Cherokees, Cheyennes, Chippewas, Comanches, Coyotes, Crees, Dakotas, Delawares, Hopi, Iowas, Iroquois, Lakotas, Micosukees, Mi’kmaqs, Mohawks, Mohegans, Mojaves, Muscogees, Narragansetts, Omahas, Oneidas, Pawnees, Pequots, Pueblos, Quechans, Saginows, Seminoles, Senecas, Shawnee, Shoshones, Sioux, Spokanes, Squamish, Tlingits, Unangans, Utes, Wichitas, Yuroks, Zunis, etc. lived in the territory now occupied by the United States and Canada.

Dr. King wrote:

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation that tried, as a matter of national policy, to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today, we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”[1]

Indeed, when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1960’s, it was clear to me that in the struggle between cowboys and Indians, the cowboys were the good guys, the Indians the bad guys. It took me many years to realize who was the oppressor and who the oppressed, who the thief and who the victim of murder, spoliation and humiliation.

Has our mentality changed? Are we ready to reject the philosophy of “manifest destiny”? Have we developed our faculty of self-criticism and started to realize the enormity of the crime committed on the indigenous of North and South America? Are we capable to practice Christianity and observe a minimum of humanity toward other peoples? What does America first mean? Does it mean oppression of the rest of the world? What does Trump mean by “Make Amerika Great Again”? Would it not be better to make America loved and respected? Would it not be better for the United States and the rest of the world if the executive orders emanating from the Oval Office were in keeping with the Christian traditions of the United States? Would it not be better to revive the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt and rediscover the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Alas, if we observe how President Donald Trump is acting, I doubt that the rest of the world would consider us “great”. Most civilized people in the world would have reason to fear us and even to hate us. It seems that Trump would practice the motto of Caligula – oderint dum metuant – let them hate as long as they fear[2]. Why change the name of Mount Denali in Alaska to Mount McKinley[3]? Why endorse the on-going Israeli ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Gaza[4] and Palestine?[5] Why deny the Palestinian people their right of self-determination, their right to their homeland[6], where their ancestors have lived for thousands of years? Here too, the roles have been reversed. It is clear that Israel is the occupier and the oppressor. It is clear that the Palestinians are the victims and have been the victims since the Nakba 1947-48. The genocidal war in Gaza did not start on 7 October 2023, but 76 years earlier. But instead of trying to do justice to the long-suffering people of Palestine, President Trump pretends to steal their lands, “transfer” the Palestinians out of their homes and make a Mediterranean “Riviera”[7] for the oligarchs of Israel and the United States. Has the genocide against the First Nations of America already gone into our DNA that we can enthusiastically support ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine?

The “discovery of America”

Every year on 12 October, many in the United States celebrate Christopher Columbus’ adventures. What do we learn in history books about the colonization of North and South America? What do we understand under the term “History”? As Herodotus noted, history-writing, means “inquiry”, a vocation further developed and applied by Thucydides.

Now, did the Europeans come to an empty continent, which they then settled and developed, or were our ancestors more like “migrants” to new frontiers? Let us look at Europe during the “age of discovery”. Our European ancestors were pretty poor, our cities were squalid, overcrowded, unemployment, disease and violence were rife. The 16th, 17th, 18th. 19th century migrants — the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, the French. the Dutch, the Germans, the Poles, the Irish and other “colonizers” — were adventurers, mavericks bent on getting rich fast, followed by simple folk hoping for a new start. The historical fact is that what we know today as North America (the Western hemisphere north of the Rio Grande) was a rich land, ecologically-balanced, populated by some 10 million human beings, minding their own business and posing no threat to Europeans, when in 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on Guanahani, an Island in the Bahamas, thinking that he had found a western route to India. Columbus went on to Cuba and the Antilles, undertook four voyages to the Americas, still thinking that the inhabitants were “Indians”.

Unlike the Spaniards who “Christianised” the indigenous populations and used them as cheap labour, our Anglo-Saxon forebears had little use for the natives, whom they referred to as “devils” and “wolves”, not worth assimilating into our superior society. The Massachusetts Puritans, who also burned witches, pretty much wiped out the native “Indians” who taught them how to survive, while the Reverend John Cotton of the first Church of Boston, and the Reverend Cotton Mather of the Second Church of Boston justified the endeavour as the will of God himself. Deus vult.

