B. Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873

Abstract

Reviewed by Antje DeckertThe author, Benjamin Madley, is Associate Professor at UCLA's history department. Although he identifies as non-Indigenous, Madley's primary research interest concerns First Nations and colonialism. Madley developed his passion early in life spending "much of his childhood in Karuk Country [. . .] where he became interested in the relationship between colonizers and indigenous peoples" (UCLA 2019). This is Madley's first book. Albeit only recently published, it already comes with a long list of accolades, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Raphael Lemkin Book Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide, and an entry in the Indian Country Today Hot List. Soon after you begin this read, it becomes apparent why the book has received so much praise: it is a real page-turner. Madley's bare prose is gruesomely detailed, of intense clarity, and unsettling overall. He provides convincing evidence and arguments, thus manifesting an indictment of a genocide attempt that was supported by the US and Californian governments.The sepia-coloured book cover depicts Chief Kintpuash, who led fifty Modoc warriors against hundreds of US soldiers. He was captured and executed in 1873 -the year that also marks the end of the historical period covered by this book. Kintpuash's life is exemplary of so many who died during the Californian genocide. Born on ancestral land but forced to live on a reservation, he fled twice, both times leading a group of Modoc back to the lands that were rightfully theirs. After the US military executed Kintpuash, they severed his head, sent it for study to the Army Medical Museum, and then handed his skull over to the Smithsonian Institute, which, after a decade of petitioning, finally returned it to Kintpuash's descendents in 1984. The book cover reminds us of First Nations' resistance and the impact the genocidal past continues to have, especially in regard to an official apology and reparation payments (9). In this spirit, Madley dedicates his book to "California Indians, past, present, and future" and also acknowledges the role First Nations played in guiding his work. This fact deserves mentioning because it is not a given in research publications written by non-Indigenous authors (e.g., Smith 2011).This monograph fills a crucial gap in research because it is the first year-by-year account of the genocide committed against First Nations in California under US rule between 1846 and 1873. The book focuses more narrowly on "direct acts of violence" (11) committed in battles, massacres, homicides, and legal executions.

Pathways to healing: Indigenous revitalization through family-based land management in the Klamath Basin

“…Less attention has been directed toward historical trauma and tensions with contemporary environmental governance institutions that govern resource access for diverse Indigenous communities (e.g., Carroll 2014Carroll , 2015. Scholars have documented how external governance relations between Indigenous nations and federal as well as state governments have prevented Indigenous access to land and resources, contributing to cultural genocide and also sparking Indigenous resistance movements (Norton 1979, Usher 2000, Wilkins and Lomawaima 2001, Nadasdy 2003, Norgaard 2005, Risling Baldy 2013, Madley 2016, Alliance for a Just Society and CATG n.d.) Yet there is an additional need to understand current Indigenous resurgence efforts in environmental governance that are working to reestablish tribal access to Indigenous lands as well as Indigenous land management practices such as cultural burning.…”

“…In 1905, the U.S. federal government designated most of Karuk territory as National Forest (Bower 1978, Salter 2003). This designation was made possible because the U.S. government never ratified treaties negotiated in good faith with the Karuk people (Heizer 1972, Hurtado 1988, Johnston-Dodds 2002, Madley 2016. Instead of creating a reservation, federal agencies set aside small allotments for individual families.…”

Covert Linguistic Racisms and the (Re‐)Production of White Supremacy

“…Although much of the racism directed at Native Americans has been especially overt, taking the form of overt and even genocidal statements and acts (Madley 2017; Biolsi 2007), racial epithets (like “digger” and “redskin”; Hinton 1994, 165‐179; Perley 2015), crude media stereotypes (Meek 2006), and more covert forms of linguistic racism continue to shape and define the particular array on what Étienne Balibar (1991, 40) has called the “spectrum of racisms” designed for Native Americans. Balibar’s imagery of a racializing spectrum fits well with contemporary approaches that focus on historical racial formations targeting specific groups.…”

Theorizing race and settler colonialism within U.S. sociology

“…These processes often involve the institution of mechanisms of standardization and surveillance that can support and police this privatization (Moreton‐Robinson, 2014, 2015). The acquisition and control of land is especially central to the settler colonial process (Bacon, 2018, Dunbar‐Ortiz, 2013, Tuck & McKenzie, 2014, Norgaard, 2019), as is the genocide and continual erasure of Indigenous peoples and their sovereign status (Fenelon, 2016; Fenelon & Trafzer, 2014; Madley, 2016; Norton, 2014). Therefore, Tuck and Yang (2012:5) argue that “relying solely on postcolonial literatures or theories of coloniality that ignore settler colonialism will not help to envision the shape that decolonization must take in settler colonial contexts.”…”