Existing studies of settler colonial genocides explicitly consider the roles of metropolitan and colonial states, and their military forces in the perpetration of exterminatory violence in settler colonial situations, yet rarely pay specific attention to the dynamics around civilian-driven mass violence against indigenous peoples. In many cases, however, civilians were major, if not the main, perpetrators of such violence. The focus of this book is thus on the role of civilians as perpetrators of exterminatory violence and on those elements within settler colonial situations that promoted mass violence on their part.

An estimated 350 to 600 million indigenous people reside across the globe. Numerous governments fail to recognize its indigenous peoples living within their borders. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the genocide of indigenous peoples became a major focus of human rights activists, non-governmental organizations, international development and finance institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and indigenous and other community-based organizations. Scholars and activists began paying greater attention to the struggles between Fourth World peoples and First, Second, and Third World states because of illegal actions of nation-states against indigenous peoples, indigenous groups' passive and active resistance to top-down development, and concerns about the impacts of transnational forces including what is now known as globalization. This volume offers a clear message for genocide scholars and others concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide: much greater attention must be paid to the plight of all peoples, indigenous and otherwise, no matter how small in scale, how little-known, how "invisible" or hidden from view.

This important collection of essays expands the geographic, demographic, and analytic scope of the term genocide to encompass the effects of colonialism and settler colonialism in North America. Colonists made multiple and interconnected attempts to destroy Indigenous peoples as groups. The contributors examine these efforts through the lens of genocide. Considering some of the most destructive aspects of the colonization and subsequent settlement of North America, several essays address Indigenous boarding school systems imposed by both the Canadian and U.S. governments in attempts to "civilize" or "assimilate" Indigenous children. Contributors examine some of the most egregious assaults on Indigenous peoples and the natural environment, including massacres, land appropriation, the spread of disease, the near-extinction of the buffalo, and forced political restructuring of Indigenous communities. Assessing the record of these appalling events, the contributors maintain that North Americans must reckon with colonial and settler colonial attempts to annihilate Indigenous peoples. Contributors. Jeff Benvenuto, Robbie Ethridge, Theodore Fontaine, Joseph P. Gone, Alexander Laban Hinton, Tasha Hubbard, Margaret D. Jabobs, Kiera L. Ladner, Tricia E. Logan, David B. MacDonald, Benjamin Madley, Jeremy Patzer, Julia Peristerakis, Christopher Powell, Colin Samson, Gray H. Whaley, Andrew Woolford

Indigenous Criminology is the first book to explore indigenous peoples' contact with criminal justice systems comprehensively in a contemporary and historical context. Drawing on comparative indigenous material from North America, Australia, and New Zealand, it both addresses the theoretical underpinnings of a specific indigenous criminology and explores this concept's broader policy and practice implications for criminal justice at large. Leading criminologists specializing in indigenous peoples, Chris Cunneen and Juan Tauri argue for the importance of indigenous knowledge and methodologies in shaping this field and suggest that the concept of colonialism is fundamental to understanding contemporary problems of criminology, such as deaths in custody, high imprisonment rates, police brutality, and the high levels of violence in some indigenous communities. Prioritizing the voices of indigenous peoples, this book will make a significant and lasting contribution to the decolonizing of criminology.

"This book explores settler colonial genocides in a global perspective and over the long durée. It does so systematically and compellingly, as it investigates how settler colonial expansion at times created conditions for genocidal violence, and the ways in which genocide was at times perpetrated on settler colonial frontiers. This volume will prove invaluable to teachers and students of imperialism, colonialism, and human rights." —Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne University of Technology, and author of The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea