Following the grim discovery of mass graves from Catholic-run schools for indigenous children, churches across Canada are being torched to the ground. Instead of the liberal government of Justin Trudeau harshly condemning the attacks, however, it has sent a weak and passive message to the arsonists.

There is no doubt that the history of Aboriginal children, physically removed from their parents and forced to attend state-run residential in Canada from the 1880s until 1996, is an appallingly tragic one. Inside of the Catholic schools, an estimated 150,000 attendees were indoctrinated with the new social and cultural values of the dominant Euro-Christian nation. Over the years, many of the children were sexually abused, tortured and even murdered in these “central training industrial schools,” criminal actors in what can be best described as the cultural genocide of an entire race of people.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada put out a lengthy report on the findings, as well as its recommendations for addressing the grievances. Yet for whatever reason, the Canadian media shied away from the story, possibly because it was too keenly aware exactly how complicit the government was in the egregious acts. Could that be the reason that not a single person has been put on trial for these crimes against humanity? Whatever the case may be, last month the suppressed news exploded to the surface like a volcano after nearly 1,000 unmarked graves were discovered on the territory of a former residential school in Saskatchewan province.

As a result of the horrific revelations, which have been an open secret among journalists for many years, a proverbial bomb has exploded in the lap of the Catholic Church as dozens of churches in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have suffered arson attacks, while many more have been vandalized.

17th Catholic Church burned in Canada. https://t.co/WtI0NgBZG6

— Xavier1017 (@Xavier10171) July 10, 2021

Equally problematic, however, has been the tepid and late response from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party to these acts of wanton violence. Although the attacks on Catholic churches in Canada have been happening since around mid-June, Trudeau waited until July 2 to give his first comments on them. And those comments failed to carry the necessary ring of authority that lets the perpetrators understand in no uncertain terms that acts of arson would not be tolerated.

“It is unacceptable and wrong that acts of vandalism and arson are being seen across the country, including against Catholic churches,” Trudeau said, in remarks that amount to little more than a slap on the wrist to the perpetrators.

“I understand the anger that’s out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic Church,” the Prime Minister continued. “It is real, and it’s fully understandable, given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of and engaging ourselves to do better as Canadians.”

When the moment called for a firm denunciation against arson, which ranks as one of the gravest crimes as it subjects a large swath of the population to grave danger, Trudeau provided guarded milquetoast criticism, which have done nothing to prevent the criminal acts from reoccurring, it should be noted. Moreover, such a kid gloves response will be replicated by other state officials, eager to trumpet the official line.

Needless to say, when Harsha Walia, the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in a tweet “Burn it all down” in response to news that two more churches were torched in British Columbia (and without any punishment from Twitter to date, by the way), the conservative response came fast and furious. Critics implored their audiences to imagine the government’s response had a Muslim mosque, for example, suffered from such a barbaric attack. The predictable reaction from the government would be – correctly – to label those acts as “hate crimes.”

So Gerry, defending the “burning churches is cool” crowd?

— Terry Glavin 格立文 (@TerryGlavin) July 6, 2021

Terry Glavin, a columnist for National Post, took issue with Walia’s despicable call for violence, and found himself ridiculed by none other than Gerry Butts, who served as the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from November 4, 2015 until his resignation in 2019.

In response to Glavin’s question if burning down churches “is cool,” Butts responded, “No Terry, it is not. Though it may be understandable.” It seems that attacks on Christian churches simply do not fall under the category of “hate crimes.”

Here we have, yet again, Canadian Liberals, in truly selective fashion, finding ways to justify acts of violence as a form of protest against historic crimes. This very same strange proclivity for denouncing law and order more than the initial crime itself was first popularized in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, which saw one liberal run state after another allow the mob to run wild.

In the city of Seattle, an entire city block was declared an autonomous “police free zone,” which lasted right up until the moment people started getting killed; in Portland, Oregon, the incompetent mayor, Ted Wheeler, denied police the use of CS tear gas after a protester group filed a complaint. Portland police, who have had everything including Molotov cocktails hurled at them, said it was their last form of non-lethal methods for confronting the crowds; in St. Louis, Mark and Patricia McCloskey brandished firearms and pointed them at a group of protesters who trespassed onto their property. Last month, under threat of felony firearm charges, the couple pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges, yet was still required to surrender their firearms.

Now these same mindless liberal tendencies, first baked in the American madhouse, are being exported abroad to other Liberal hotspots. Canada, with spineless and spiritless Trudeau at the helm, has been an enthusiastic student of these decaying ways. Yes, the violation of human rights is very serious business, but to allow the passions of the mob to run wild as a form of “reconcilitation” is a recipe for the complete breakdown of society. Meanwhile, there are already definite warning signs that the American ‘woke’ mentality has moved across the ocean where it is now taking root in England and Western Europe.

It is the prediction here that the West is on the cusp of a massive right-wing backlash from these reckless liberal policies that refuse law and order its rightful place in the political establishment. Whether that backlash will wear the jackboots on cobblestone brand of fascism is anybody’s guess, but at this point it’s either a return to ‘strong conservative values’ or the complete self-destruction of the Western nations, whose fate will be determined by the destructive mob.

Ugly truths which some had preferred be kept in the dark have been pulled into the light of day as a mass grave of 215 children was discovered this month in Kamloops BC using ground penetrating radar.

The controversial find has sent shockwaves through the world Community and resulted in official calls by UN human rights experts that investigations be undertaken by both the UN and Holy See into these and other atrocities committed by the Canadian government whose Catholic Church-controlled Federal Residential School processed 150 000 First Nations children in 130 schools between 1831-1970.

Many of these children were heartlessly ripped from their homes and prevented from either speaking their native languages, seeing their families or practicing their customs as part of a multi-generational assimilation program to break the “culture of the savages” as outlined in explicit detail by Canada’s founding father and arch racist John A. Macdonald.

The UN human rights experts called on June 4 for the full implementation of all recommendations of the 2008-2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which released a 2015 final report covering the cultural genocide committed on Canada’s First Nations’ by the Federal Government and Catholic Church. During the commissions seven-year study, it was revealed that there were 3200 confirmed child fatalities (yet no records existent of causes of deaths) while former TRC Chair Murray Sinclair has concluded that the real number was closer to 6000. Among their extensive interviews with First Nations communities, the Commission found tens of thousands of reports of torture, sexual violence and other criminal abuse committed by overseers of the residential school system.

