Cultural genocide is the systematic destruction of traditions, values, language, and other elements that make one group of people distinct from another.Cultural genocide remains a recurrent topic, appearing not only in the form of wide-ranging claims about the commission of cultural genocide in diverse contexts but also in the legal sphere, as exemplified by the discussions before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and also the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These discussions have, however, displayed the lack of a uniform understanding of the concept of cultural genocide and thus of the role that international law is expected to fulfil in this regard. The Concept of Cultural Genocide: An International Law Perspective details how international law has approached the core idea underlying the concept of cultural genocide and how this framework can be strengthened and fostered. It traces developments from the early conceptualisation of cultural genocide to the contemporary question of its reparation. Through this journey, the book discusses the evolution of various branches of international law in relation to both cultural protection and cultural destruction in light of a number of legal cases in which either the concept of cultural genocide or the idea of cultural destruction has been discussed. Such cases include the destruction of cultural and religious heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the forced removals of Aboriginal children in Australia and Canada, and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in relation to Indigenous and tribal groups' cultural destruction.

Part of Social Science Research Council project; part I, The failure of colonial administration, results of colonial administration, resistance to settlement, historical background of administration, N.S.W. (Sydney, Hawkesbury River, Myall Creek massacre), Queensland (Moreton Bay), Van Diemens Land, ; Port Phillip Protectorate, Western Australia from 1829, South Australia; attempts to civilize natives by education, missions; race relations Clarence River, 1840-1860, retrospect; part II, The destruction of Aboriginal society, the frontiers after 1856, native administration, police, Queensland frontier 1859-1897, extension of settlement in Western Australia, South Australian frontier 1860-1911, Commonwealth administration (Northern Territory), problems of justice, law, and Aboriginal custom, N.T. legislation 1911-1953; missions & extensive reserves (Port Keats, Mitchell River, Central Australia, Arnhem Land); Bleakley report discussed, reactions to spectacular injustice (Coniston killings, Tuckiar & Caledon Bay massacre, Moseley report), search for Aboriginal policy 19341938, Commonwealth & State authorities conference 1937, effects of World War II; appendix A - Who is an Aboriginal; The answer in 1967, definitions of S.A., N.T., statistics for urban & rural population, population trends, age structure, projections of growth 1961-1981.

" ...Often new, probing and rich examinations of the takeover of a continent by white Anglos and the long-term impact ...the book is replete with detailed and meticulously sourced information on the scope, scale and persistence of the cruelty and violence involved - actual and structural - over a 200-year period...there is a great deal in this excellent volume that demands grounds for deep reflection on how Australia came to be what it is." * Patterns of Prejudice "The value of this stimulating collection of historical essays is that it points to both the usefulness of a transnational framework for analysing race thinking and the necessity for close attention to the historical specificity of particular moments and places." * Australian Book Review "[This volume] is an outstanding collection, a challenging conversation between differing viewpoints where discussion is ongoing and cooperative." * Australian Historical Studies Colonial Genocide has been seen increasingly as a stepping-stone to the European genocides of the twentieth century, yet it remains an under-researched phenomenon.This volume reconstructs instances of Australian genocide and for the first time places them in a global context. Beginning with the arrival of the British in 1788 and extending to the 1960s, the authors identify the moments of radicalization and the escalation of British violence and ethnic engineering aimed at the Indigenous populations, while carefully distinguishing between local massacres, cultural genocide, and genocide itself. These essays reflect a growing concern with the nature of settler society in Australia and in particular with the fate of the tens of thousands of children who were forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal families by state agencies. A. Dirk Moses teaches European History and comparative genocide Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is editing another volume in this series entitled Genocide and Colonialism.

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.

New York Times Bestseller Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck Recipient of the American Book Award The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.” Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.