In the course of three centuries 98% of the native North American population was not only displaced pursuant to the official policy of “manifest destiny” — it was deliberately exterminated. The founding fathers of the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, Benjamin Franklin (“the design of Providence to extirpate these savages”), George Washington (“beasts of prey”) , John Adams (“blood hounds”), Thomas Jefferson (“merciless Indian savages”), James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson (“the wolf be struck in his den”)– all called for the extinction of the American “Indian”. There is damning evidence that Lord Jeffrey Amherst actually waged germ warfare on the Indigenous by deliberately delivering smallpox-contaminated blankets[8]. These dreadful historical facts lie sleeping in the archives, if anyone cares to consult them. But most historians and the mainstream media only choose to remember “Thanksgiving Day” and the story of Pocahontas.

What we know as Meso-and South America, was also a rich land, densely populated with some 60 million human beings, with magnificent cities like Tenochtitlan (today Mexico City), capital of the Aztec kingdom, with towns, villages, impressive architecture, aqueducts, sports facilities, science, astronomy, art, and vast agricultural lands producing such wonderful foods as avocado (aoacatl in Aztec, originating in the Tehuacán valley near Oaxaca), beans, blueberry, cacao, cashews, cassava, cayenne pepper, chilli peppers, cranberry (native to the region around Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada), gourds, jalapeños, maize (mahiz in Arawak language, commonly known as corn), maple sugar and maple syrup (produced by the Ojibwe and Algonquin peoples of Northeast Canada), passion fruit, peanuts, pecans, pineapple, quinine (tonic water!), sunflowers (helianthus), sweet pimentos, potatoes (papa or patata in Inca language), pumpkin, squash, tapioca, tomatoes (tomatl in Nahuatl language), topinanbour, vanilla, “wild rice” (anishinaabe manoomin, hand-harvested by Anishinaabe peoples in central-north America), zucchini, etc., not to mention that very bad import to Europe — tobacco (from the Arawakan or Taino word referred to by the Dominican friar, later Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas), hitherto unknown in Europe (until introduced in Spain in 1558 by Francisco Fernandez).

As we can read in the writings of Las Casas, our Spanish ancestors brutally aggressed the indigenous population, murdered and enslaved millions of the men, raped their women, and eventually mixed with the survivors to create the “mestizo” society we know in Latin America today. If you travel to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia — you will see the descendants of the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Incas. The former Presidents Toledo of Peru, Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia have Spanish surnames, but they certainly also have as many indigenous forefathers. So much for the “discovery” of the Americas and for the legal fiction of “terra nullius”.

It is worth remembering that, far from being xenophobic, the first nations of the Americas received Cristóbal Colón with remarkable hospitality, as Columbus himself acknowledged in his writings. — The European newcomers, however, were migrants with the sword. Perhaps the only good thing that can be said for Spanish colonization is that the human rights activities of Friar Antonio de Montesinos (“are these not also men”?) and Bartolomé de las Casas before Emperor Charles V led to the adoption of the “New Laws” of 1542[9] which recognized the human nature of the indigenous population and forbade their ill-treatment and enslavement.

The great disputations of Valladolid 1550-51[10] have gone down in history as a milestone in the development of the concept of human rights. Admittedly, Charles’ laws were violated with impunity, which only illustrates the truism that norms and their enforcement are not identical. Yet, if we had no norms, we would be totally subject to the law of the jungle, otherwise known as “might is right”.

I cannot help wondering how our world would look if instead of the Europeans “discovering” America, the Iroquois, the Cree, the Dakotas, the Aztecs, the Incas, had crossed the Ocean to “discover” Europe. Would they have slaughtered the Europeans, as our ancestors slaughtered them?

What Indigenous Names in America tell us

Now that it has become “politically correct” to condemn the discrimination and humiliation of Afro-Americans, will historians and the media finally come to grips with the discrimination, exclusion and aggressions against the First Nations of the Americas? When will the mainstream media recognize the crimes committed against the indigenous, the hundreds of broken treaties, including the treaty of Laramie of 1864 that had recognized the Black Hills of South Dakota as Sioux property in perpetuity, and discarded as soon as gold was found there. There too was the massacre of Wounded Knee. There too the Four Heads of white American Presidents were sculpted on the sacred hills of Mount Rushmore, two of whom were slave owners and all four of whom were “Indian”-haters.[11]

We all agree that the endemic racism against Afro-Americans is criminal, their reduction to slavery and segregated peoples, the lynchings of blacks by the ku klux klan and others. Yet, four centuries of massacres and exploitation of the First Nations of North America have not elicited general outrage or even interest. There is no apology or remorse for the on-going discrimination of Alas, the clash of civilizations during the 16th-20th centuries, when European migrants destroyed the livelihoods of 70 million North and South American Indigenous, continues. And yet, the physical and cultural genocide perpetrated against them remains a taboo subject.