This is obviously embarrassing for a nation which has grown accustomed to “enlightened” virtue signaling often being the first to condemn alleged cases of government-sanctioned genocide and human rights abuses against nations like Libya, Syria and most recently China. The consequences of Canada’s liberal self-righteous condemnation of other nations’ bad behavior to their minority groups has resulted in Canada’s support for acts of war such as sanctions, spreading misinformation which often ignores the role of western intelligence agencies at the heart of many of the operations- especially across Africa and the Middle East- and has even led to the outright bombing of nations back to the stone age with the full backing of liberal imperialists among Canada’s power structure.

When such paragons of liberal enlightenment like Prime Minister Trudeau cry crocodile tears over the abuses committed against the First Nations over the decades- and the current mass grave situation is no exception- it is often undertaken with a fair dose of misdirection and fallacy. For instance, the language heard by virtue signalling politicians implies that these injustices are a thing of the past and the new “normal” involves a hypersensitivity and respect for First Nations.

However, evidence shows a very different story, as First Nation families continue to be ripped apart with over 52% of Canadian children in foster care being indigenous and with suicide rates among natives 3x higher than the national average.

Across Canada’s reserves, states of government-enforced stagnation and isolation have been maintained for the past 50 years which has deprived these minority groups of any genuine economic development under a modern “human flagpole” policy. This social engineering program dubbed officially the “Arctic Re-Allocation Project” was innovated between 1952-1958 and saw hundreds of First Nations family sent back to “their natural ecosystems” in the Arctic despite the fact that they had assimilated into the industrial economic paradigm for several generations and had forgotten many of their hunting-gathering skills resulting in many deaths. This program was more broadly adopted when the assimilation regime was ended in the 1970s and a new manipulative policy befitting a post-industrial paradigm was imposed which I described in a recent article on Eco Colonialism.

To this day, 61 native communities have no access to clean water and no federal regulatory protection on infrastructure.

A Human Rights Watch representative commenting: “If you are anywhere else in Canada and you turn on the tap, then you are protected by safe drinking water regulations. If you live on reserve, no such regulations exist. There are no safe drinking water protections.”

Indigenous communities find themselves often adrift with no sense of future and no economic opportunities suffering 3 times more infant mortalities than the national average, 11% of all opioid deaths (despite only accounting for 2.6% of the population), and 47% of native children living in poverty. Inuit communities suffer the worst statistics with 11 times more suicides than the national average. Up until last year, BC hospitals still maintained a “birth alert” registry to keep tabs on all native families that might be a risk to their children.

While it is nice that a $33 million registry was approved to track down other cases of abuse- much of which will be directed to families directly impacted by the Kamloops abuses, the federal government is showing its true colors by battling thousands of First Nations victims in court who are defending the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals ruling that each of the 50 000 victims are entitled to $40 000 compensation each who had been taken from their homes and did not receive welfare protection.

The facts show that the injustices of the past have not disappeared, but merely changed forms over the past decades and continue to distort and traumatize in lesser understood modes through the present day. Will the ultimate truth and justice be revealed through the UN or Vatican’s participation in a serious inquiry into the past and present crimes of the Canadian government or will blind eyes continue to be turned as past skeletons are kept in their unmarked graves?

The author can be reached at canadianpatriot1776@tutanota.com

The recent discovery of an indigenous mass grave in Canada bearing the remains of 215 children, is yet another reminder of colonial impunity. Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest of many schools in Canada run by the government and the Catholic Church, which participated in the practice of separating indigenous children from their communities and families, in a bid to assimilate the younger generations to the settler-mainstream society. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into these schools; over 4,100 have been reported dead or missing. From malnutrition, medical neglect, to sexual abuse, the crimes were covered up.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has come under criticism from indigenous leaders for failing to move beyond symbolic language of reconciliation. While the government pointed towards the Truth and Reconciliation report, Trudeau implied that the lengthy research process was partly due to the various partnerships and collaborations involved. “If it were only done by ministers, if it were only done by Ottawa, to solve these challenges, it might have been done long ago, but it would have been done wrong,” he stated.

A thriving colonial political supremacy should have been blamed for the stalling, as well as the Canadian government’s reliance on symbolic gestures as opposed to committed action to locate the missing indigenous children. To merely state, in the wake of the mass grave discovery, “We have committed as a government to be there for reconciliation, but also to be there for truth and that is an important step. So yes, we will be there to work with communities on the things they need and on the things we all need to know,” is not indicative of a government’s resolve to aid the process of Canada’s indigenous collective memory, let alone establish culpability and accountability for the historical atrocities.

Between 2007 and 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission embarked upon a mission to gather testimonies and accounts pertaining to the Residential Schools which targeted indigenous children. In the span of six years, the commission gathered historical accounts from over 6,500 witnesses, while the Canadian government presented over 5 million records to the Commission. In December 2015, the Commission presented its report, along with recommendations for the government to embark upon the reconciliation process. Prominent among the recommendations was the importance of “constructive actions on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism.”

Yet Trudeau’s rhetoric indicated no reference to the colonial cultural genocide which established control over indigenous lands and peoples. The justification for the residential schools targeting indigenous children was rooted in white supremacy. As Canada’s first Prime Minister John A Macdonald in 1883 declared, the policy was that children should be removed from their parents and “the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

Canada’s recent discovery not only alludes to the existence of other mass graves in the country. Additionally, it also sheds light on the global colonial legacy and how the military empire expanded through settler-colonialism and exploitation of indigenous lands – the latter hindered by the presence of the indigenous.

While the UN Human Rights Office has called for an investigation into the deaths of indigenous children in Canada, it has avoided mentioning the ramifications of colonialism. “Lack of exhaustive clarification and access to truth and redress for what happened during this dark period compounds this,” UN spokeswoman Marta Hurtado stated. At an international level, the organisation purportedly responsible for protecting human rights is still deeply entrenched in safeguarding the historical colonial legacies, hence the refusal to politicise human rights, lest the struggle for collective memory, which is common to all indigenous peoples, dent the structure which has served the colonial powers so well until now.

By Raul DIEGO

Buried deep in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2015, section 3003 calls for the expeditious facilitation of a land exchange agreement between Resolution Copper Mining, LLC and the United States government to create one of the largest and deepest copper mines in the country, spanning nearly 11,000 square miles of national forest terrain and penetrating 7,000 miles into beneath the surface of the earth.

