Holocaust and Denial in the Americas
This talk is based on Ward Churchill’s 1997 book, A Little Matter of Genocides. It is a shattering and deeply disturbing survey of ethnic cleansing in the Americas from 1492 to the present. Churchill compares the treatment of North American Indians to historical instances of genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Turks against Armenians, as well as Nazis against the Poles and Jews.
This segment on Genocide ends with an extraordinary statement by Ward Churchill on the importance of knowing history: “We got an entire society here that, with its own collaboration, quells certain knowledge that would disrupt its very convenient scenarios of what it wants to be by denying what it has been… And so we punch holes into the domes of false reality that have been constructed to shield the society from an understanding of itself. All this in order to get to the subliminal circumstances which can motivate people to tangibly, finally, oppose the order of things that we encounter in such a way as they can be transformed. I think the key to the whole of America lies right here – in its refusal to understand itself is the key to it’s refusal ultimately to change itself. And change is that which we most desperately need.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)