If the people are pulling down monuments of US Confederate officers, will they also pull down statues of the killers of native Americans, including President Andrew Jackson and General William Sherman, and General Philip Sheridan, who coined the phrase “the only good Indian is a dead Indian?

Let us pause and reflect on what indigenous place names tell us: Adirondack, Alabama, Alaska, Algonquin, Allegheny, Apache, Apalachee, Appalachia, Appomattox, Arkansas, Biloxi, Calumet, Calusa, Canada, Caribou, Cayuga, Chatanooga, Chautauqua, Chepanoc, Cherokee, Chesapeake, Cheyenne, Chicago, Chickasaw, Chilliwak, Chinook, Chipola, Chippewa, Chiwawa, Choctaw, Clatsop, Coloma, Colusa, Comanche, Commack, Connecticut, Coquitlam, Cree, Curyung, Cuyahoga, Dakota, Delaware, Denali, Detroit, Erie, Hackensack, Hawaii, Hialeah, Hiawatha, Hopi, Huron, Idaho, Illinois, Inola, Inyo, Iowa, Iroquois, Kalamazoo, Kanab, Kansas, Kelowna, Kenosha, Kentucky, Keweenaw, Klondike, Kuskokwim, Lillooet, Mackinac, Mackinaw, Malibu, Maliseet, Manatee, Manhattan, Manitoba, Mantou, Mattawa, Massachusetts, Meramec, Merrick, Merrimac, Metoac, Miami, Miccosukee, Michigan, Michipicuten, Micmac, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Minnewanka, Mississippi, Missouri, Moab, Moccasin, Modoc, Mohawk, Mohegan, Mohican, Mojave, Monache, Montauk, Muscogee, Muskegan, Muskimgun, Muskoka, Muskwa, Nakota, Nanaimo, Nantucket, Napa, Narragansett, Natchez, Naugatuck, Navajo, Nebraska, Niagara, Norwalk, Ocala, Ohio, Okanagan, Okeechobee, Oklahoma, Omaha, Omak, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Oregon, Orono, Osage, Oswego, Ottawa, Palouse, Pamlico,Panola, Pataha, Pawnee, Pennacook, Pennamaquan, Pensacola, Penticton, Peoga, Peoria, Peotone, Pequot, Pocahontas, Poconos, Pontiac, Potomac, Potosi, Poughkeepsie, Quebec, Rappahannock, Roanoke, Sarasota, Saratoga, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Savannah, Sawhatchee, Scituate, Seattle, Sebago, Seneca, Sequoia, Seminole, Sewanee, Shannock, Shawnee, Shenandoah, Shetucket, Shiboygan, Shoshone, Sicamous, Sioux, Siska, Sonoma, Sowanee, Spokane, Squamish, Squaw, Stawamus, Sunapee, Susquehanna, Swannanoa, Tacoma, Taconic, Tahoe, Takoma, Tallahassee, Tampa, Tecumseh, Tennessee, Texarcana, Texas, Tichigan, Ticonderoga, Tippecanoe, Tomahawk, Topawingo, Topeka, Toronto, Tucson, Tulsa, Tunica, Tuscaloosa, Tuscarora, Tuskegee, Tuya, Utah, Ute, Wabamun, Wabasca, Wabash, Waco, Wadena Walla Walla, Wallowa, Wanakit, Wanchese, Wannock, Wapota, Wasco, Watauga, Watonga, Waupaca, Wausau, Wenatchee, Wenonah, Wichita, Willamette, Winnebago, Winnimac, Winnipeg, Winona, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Yakutat, Yazoo, Yosemite, Yuba, Yukon, Yuma …

What language do these sonorous names speak? What message do they convey to us? Indigenous names are vestiges of the First Nations who lived and prospered in the rich lands of the Americas. Anthropologists estimate that some ten million human beings resided in North America when their lands were “discovered” by the Europeans. This vast continent was theirs, full of villages, wigwams, tipis, laughter and life. Where are these people now? Where have they all gone? Gone and forgotten, blown with the wind and the clouds.

What does Chapultepec, Chichen Itza, Cuba, Machu Picchu, Tikal and Ushuaia tell us? That south of the Rio Grande the continent was populated by millions of human beings, perhaps as many as 60 million. Their land was not terra nullius. We can still recognize the Aztec, the Maya, the Inca, the Quechua in the populations of Central and South America. From the writings of the Dominican friars Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos we have learned that the Arawacs, the Siboneyes and Tainos were massacred and enslaved. How many indigenous lives were deliberately extinguished by the European colonizers ? How many died or disease and deprivation? Ten million? Twenty?