The land swap specifically targets approximately 2,500 acres that are not already owned by the mining concern and which rest inside Apache hallowed ground known as Oak Flat in the Tonto National Forest in central Arizona. Considered sacred by the Apache and other First Nation peoples who still use the land they call Chich’il Bildagoteel for important ceremonies, food, and a vital link to their heritage, Oak Flat has been at the center of a decades-long battle between the San Carlos Apache Tribe and Resolution Copper, comprised of extraction industry behemoths Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Closed to mining activities by President Eisenhower in 1955, Oak Flat has since flourished as a significant habitat for wildlife, including several endangered species of fish, snakes, and birds, as well as a popular campground and world-renowned rock climbing destination. Reaffirmed in the early ‘70s the protective regulations have nevertheless been incessantly targeted by UK-based Rio Tinto, whose lobbying efforts to obtain burrowing rights to the land have been rebuffed 13 times since.

In 2014, John McCain – the largest recipient of Rio Tinto political contributions in Congress that year ­– inserted the aforementioned rider in the 2015 NDAA, effectively reversing 66 years of environmental protection law and betraying his own history of advocating for indigenous rights as a ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs in 1989, when he led a Republican minority in the fight for the religious freedom of First Nations and the protection of sacred lands.

More than 30 years later, as President Trump leaves office, his administration looks to finish this act of duplicity initiated by his biggest political enemy in yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy that runs through the American political system and pervasive history of broken treaties and disenfranchisement of Native peoples.

Rushing into destruction

The U.S. Forest Service will release the final version of the environmental analysis for the Resolution Copper Project and Land Exchange in three days’ time and a full year ahead of schedule as a result of pressure from the Trump administration, according to local officials.

Members of the San Carlos Apache Nation have been camping out at Oak Flat since January 2020 as part of their continued effort to halt the mining project. Tribal member Wendsler Nosie Sr, interviewed by The Guardian in November described the urgency of their plight as the “fourth quarter with two minutes left in the game,” adding that Trump’s move to push the approval process forward by a year meant they now only “have one minute left.”

Oak Flat is just one of several large-scale mining and energy projects the outgoing administration is looking to approve before the proper assessments and consultations with affected populations are made. Other projects include a lithium mine in Nevada; a helium extraction project in Utah and an oil and gas drilling venture in Alaska, among others.

Virtually every one of these projects is facing opposition from Native tribes, whose very survival is threatened by the relentless advance of the extraction industry. That industry not only represents a catastrophic menace to their sources of clean water and food but also poses a direct risk to their safety as the proliferation of so-called “man-camps” or the temporary labor sites, plays a central role in the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women.

In the case of Oak Flat, Native communities have found an unlikely ally in their fight against Rio Tinto and BHP. A British government pension fund group with a stake in both companies has requested more information from their subsidiary, Resolution Copper, as to the potential impacts the proposed mine would have on Native American cultural and religious sites.

Ally or cover?

Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) Chairman, Doug McMurdo, has voiced his opposition to the mining method Resolution Copper is expected to use in Oak Flat, should the project move forward. The head of the £300 Billion pension investment fund echoes the concerns of the indigenous communities who oppose the “block caving” method planned, which consists of blasting beneath the surface to extract the copper ore through tunnels and inevitably cause the collapse of the rock above, taking ancient burial grounds, petroglyphs, and medicinal plants with it.

LAPFF has advocated for communities affected by Rio Tinto’s irresponsible mining practices in other parts of the world as well. Last year, Rio Tinto faced an official inquiry from the Australian government after the company blew up 46,000-year old caves in Western Australia that were part of the country’s Aboriginal heritage. McMurdo participated in the parliamentary inquiry that found Rio Tinto culpable of knowingly destroying the Aboriginal cultural heritage site. The LAPFF Chair pointed to the conclusions as the reason why the fund “has increased its call for companies to engage meaningfully with affected communities. The fact that Rio Tinto’s senior management had not reviewed a critical report about the site itself calls into question the company’s governance and oversight processes.”

But, at the end of the day, the question arises whether such remonstrations are enough to curtail the irreparable damage the extraction industries have done and continue to do to the environment and to the indigenous communities who are not only fighting for their own survival but the survival of the entire planet.

The legend of Oak Flat 

One of the most significant areas of Oak Flat threatened by Resolution Copper’s project is a place called Apache Leap. The 400 foot-high cliff is the site of a historic incident of Native American resistance, from which 75 Apache warriors leaped to their death rather than be captured by the U.S. troops that surrounded them after a sneak attack that took the lives of 50 Apache warriors within minutes.

The Legend of Apache Tears is an enduring account of defiance against an enemy that keeps coming. When the wives and children discovered the bodies of their brave men at the bottom of the precipice, the legend states that their tears turned the white earth at their feet into black stones (obsidian) and, henceforth, anyone who acquired any such stones would never have to cry again since so many tears had already been shed by the Apache women on that tragic occasion.

If we stand with our Native American brothers and sisters against the destruction of their sacred sites, we might realize that they are sacred to us as well and then we might be able to arm ourselves with obsidian to begin the hard road back to living in harmony with nature and avert the creation of the Legend of Oak Flat.

mintpressnews.com

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims in 1620. Plymouth was the first English settlement to establish itself successfully in the New World. You might think that the four-century mark of that event would be cause for big commemorations. Instead, there has been barely a peep.

Today, the trendy thing is to feel nothing but guilt and shame for the expansion of European civilization, particularly the English version, into North America. After all, there were indigenous people here when the first settlers arrived. What right did the English or other European settlers have to occupy this territory? To demonstrate its politically-correct bona fides, Google affiliate YouTube (among many others) took the occasion of Thanksgiving Day to celebrate instead something they call “Unthanksgiving,” a day of “Indigenous history, activism and resistance”:

Unthanksgiving is about acknowledging, educating, and honoring centuries of Indigenous resistance. Coinciding with New England’s National Day of Mourning,.. Native Americans and Indigenous persons have shared their experiences, using Unthanksgiving as an opportunity for intergenerational and intercultural dialogue,

Perhaps you may have the idea that prior to the Pilgrims North America was inhabited by Noble Savages living in peace and harmony with nature and each other. Then the evil Europeans arrived to commit plunder and rape and genocide. This is certainly the view pushed by much of trendy academia today, following the lead of America-hating Howard Zinn. But if you want a more full picture of the reality of the Native Americans at the time of early settlement, there are plenty of decent sources to look to. Two that I can recommend are Charles Mann’s “1491,” and Francis Parkman’s “France and England in North America.”

