The Need for Accountability and Reparations: 1830-1976 the United States Government's Role in the Promotion, Implementation, and Execution of the Crime of Genocide against Native Americans
![handle is hein.journals/deplr51 and id is 925 raw text is: THE NEED FOR
ACCOUNTABILITY AND REPARATION: 1830-1976
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN THE
PROMOTION, IMPLEMENTATION, AND EXECUTION
OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE AGAINST
NATIVE AMERICANS
The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness; it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy; it's indifference.
The opposite of life is not death; it's indifference.
Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.
Elie Wiesel.1
INTRODUCTION
On September 8, 2000, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the eth-
nic cleansing2 of Western tribes.3 From the forced relocation and as-
similation of the sauvage4 to the white man's way of life to the
forced sterilization of Native Americans, the BIA set out to destroy
all things Indian.5 Through the exploration of the United States'
Federal Indian policy, it is evident that this policy intended to de-
1. Lionel VonFrederick Rawlins, Indifference + Inaction = Genocide, in ANATOMY OF GENO-
CIDE: STATE-SPONSORED MAss-KILLINGS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 421 (Alexandre Kimenyi
& Otis L. Scott eds., 2001).
2. It should be noted that ethnic cleansing, which refers to the intent to remove a group
from a specific location, is not considered a form of genocide. Matthew Lippman, Genocide: The
Crime of the Century. The Jurisprudence of Death at the Dawn of the New Millennium, 23 Hou. J.
INT'L L. 467, 501 (2001).
3. Remarks of Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary- Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior,
at the Ceremony Acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs (September 8, 2000), available at http://www4.nau.edu/itep/gover-remarks.html
(last updated January 7, 2002).
4. Beginning as early as the 1600s, some Colonizers commonly referred to Native Americans
as sauvages because of the resistance they faced when attempting to take over Native Ameri-
can land. See BRIAN W. DIPPIE, THE VANISHING AMERICAN 5-6 (1982). The Supreme Court in
Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh agreed with this proposition by stating, [T]he tribes
of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war. Johnson &
Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 590 (1823).
5. Gover, supra note 3.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/deplr51&div=38&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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