The “Christianisation” of Latin America and the Anglo-Saxon policy of “manifest destiny” constituted perhaps the greatest demographic catastrophe in the long history of mankind,
maybe the 21st century will revitalize these honourable peoples and their millennia of understanding and caring for nature.

Alaska means “great land” in Aleutian
Allegheny means “beautiful stream” in Lenape language
Apalachee means “other side of the river” in Muskogean
Chesapeake means “great shellfish bay” in Algonquin
Chicago means “place of the wild onion” in Algonquin
Cuba means “fertile land” in Arawakan Taino language
Illinois means “ordinary speaker” in Algonquin
Iowa means “sleepy ones” in Algonquin
Kansas means “Southwind” in Sioux language
Kentucky means “meadow” in Shawnee
Manhattan means “island” in Lenape language
Massachusetts means “large hill place” in Algonquin
Mississippi means “big river” in Algonquin
Missouri means “people of the big canoes” in Algonquin
Nebraska means “flat river” in Sioux language
Niagara means “Thundering water” in Iroquois
Ohio means “good river” in Iroquois
Ontario means “beautiful lake” in Iroquois
Ottawa means “trading centre” in Algonquin
Pensacola means “hair-people” in Muskogean
Potomac means “something brought” in Algonquin
Quebec means “straits” or “narrows” in Micmac
Toronto means “meeting place” in Huron
Ushuaia means “deep bay” in Yaghan
Wallowa means “singing water” in Sahaptin language
Winnipeg means “dirty water” in Algonquin
Wyoming means “at the big plains” in Algonquin

Perhaps the new consciousness of the horror of slavery and the oppression of Afro-Americans may open our eyes to the genocide against Native Americans, whom we wrongly call “Indians”, will motivate us to come to grips with the on-going looting of the natural resources of the North and South American Indigenous, acknowledge the gross injustices committed against them and prompt us to consider how to ensure adequate reparation and sustainable rehabilitation.

The bottom line is that the European colonization of the Americas never ended. There was no decolonization process like in Africa or Asia. To this day the Indigenous Peoples of North America continue to live in a form of colonial subjugation, and unlike the peoples of Africa and Asia, the Original Nations of the United States, Canada, Meso- and South America were never restored to independence and prosperity, partly because the Original Nations were victims of physical genocide and partly because the European settlers — actually uninvited migrants — grew so numerous that the Indigenous Peoples became minorities in their own lands, only the indigenous names of the rivers, mountains, lakes, cities and villages remain as testimony of their existence.

Martin Luther King attempted to draw attention to the tragedy of Native Americans. He called it genocide. No effort to soften the blow. Dr. King’s words are tough to hear, but unfortunately it is not a hyperbole. That is perhaps why this aspect of Dr. King’s legacy is systematically ignored by the media, why it is not taught in high schools and universities. I sincerely hope that one day history will give credit to Dr. King for taking up the cause of the indigenous.

Sixty years after Dr. King wrote his indictment, systemic racism against indigenous Americans persists, and many do not forget the signs that used to hang in South Dakota stores – in Arizona near the Navajo “Reservation” and in so many other places in the American West: “No dogs or Indians allowed”[12]. This kind of humiliation is difficult to forget.

Let us hope that politicians listen, recognize the immensity of the crime against the indigenous peoples of North and South America and make an effort to rehabilitate the survivors, giving them at the very least the rights enunciated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. [13]

American “Indians” and Palestinians

The genocide against the First Nations of the Americas is not isolated. Many other genocides have followed. Today we are witnessing it in Gaza and are revolted by President Trump’s shameless proposal to expel the Palestinians and turn Gaza into a real estate paradise for the super rich and their brand new beachfront properties. The cynicism is unparalleled.

The International Court of Justice has issued two advisory opinions concerning Israel and Palestine, the 9 July 2004 Advisory Opinion on the Wall[14], and the 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem[15], in which the Court held:

“that the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful”

“ that the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”

“that the State of Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory”

“ that the State of Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”

“ that all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”

“that international organizations, including the United Nations, are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”

“that the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly, which requested this opinion, and the Security Council, should consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

As an American citizen, I expect the President of the United States to abide by this advisory opinion and to cease giving military, political, economic, diplomatic, and propagandistic support to a genocidal state. As Americans we must all stand up and say “not in our name”! If we do not protest, we are complicit in the genocide.

The pending case before the ICJ South Africa v. Israel [16], which Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Lybia, Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain, Turkey have joined, is probably the most important case that the ICJ has ever had before it. Either we are civilized or we are not. The authority and credibility of the ICJ and the United Nations itself are on the line.