“1491” came out in 2005, and definitely has a more native-admiring perspective than Parkman’s opus, which was published over many years in the late 19th century. Nevertheless, an overriding issue permeates both books in their descriptions of native life pre- and shortly post-Columbus: the Indian tribes were engaged in constant, endless, brutal, murderous warfare against each other. Mann’s book has particularly harrowing accounts of the wars conducted by the Aztecs against their predecessors in the region that is today Mexico City.

Over in Parkman’s work, the portion relating to the French settlement of Canada derives mostly from first-person accounts written by Jesuit missionaries who inserted themselves among the tribes along and north of the St. Lawrence River in the early 1600s. The largest of the tribes where the Jesuits had some success in their efforts was known as the Hurons. That tribe inhabited an area south and east of the lake by that name. At the time, the Hurons were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Iroquois confederacy, which inhabited a broad swath of what is now upstate New York. From pages 634-35 of the 1983 New American Library edition of Parkman’s book:

How the quarrel began between the Iroquois and their Huron kindred no man can tell, and it is not worth while to conjecture… The first meeting of white men with the Hurons found them at blows with the Iroquois, and from that time forward, the war raged with increasing fury. Small scalping parties infested the Huron forests, killing squaws in the cornfields, or entering villages at midnight to tomahawk their sleeping inhabitants. Often, too, invasions were made in force. Sometimes towns were set upon and burned, and sometimes there were deadly conflicts in the depths of the forests and the passes of the hills.

Parkman’s account is filled with detail of battles, tortures and executions. Here is an example from page 635:

[In the year 1645] Fortune smiled on the Hurons; and they took, in all, more than a hundred prisoners, who were distributed among their various towns, to be burned. These scenes, with them, occurred always in the night; and it was held to be of the last importance that the torture should be protracted from sunset till dawn… Ononkwaya was among the victims… On the scaffold where he was burned, he wrought himself into a fury which seemed to render him insensible to pain. Thinking him nearly spent, his tormentors scalped him, when, to their amazement, he leaped up, snatched the brands that had been the instruments of his torture, drove the screeching crowd from the scaffold, and held them all at bay, while they pelted him from below with sticks, stones, and showers of live coals. At length he made a false step and fell to the ground, when they seized him and threw him into the fire…

But the wars continued, year after endless year. In 1649-50, the Iroquois got the upper hand, and essentially wiped out the Hurons. One example of the fighting in that year, from page 664-65:

Late in the autumn, a thousand Iroquois, chiefly Senecas and Mohawks, had taken the war-path for the Hurons. They had been all winter in the forests, hunting for subsistence, and moving at their leisure towards their prey… It was just before dawn, when a yell, as of a legion of devils, startled the wretched inhabitants [of a Huron town the French called St. Ignace] from their sleep; and the Iroquois, bursting in upon them, cut them down with knives and hatchets, killing many, and reserving the rest for a worse fate… 

There is much, much more of the same and indeed far worse. Given the endless and brutal warfare that characterized Native American existence, it is not surprising that many native groups, upon encountering Europeans, sought to enlist the newcomers as allies against their perpetual enemies in neighboring tribes. Indeed, in Mann’s account, that is exactly what Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoags was about in befriending the Pilgrims and assisting them through their first difficult winter. The Wampanoags had just suffered a major population decline — probably the result of diseases brought by Europeans — and they needed help against their perpetual enemies the Narragansetts, who lived immediately to the West. The newcomers had things that the Wampanoags badly needed in that struggle, like knives, hatchets, and even guns.

As Parkman said, the origins of the particular dispute in the 1600s between the Hurons and the Iroquois are beyond knowing. But what we do know is that groups of humans in hunter-gatherer existence are always engaged in warfare against their neighbors. Specific slights or jealousies may have something to do with any given dispute, but on a more fundamental level, hunter-gatherers exist at all times on the brink of starvation, and there is never enough territory to go around.

In contrast, over the past several centuries, beginning in Europe and then spreading through the world, mankind has created an economic system that is capable of providing plentifully for multiple billions of people without need for warfare over control of resources. The system goes by the misnomer of “capitalism.” I prefer calling it the “freedom-based economic order.” Under this economic system, it is entirely possible for all people to live in peace and prosperity, without any need for the warfare that has plagued human existence from the beginning.

Of course, all of our “smartest” people in academia and government have little or no idea how or why the freedom-based economic order works. What they think they know is that they hate what they call “capitalism,” because it does not create perfect equality and justice between and among all people. So they are completely ready to get rid of this “capitalism” and go back to a world of desperate scarcity and endless conflict.

manhattancontrarian.com

The Araucania region in Chile, targeted by President Sebastian Piñera for modernisation – in other words, exploiting the land and its natural resources – has seen an increase in violence against the Mapuche population, who are the main obstacle, from the government’s point of view, impeding industrialisation. The alleged suicide of these two Mapuche women, like that of Valdes, occurred in a political context where resistance in terms of land rights in criminalised by the Chilean state.

Militarising a region to placate the multinational companies seeking to exploit Chile’s resources is governmental priority. It is in this context that the Mapuche people are demanding a through investigation in the death of Quiñilén and Rosales, which have not occurred in a vacuum but as part of a widespread targeting of the Mapuche, including the human rights violations of Mapuche political prisoners.

In her community, Quiñilén was at the helm of mobilising against the militarisation of the Araucania. In 2016, Valdes was taking part in demonstrations against the development of a hydropower plant on the Tranquil River – a project of the Austrian company, RP Global. The only witness to Valdes’s death, or possibly murder, is her son, who was only two years old at the time. The power plant was set up without further interruptions, yet many questions remain unanswered regarding how Valdes died. Forensic expert Luis Ravanal has discredited the official version of events – Valdes had been murdered prior to hanging.

Quiñilén and Rosales have died under similar circumstances – mobilising against government and multinationals’ usurpation of land. The possible murder of these two Mapuche women is a stark reminder to the community that as long as there is resistance in the Araucania, there will be impunity in terms of violence against the Mapuche people.

Chilean governments since the democratic transition following the fall of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship have upheld the anti-terror laws and the criminalisation of Mapuche resistance. Through this narrative of resistance as alleged terror, governments have cultivated impunity for the perpetrators of violence against the Mapuche, as was recently seen in the escalation of violence against the indigenous by right-wing groups and the Chilean police.

A case which resonated internationally and prompted the UN to send a fact-finding mission to the Araucania was the hunger-strike initiated by Mapuche spiritual leader Celestino Cordova, jailed for 18 years for allegedly killing a landowner couple in 2014 during an arson attack. It is highly unlikely that the UN will intervene in Chile to protect the rights of the Mapuche people; the institution is, after all, built upon the remnants of colonialism.

