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Destroying to Replace

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Highlights

Yes, this book should be required reading by every student of world history, but especially by those who enjoy the fruits of lands wrested at great human expense from Indigenous peoples. — location: 254 ^ref-28784

“Peace will spell death for me and my nation for I know there is no place for me in your midst — location: 318 ^ref-56413

Indeed, it can be argued that consistently exterminatory behavior by settler establishments over decades is a good indicator of genocidal intent. — location: 512 ^ref-56459

Intent is not synonymous with motive and, importantly, does not require premeditation. — location: 544 ^ref-749

Once their socially destructive actions are recognized, or should be recognized, by perpetrators as possibly leading to the destruction of the targeted group, to persist in these actions is to display genocidal intent. — location: 563 ^ref-65235

It is only in failed settler colonies, such as South Africa, Algeria, and Zimbabwe, where colonists were relatively few and Indigenous societies and economies robust, that Indigenes have regained political independence. — location: 632 ^ref-23434

James Belich justifiably describes settlers as “dangerous people, especially when in full-frothing boom frenzy.” — location: 671 ^ref-52684

race cannot be taken as given. It is made in the targeting.” — location: 752 ^ref-22755

Settler obsession with the elimination of the native has been propelled by the inescapable reality that the very existence of the Indigene challenges the legitimacy of the settler regime. — location: 792 ^ref-61459

The narrative that successful settler projects across the globe have propagated can be summarized as: “We made the land productive through hard work and enterprise, and the land, in turn, remade us. We are as good as Indigenous.” — location: 805 ^ref-36409

Denying, disavowing, obfuscating, and eliding the foundational violence of colonial conquest and subsequent human rights abuses are integral to settler societies’ perceptions of themselves as legitimate and moral, and how they present themselves to the world. — location: 809 ^ref-31318

Ishi’s hair was still cropped short in mourning when he was taken captive. — location: 2431 ^ref-60713

The impact of contagious diseases was commensurately greater in those societies suffering land confiscation, malnutrition, mass violence, forced labor, and the psychological traumas attendant upon invasion. — location: 4292 ^ref-1092

Perpetrators of exterminatory violence generally act in groups and usually with the sanction of their broader societies or sections of it. As such they share ideas about their motives and the necessity for resorting to final solutions to a perceived social or political problem. Ideologies, moreover, are important enablers of mass violence to the extent that they help perpetrators overcome taboos against taking human life, help mobilize sympathizers to their cause, and provide ready-made justifications for violence. — location: 4358 ^ref-7336

In terms of this deeply rooted conviction, many land-hungry settlers believed that they had a right, even an obligation, to appropriate Indigenous land because they were supposedly able to make better use of it. — location: 4376 ^ref-10528

Settlers across the globe, and very often the colonial establishments that supported them, had little difficulty justifying the killing of Indigenous women and children as well, and did so in remarkably similar fashion, claiming that the women bred bandits and that children grew up to become enemies. — location: 4404 ^ref-700

righteous violence is particularly pernicious as perpetrators feel little, if any, remorse and are motivated by what they regard to be honorable goals. This is amply reflected in the mythologies and manifest destinies that settler societies have constructed to justify their existence, their acquisition of the land, and treatment of Indigenous peoples. — location: 4437 ^ref-64942

settler colonialism, together with its {168} panoply of eliminatory practices, continues to exert its baneful influence on the lives of Indigenous survivors: — location: 4447 ^ref-22633

We who live in the present did not create the violence and hatred of the past. But the violence and hatred of the past, to some degree created us. It formed the material world and the ideas with which we live, and will continue to do so unless we take active steps to unmake their consequences. — location: 4455 ^ref-29538