Whoever has read the submissions of South Africa and compared them with the responses provided by Israel realizes that the crime of genocide has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. The ICJ has no option but to issue a judgment confirming that Israel has perpetrated genocide, and that the issue of “intent” has been established. It is a continuation of the Nakba[17], a continuation of the Zionist dream of taking the entire territory for the Israelis and expel the native Palestinians, as if they were not human, as if they did not matter, as if they had no rights. Sound familiar? The indigenous of America were treated the same way – pushed back, exterminated, spoliated, forgotten.

On 21 November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu[18] and his former Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant because of their responsibility in crimes against humanity under article 7 of the Rome Statute. What has President Trump done? Impose sanctions on the ICC[19] and pompously receive Netanyahu in the White House[20]. We are confronted with an open rebellion against international law and morals. Both Trump and Netanyahu are guilty of the crime, both should be isolated in the civilized world. For that, however, we need a different media narrative, we must turn away from the fake news, fake history, fake law and fake diplomacy that we get from the mainstream media on a daily basis. We must demand ethics in government.

Again, as Dr. King wrote in his book Why we can’t wait, our ancestors committed genocide against the First Nations of America. Today America is complicit in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. Not only Donald Trump, but already Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Has the genocide virus really entered our DNA?.

Selected Bibliography

Bartolomé de las Casas, Brief History of the Devastation of the Indies, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992; Castro, Daniel. “Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism.” Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007. David Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford University Press, 1992. Richard Drinnon, Facing West, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997; Frederick Hoxie (ed.) Encyclopedia of North American Indians, in particular the entry “Population: Precontact to Present”, pp. 500-502 by Russell Thornton. Carl Waldman’s Atlas of the North American Indian , New York, 1985. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America, Chappel Hill, 1975. Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, Cambridge 2007. R. W. van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire, Oxford 2010. Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy 1983-1812, Michigan State University Press, 1967. Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, Penguin 2010, pp. 16-24. Ward Churchill, Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Colonization. San Francisco, City Lights Books, 2002. Tamara Starblanket, Suffer Little Children, Clarity Press, Atlanta 2019. Martin Luther King, Why we can’t wait (1964), New York: New American Library (Harper & Row). ISBN 0451527534, pp. 118-9.

Ilan Pappe, La Propagande d’Israel, Investig’Action, 2016. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, One World Publications, 2006.
Professor Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas, Geneva School of Diplomacy

Notes.

[1] Why we can’t wait, p. 141, see also an earlier edition (New American Library, Signet Book, New York, p.120)https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/dr-king-spoke-out-against-the-genocide-of-native-americans/

[2] Suetonius, https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Suetonius4.php

[3] https://apnews.com/article/trump-denali-mount-mckinley-alaska-2fbff88e1845e066a65cbabfa17284ae

[4] Norman Finkelstein, Gaza, University of California Press, Oakland, 2018.

[5] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/17/a-rebellion-against-law-and-civilization-genocide-and-its-accomplices/

US Airman Aaron Bushnell’s Self-Immolation Outside the Israeli Embassy In Washington D.C.

[6] https://www.alfreddezayas.com/Articles/crimlawforum.shtml “The Right to the Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia” Criminal Law Forum, vol 6, (1995) pp 257-314. Alfred de Zayas “Forced Population Transfer” in Wolfrum (ed.) Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Vol. IV, 2012.

[7] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/05/politics/trump-gaza-takeover-analysis/index.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-s-gaza-riviera-plan-is-the-most-outlandish-idea-in-the-history-of-us-middle-east-peacemaking/ar-AA1yqLuu

[8] https://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html

[9] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/bartolome-de-las-casas/new-laws/71F9F9D9FAC6C109939340CDD0CD6558

[10] https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/valladolid-debate-rights-indigenous-people

[11] https://blog.nativehope.org/six-grandfathers-before-it-was-known-as-mount-rushmore. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/theodore-roosevelt-the-only-good-indians-are-the-dead-indians-oN1cdfuEW02KzOVVyrp7ig. Le Courrier de Genève “Sacré mont Rushmore”, 2 août 2012.https://www.startribune.com/the-real-history-of-mount-rushmore/388715411/

[12] https://www.hcn.org/issues/49.17/opinion-racism-against-native-americans-persists. https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/archive/the-story-has-another-chapter-first-indigenous-peoples-day-observed/article_ef115dbe-b3b4-596e-9e35-7b9b95f5f112.html

https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2020/06/22/in-gallup-surrounded-by-the-navajo-nation-a-pandemic-crosses-paths-with-homelessness-hate-and-healers/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-nov-02-na-trailmix2-story.html

[13] https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html

[14] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/131

[15] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186