Yet the discrepancy in the UN’s scant attention towards the Mapuche people is evident. A case which has attracted international attention and which also involves diplomatic overtures due to the humanitarian aspect will take momentary precedence. The same cannot be said for Quiñilén and Rosales, and other Mapuche and environmental activists found dead by hanging immediately after their involvement in resisting the industrialisation of their territory.

The Chilean government has much to answer for, and not only regarding the application of Pinochet’s anti-terror laws exclusively to the Mapuche. The patterns of these possible murders have become all too predictable. By issuing statements that contradict the sequence of events, the Chilean government is protecting perpetrators and providing an environment where violence and murder can thrive unabated.

When former President Evo Morales was threatened out of office on November 10 by orchestrated, massive street violence, US President Donald Trump hailed it “a great day for democracy”. What Trump meant was “a great day for plutocracy”. The new regime in Laz Paz is the colonial-descendant, ruling class back in power, rolling back the gains made after 14 years of progressive socialism and democracy for the indigenous majority of Bolivians.

The coup was carried off by Washington’s smearing of Morales’ re-election on October 20 and by fascist paramilitaries directed by Bolivian oligarchs who are well connected in Washington, as documented by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton.

The Bolivian oligarchs and their supporters espouse a rightwing Christian fundamentalism which disparages the indigenous culture as pagan. The violent racism towards the indigenous majority was expressed by the self-declared “interim president”, Jeannie Anez, who, like other oligarchic figures, denounced the native and largely poor population as “satanic”.

The takeover in Bolivia is as much about taking control of the country’s wealth – natural gas and minerals – as it about a racist revenge on the native Indian population who dared to rule the country under Morales’ leadership for the benefit of the poor majority.

Morales has been warned that if he returns from exile in Mexico he will be jailed for terrorism. The new regime has instructed state forces to “hunt down” members of Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party. It has given impunity for the police and army to shoot dead protesters who are holding strikes and other demonstrations against the new regime. The latter made earlier promises to hold new elections – without MAS being allowed to participate despite the party having a majority of lawmakers in the country’s Congress. It looks like even those hollow promises are now being scrapped.

Since Morales was ousted, over 30 people have been killed and hundreds injured as state forces fire live rounds at unarmed protesters. Reporting from on the ground, Medea Benjamin says the indigenous communities are living in fear of increasing atrocities and the return to the old days of military dictatorship.

In one incident in El Alto on November 19, army and police, reinforced with helicopters, killed eight people, including children, who were among MAS supporters holding an unarmed strike against the new regime.

“I saw the doctors and nurses desperately trying to save lives, carrying out emergency surgeries in difficult conditions with a shortage of medical equipment,” reported Benjamin. “I saw five dead bodies and dozens of people with bullet wounds… A grieving mother whose son was shot cried out between sobs: ‘They’re killing us like dogs’.”

The coup in Bolivia is consistent with the wider historical perspective of Indian Wars waged for centuries across the entire American continent. From the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in the 15th century who wiped out the Mayan and smaller Andean civilizations in the central and southern continent, to the later British and other European colonialists who dispossessed and destroyed the native tribes in the north in what became the United States and Canada.

It may sound cliched, but nevertheless should never be forgotten that the United States and other modern American states were built on genocide of the native populations. That genocide has never been properly atoned for. Existing American-Indians live in predominantly marginalized, impoverished conditions. Their bountiful lands stolen and poisoned by industrial capitalism.

Official celebrations like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day stick in the craw because they sanitize the real and brutal history of the US being founded on barbaric crimes against humanity.

If there is no official acknowledgment – let alone atonement – for the exterminatory foundations of the US, and its economic and military power, then no wonder that the state permits itself to continue waging wars and subversions against other nations. It is above the law because it always has been above the law from its very inception.

The Hollywood-like depiction of Thanksgiving tells us that English settlers arriving on the northeast coast in the early 1600s were befriended by the indigenous people who shared their food and showed the foreigners how to survive harsh winters. What gets lopped out from this rosy narrative is the subsequent centuries when the European colonizers expanded their rapacious land-grabbing and pushed the natives to extinction, often by slaughtering them in their camps.

Native American elder Leonard Peltier (now 75), who has been in jail for nearly 40 years on a trumped-up conviction for killing two FBI officers, wrote the following reflection for this year’s Thanksgiving: “As I let my mind wander beyond the steel bars and concrete walls, I try to imagine what the people who live outside the prison gates are doing, and what they are thinking. Do they ever think of the indigenous people who were forced from their homelands? Do they understand that with every step they take, no matter the direction, that they are walking on stolen land? Can they imagine, even for one minute, what it was like to watch the suffering of the women, the children and babies and yes, the sick and elderly, as they were made to keep pushing west in freezing temperatures, with little or no food? These were my people and this was our land.”

In his reflection, Leonard Peltier makes a direction connection with the coup in Bolivia to past crimes against the indigenous people of all America.

“We also remember our brothers and sisters of Bolivia, who are rioting, in support of the first indigenous President, Evo Morales. His commitment to the people, the land, their resources and protection against corruption is commendable. We recognize and identify with that struggle so well,” he writes.

The crime against Bolivia is allowed to happen because the US by and large is held in a condition of historical amnesia by its plutocratic system and its obedient corporate mass media. Thanksgiving Day is followed by a day of consumerist frenzy, known as Black Friday, when crowds queue up for shops to open their doors for sales. People fill up their empty lives with cheap gadgets and techno-fetichism. And so plutocrats like Trump and his evangelical Christian cabinet can espouse the crass nonsense that what is happening in Bolivia is “a great day for democracy”.

As Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn put it beautifully: “You thought it was over but it’s just like before. Will there never be an end to the Indian Wars?”

Last month, Chilean President Sebastian Piñera described the killing as “an abuse of power”. A year has passed since the murder and Catrillanca’s family are still seeking justice in Chilean courts. The latest impediment to justice is the appointment of the judge in charge of Catrillanca’s case, Francesco Boero Villagran, who represented the interests of the company Forestal Mininco in their legal proceedings against other Mapuche individuals. The company has encroached upon lands which are of cultural and spiritual significance to the Mapuche. Earlier this month, the government invoked the anti-terror laws against the Mapuche people in Temuco, for their sabotage actions of resistance against the company.

Chilean governments and their protection of social inequalities created the marginalisation of the Mapuche people from the rest of the population. However, the current protests calling for Piñera’s resignation and the drafting of a new constitution to replace Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial legacy have shattered the prevailing illusion that the struggles of the Mapuche and the Chilean people are entirely separate issues.

Since the start of the protests last October, the Mapuche people have protested alongside Chileans, and the Mapuche flag has been prominent in the demonstrations. The military violence allowed by the Chilean government has targeted Chileans and Mapuches alike, with the extent of human rights violations committed becoming a reference to the crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship era.

In light of the current developments, notably the unity between the Chilean people and the Mapuche, it is important to note the importance of the Mapuche struggle against neoliberal violence and exploitation. Their long history of resistance has, in fact, led to the toppling of colonial monuments in Chile which, until the protests, symbolised the glorification of earlier colonial conquest, while the historical crimes committed against the indigenous population were normalised under euphemisms such as “pacification” rather than genocide.

The reaffirmation of anti-colonial struggle against the erasure of Mapuche history, which remained unchallenged by Chilean governments in the democratic transition, is a departure point for this moment in Chilean politics where the people are calling for a new constitution. The unity exhibited by the Chilean people and the indigenous communities in Chile must be respected by recognising Chile as a plurinational state. It must be remembered that the colonialism that ravaged Chile was the start of a process that culminated in the neoliberal experiment enforced by Pinochet upon Chileans and which the subsequent governments have failed to challenge.

Furthermore, while the violence meted out to protestors does indeed raise reflections about the dictatorship tactics, it is also reflective of how Mapuche resistance is routinely criminalised. The moment Chileans mobilised against the government, their legitimate protest was a target for state institutions. By the last days of October, according to the National Institute for Human Rights in Chile, 3,535 Chileans were detained, 1,132 injured, 43 minors were maltreated, 5 killed and 19 declarations of sexual torture were recorded.

Chile’s social and political status quo has been altered. Last week, Piñera, who is facing constitutional accusations regarding the human rights violations carried out by the military and the police, stated he was open to discussing a constitutional reform. However, this week Piñera announced discussions were being held to advance a new constitution. It remains to be seen if the people’s demands will indeed be met.

These demands must be based upon the reciprocity of political support which Chileans and the Mapuche have shared since the protests started. Speaking on the anniversary of his son’s murder, Marcel Catrillanca affirmed Mapuche support for the Chilean people: “We, the Mapuche, have, supported many demonstrations and we will continue to support the Chilean people.” In light of this evident unity, it is imperative that justice for Catrillanca is not depicted solely as a Mapuche issue, but one that affects the entire Chilean nation.

Lowry is the editor of the “National Review” magazine, a once mainstream conservative publication that was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley. Like other nationalists, Lowry champions the arrival of white European settlers on the American east coast, who then expanded into the “Mexican territories” and absorbed the Pacific littoral. But what of the Native American tribal peoples who had already lived in the Western Hemisphere for several millennia? Lowry discounts the Native Americans by claiming that by forcing them under the control of the United States, the tribal peoples “got political stability, democracy, the rule of law, and a prosperous economic system.” In fact, the “pioneers,” as Lowry calls them, brought nothing but misery to the Native Americans. This included smallpox, guns, whisky, venereal diseases, and forced removal from sacred ancestral lands.

The sort of fascist thinking that now appears regularly on the pages of the “National Review” has been adopted as policy by the Trump administration. All presidents since George H. W. Bush in 1990 have designated the month of November as National Native American Heritage Month. This November, Trump added another federal government observance to the month of November: “National American History and Founders Month.” This observance honors the white European settlers who introduced to the “New World” the genocide of 65 million native peoples, stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. Lowry discounts this genocide by claiming it resulted in a “stupendous boon,” as far as the United States in concerned.

Trump has done everything possible to intimidate Native Americans. He prominently displayed a painting of President Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. Jackson was responsible for passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which saw the forced relocation of Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River to the Indian Territory – what is now Oklahoma. In what the Native American tribes affected called the “Trail of Tears,” thousands of members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, and Ho-Chunk/Winnebago nations lost their lives. It was the invasion and occupation of the West by what Trump calls “founders” and Lowry calls “pioneers” that served as a template for Hitler’s plan to de-populate the Slavic peoples of Europe to create “lebensraum,” living space, for Germans seeking to extend the Third Reich from central Europe through Eastern Europe and Russia beyond the Urals.

Lowry’s neo-fascist tract points to the unitary nature of the Egyptian empire as an example that should be embraced by the United States. He also points to the empires of China and Japan as examples of beneficial unitary states based on their homogeneity. Lowry and his fan, Trump, fail to recognize that the Egyptians had a huge slave population. China and Japan worshiped their emperors as “god kings.” None of these empires have any place in a world of modern democratic political systems. Perhaps Lowry believes that slaves should be used to build Trump’s southern border wall with Mexico as they were used by the Egyptians to build the Pyramids. And, if Lowry is to be taken seriously, the slaves should be happy to build a wall in order to please America’s new god-king, Donald Trump.

Trump’s hostility to the Native American tribes, who Lowry believes should be thankful to their Aryan conquerors for bringing them “democracy,” “the rule of law,” and “prosperity,” stems from his low opinion of them that dates back to the time when sovereign native tribes began opening casinos on their reservations. Trump insists that his Atlantic City, New Jersey casinos went bankrupt because of competition from Indian gaming. In fact, Trump’s casinos collapsed due to Trump’s poor management skills, money laundering by organized crime syndicates, and hefty government fines as a result of Trump casinos being caught laundering mob money. Trump has all but abrogated some 368 international treaties the various Native tribal nations signed with the US federal government.

Trump’s order scaling back protected land of two Western national monuments sacred to the Native nations, Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, opened up the land to exploitative mining and drilling companies owned by Trump political cronies. Trump’s wall with Mexico cuts in half the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona and Mexico. Members of the tribe are no longer be free to cross over the international border from one part of their 4,460-square mile sovereign territory to the other. The Trump Wall also adversely affects the sovereign rights of other tribal nations, including the Yuma, Apache, Yaqui, Pima, and Kickapoo.

The Native American nations were the first victims of US “nationalism” that was proclaimed by President James Monroe with his imperialistic “Monroe Doctrine” that established a US hegemon over the Western Hemisphere; Andrew Jackson with his genocidal treatment of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River; and, now, Donald Trump with his championship of white European nationalism over other ethnicities in the United States.

Trump’s glowering at Bolivian President Evo Morales during the September 26, 2018 meeting of the United Nations Security Council likely placed Bolivia’s first indigenous Aymara leader in the crosshairs of Trump and his acolytes in the US Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. Both are the sons of right-wing Cuban immigrants to the United States. Morales, as president of the Security Council, lectured Trump on America’s past abuses. The Bolivian president cited the United States in having “financed coups d’etat and supported dictators,” and having instituted a border policy “separated migrant children from their families and put them in cages.”

On November 10, Morales received his belated response from Trump. After having fallen prey to the US owned and operated Organization of American States (OAS) that deemed Bolivia’s presidential election fraudulent. Morales had a 10-point plurality over his US- and Brazilian-backed right-wing challenger, former president Carlos Mesa.

Even though Morales agreed to a new election, he and his entire government, including Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, Chamber of Deputies President Victor Borda, and Senate President Adriana Salvatierra, all in the line of succession to Morales, were forced to resign by the Bolivian military and national police. Without a constitutional successor to Morales, the military and national police commanders took over in a classic CIA textbook coup from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The new de facto head of state appeared to be Bolivian armed forces commander, General Williams Kaliman.

Morales and his Movement for Socialism colleagues saw their homes attacked by mobs. The street action against Morales and the Venezuelan embassy in La Paz was led by domestic and foreign elements employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and Brazilian neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro’s intelligence service – “Agência Brasileira de Inteligência” – ABIN. In one case, a relative of Morales was kidnapped by right-wing mobs. The governments of Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba denounced the coup against Morales. Argentina’s president-elect Alberto Fernández also condemned the coup. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the right-wing governments of Brazil and Colombia welcomed the putsch.

The right-wing putsch in Bolivia, which began with the national police taking the side of CIA-sponsored protesters, was uncannily similar to the 2010 attempted police coup against Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa. There were reports that the junta in charge of Bolivia issued warrants for the arrest of Morales and other top officials of his government. Ironically, the reported arrested warrants came a few days after Brazil’s imprisoned former leftist president, Luis Lula da Silva, a champion of the rights of Brazilians indigenous Amazon peoples, was freed from prison after being convicted on cooked up criminal charges by Brazil’s right-wing political establishment.

Native American indigenous peoples have been among the first victims of Donald Trump’s white nationalist policies, whether they are Sioux, Cherokee, Tohono O’odham, Navajo, Guatemalan Mayans being caged after requesting asylum in the United States, Alaskan Inuit coping with exploitative oil drilling companies, or Aymara in Bolivia being attacked by mobs of Bolivians of European ancestry in the wake of the coup against Morales. Nationalism, as practiced by Trump and his supporters, is not a legitimate political cause, but an excuse for harsh degradation of human and indigenous rights.

concentration camp (noun): a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.

– Oxford English Dictionary

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a firestorm of criticism, from both the left and the right as well as the mainstream media, for calling US immigrant detention centers “concentration camps.” To her credit, Ocasio-Cortez has refused to back down, citing academic experts and blasting the Trump administration for forcibly holding undocumented migrants “where they are brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.” She also cited history. “The US ran concentration camps before, when we rounded up Japanese people during World War II,” she tweeted. “It is such a shameful history that we largely ignore it. These camps occur throughout history.” Indeed they do. What follows is an overview of US civilian concentration camps through the centuries. Prisoner-of-war camps, as horrific as they have been, have been excluded due to their legal status under the Geneva Conventions, and for brevity’s sake.

Trail of Tears

Half a century before President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830, a young Virginia governor named Thomas Jefferson embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing as solutions to what would later be called the “Indian problem.” In 1780 Jefferson wrote that “if we are to wage a campaign against these Indians, the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River.” However, it wasn’t until Jackson that “emigration depots” were introduced as an integral part of official US Indian removal policy. Tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, Winnebago and other indigenous peoples were forced from their homes at gunpoint and marched to prison camps in Alabama and Tennessee. Overcrowding and a lack of sanitation led to outbreaks of measles, cholera, whooping cough, dysentery and typhus, while insufficient food and water, along with exposure to the elements, caused tremendous death and suffering.

Thousands of men, women and children died of cold, hunger and illness in camps and during death marches, including the infamous Trail of Tears, of hundreds and sometimes even a thousand miles (1,600 km). This genocidal relocation was pursued, Jackson explained, as the “benevolent policy” of the US government, and because Native Americans “have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits nor the desire of improvement” required to live in peace and freedom. “Established in the midst of a… superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority… they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and long disappear,” the man who Donald Trump has called his favorite president said in his 1833 State of the Union address.

The Long Walk

Decades later, when the Sioux and other indigenous people resisted white invasion and theft of their lands, Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey responded with yet another call for genocide and ethnic cleansing. “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state,” he declared in 1862, offering a bounty of $200 — over $5,000 in today’s money — for the scalp of each fleeing or resisting Indian. Around 1,700 Dakota women, children and elderly were force-marched into a concentration camp built on a sacred spiritual site. Many didn’t make it there. According to Mendota Dakota Tribal Chair Jim Anderson, “during that march a lot of our relatives died. They were killed by settlers; when they went through the small towns, babies were taken out of mothers arms and killed and women… were shot or bayoneted.” Those who survived faced winter storms, diseases and hunger. Many did not make it through the winter.

Two years later, Civil War general and notorious Indian killer James Henry Carleton forced 10,000 Navajo people to march 300 miles (480 km) in the dead of winter from their homeland in the Four Corners region to a concentration camp at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This followed a scorched earth campaign in which famed frontiersman Kit Carson tried to starve the life out of the Navajo, hundreds of whom died or were enslaved by white settlers and rival tribes during what became known as The Long Walk. Those who survived the death march to Fort Sumner faced starvation, lack of wood for heating and cooking during the bitterly cold winters and ravaging diseases. Daily depredations included a ban on prayers, spiritual ceremonies and songs. It is estimated that some 1,500 people died while interned at Fort Sumner, many of them infants and children.

Contraband

At about the same time, the Union Army was re-capturing freed slaves throughout the South and pressing them into hard labor in disease-ridden “contraband camps,” as escaped and freed slaves were considered captured enemy property. “There is much sickness, suffering and destitution,” wroteJames E. Yeatman of the Western Sanitary Commission after visiting one such camp near Natchez, Mississippi in 1863. “There was not one house that I visited where death had not entered… Seventy-five had died in a single day… some had returned to their masters on account of their suffering.” At one camp in Young’s Point, Louisiana, Yeatman reported “frightful sickness and death,” with 30-50 people dying each day from disease and starvation. One camp near Natchez, Mississippi held as many as 4,000 black refugees in the summer of 1863; by fall 2,000 had already perished, most of them children infected with smallpox and measles.

‘Benevolent Assimilation’ in the ‘Suburbs of Hell’ 

With indigenous peoples no longer standing in the way of its “manifest destiny,” the US set its sights on becoming a first-rate imperial power through overseas conquest and expansion. After overthrowing Hawaii’s monarchy and annexing its islands, war was waged against Spain, resulting in the capture of the first US colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. When Filipinos resisted, US commanders responded with tremendous cruelty. Echoing Andrew Jackson, President William McKinley called this the “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines into the burgeoning US empire.

As General “Hell-Roaring” Jake Smith ordered his troops to “kill everyone over 10” in Samar, future president William Howard Taft, the US colonial administrator of the archipelago, instituted a “pacification” campaign that combined the counterinsurgency tactics of torture and summary execution with deportation and imprisonment in concentration camps, or reconcentrados, that one commandant referred to as the  “suburbs of hell.” General J. Franklin Bell, looking forward to his new post as warden of the notorious Batangas reconcentrado, declared that “all consideration and regard for the inhabitants of this place cease from the day I become commander.”

He meant it. In December 1901 Bell gave the people of Batangas two weeks to leave their homes and report to the camp; everything they left behind — their homes, farms, livestock, food stores and tools — was stolen or destroyed by US troops. People who refused to report to the camp were shot, as were random prisoners whenever insurgents killed an American. Conditions were beyond horrific in many reconcentrados. Hunger, disease and torture, which included waterboarding, were rampant. In some camps, as many as 20 percent of internees died. In order to save food, 1,300 Batangas prisoners were forced to dig mass graves before being gunned down 20 at a time and buried in them. “To keep them prisoners would necessitate the placing of [US] soldiers on short rations,” one soldier explained. “There was nothing to do but kill them.”

Concentration Camps for US Citizens

During both world wars, thousands of German nationals, German-Americans and Germans from Latin American nations were imprisoned in concentration camps across the United States. However, their race and relatively high level of assimilation saved most German-Americans from internment, and conditions were much better than they had been in previous US camps. Japanese-Americans weren’t so lucky. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, under which all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were rounded up and imprisoned in dozens of civilian assembly centers (where they were often forced to sleep in crowded, manure-covered horse stables), relocation centers, military bases, and “citizen isolation centers” — harsh desert prison camps where “problem inmates,” including those who refused to pledge allegiance to the United States, were jailed. Conditions varied by camp, but overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing, fuel shortages and food rationing were common. Many of the camps were located in remote, scorpion- and snake-infested deserts.

Incredibly, thousands of Japanese-Americans volunteered to fight for the country that was imprisoning them for nothing more than their ethnicity. These were some of the most highly-decorated US troops in the war. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court sided with the government in three cases brought by Japanese-Americans challenging the constitutionality of their detention, and an American public caught in the grip of racist “yellow peril” hysteria acquiesced to the blatantly unconstitutional mass imprisonment. Internment would last the duration of the war, sometimes longer, with many detainees discovering their homes, businesses and property were stolen or destroyed when they were finally released. President Ronald Reagan would formally apologize and sign off on $20,000 reparation payments to former internees in 1988.

In addition to Japanese and some Germans, a smaller number of Italians and Italian-Americans were also imprisoned during World War II. So were the indigenous Aleuts of Alaska, who were forcibly evacuated before their villages were burned to the ground to prevent any invading Japanese forces from using them. Nearly 900 Aleuts were imprisoned in abandoned factories and other derelict facilities without plumbing, electricity or toilets; decent food, potable water and warm winter clothing were in short supply. Nearly 10 percent of the detainees died in the camps. Others were enslaved and forced to hunt fur seals.

During the early years of the Cold War, Congress passed the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 over President Harry Truman’s veto, which led to the construction of six concentration camps that were meant to hold communists, peace activists, civil rights leaders and others deemed a threat in the event the government declared a state of emergency. The act was upheld by the Supreme Court during the McCarthy/Red Scare years but in the 1960s the high court ruled  that provisions requiring communists to register with the government and banning them from obtaining passports or government employment were unconstitutional. The camps, which were never used, were closed by the end of the decade.

From Japan to Vietnam 

In a little-known atrocity, at least 3,000 Okinawans died from malaria and other diseases in camps set up by US troops after they conquered the Japanese islands during fierce fighting in 1945. During and after the war, Okinawans’ land and homes were seized at gunpoint and their houses and farms were bulldozed or burned to the ground to make way for dozens of US military bases. Some 300,000 civilians were forced into these camps; survivor Kenichiro Miyazato later recalled how “too many people died, so the bodies had to be buried in a single mass grave.”

For sheer scale, no US concentration camp regime could match the Strategic Hamlet Program. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy approved the forcible relocation, often at gunpoint, of 8.5 million South Vietnamese peasants into over 7,000 fortified camps surrounded by barbed wire, minefields and armed guards. This was done to starve the growing Viet Cong insurgency of food, shelter and new recruits. However, few hearts and minds were won and many were indeed lost as US and South Vietnamese troops burned people’s homes before their very eyes before marching them away from their land, and with it their deepest spiritual bonds with their revered ancestors.

War on Terrorists and Migrants 

Although prisoner of war camps are not included in this survey of US concentration camps, the open-ended global war against terrorism started by the George W. Bush administration after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States has seen a blurring of lines between combatant and civilian detention. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for Bush-era secretary of state Colin Powell, most of the men and boys held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison were innocent but held for political reasons or in an attempt to glean a “mosaic” of intelligence. Innocent civilians were also held in military prisons, some of them secret, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Many detainees were tortured and died in US custody. Some of these men have been held without charge or trial for as many as 17 years, while some deemed too innocent to charge remain imprisoned at GITMO despite being cleared for release for many years.

Now it’s the migrants’ turn. And despite the howling protestations of those who commit or justify the crime of tearing infants and children from their parents’ arms and imprisoning them in freezing cages that Trump officials have euphemistically compared to “summer camp,” there is no doubt that concentration camps are in operation on US soil once again. The Trump administration’s attempt to portray child imprisonment as something much happier instantly recalls World War II propaganda films showing content Japanese-Americans benefiting from life behind barbed wire. Actor George Takei, who was interned with his family for the duration of the war, was anything but content. “I know what concentration camps are,” he tweeted amid the current controversy. “I was inside two of them. In America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.”

Takei noted one big difference between then and now: “At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents,” he wrote, adding that “‘at least during the internment’ are words I thought I’d never utter.”

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