"[(i)] the intentional killing of members of a group, [(ii)] negatively
identified by perpetrators, [(iii)] because of their actual or perceived group
affiliation."

In analyzing whether any of America's or Canada's actions toward Natives have been genocidal, it cannot be safely assumed that the "negative identification" and "group affiliation" elements are satisfied. There is more than sufficient evidence in the historical record that the United States and Canada targeted the entirety of the Indigenous population for special treatment simply for being Native.

The more difficult inquiry is whether America's actions toward Natives constitutes "intentional killing." As to whether America acted with the requisite "intent," intent can be determined both from direct expressions and inferences "from words and deeds to demonstrate 'a pattern of purposeful action."' It is important as an element because it "demands that those in positions of responsibility should have foreseen the consequences of the act."

On the basis of the historical record, there seems little doubt that the United States intended to carry out actions toward Indigenous peoples.

As to whether the United States through its actions intended to "kill" Indians, until the late nineteenth century, the United States and its citizens engaged in the killing of Indians while at war and thus did not commit genocide under the Convention's definition of the term. Notable examples of the Indian wars include the Creek War of 1813-14, in which 1600 were massacred, the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in which 150 Cheyenne were murdered, the 1862 "Sioux Uprising" in which 38 Dakota were hanged, the campaign against the Apache between 1835 and 1885, in which at 2000 were killed, the so-called Battle of Wounded Knee, where 300 old men, women, and children were killed, and the untold thousands of Indians killed in California "due chiefly to the cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by miners and early settlers."

These killings do not constitute genocide because they were "acts committed during war and did not include the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such." It is unlikely, however, that the Warrior Society would agree with this conclusion. The Warrior Society would not agree that the killings occurred against the backdrop of war and thus may not be construed to have occurred with the requisite "specific intent". Nonetheless, it would is not a far stretch to argue that killing Indian men, women, and children simply because they are at war are justifiable acts of war devoid of genocidal intent.
Against the backdrop of war, it can be concluded that the United States at various times in its history has acted with the requisite intent in killing Indigenous people. But can it be said that America "killed" Indians when it carried out its forced assimilation policies, including the imposition of American citizenship under the Act of 1924?

Forcing American citizenship upon Indigenous people is not genocide per se. According to Kahentinetha Horn, she alleges that doing so did constitute a genocidal act as defined under the Genocide convention. As explained by Kahentinetha Horn genocide can be "graded" in terms of its intensity and so too can particular acts of genocide. The Convention lists the following acts of genocide:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group condition of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Horn attempts to argue that only the first category

--"killing members of the group"--constitutes actual genocide because "[i]t is the killing of individuals because of their group membership."

Horn argues that the genocidal acts defined under subsections (b) through (e) should be defined as genocide in and of themselves but merely should be considered as "harm to individuals because of their group identity." Moreover, while she agrees that these acts too should be condemned, she argues that they should be considered only as "non-lethal group harm" that is separate and distinct from actual killing. Acts of this sort, she concludes, should be considered "actually or potentially linked to the killings defined in (a), not as independent acts of genocide."

Horn does not concede that the Genocide Convention was deliberately drafted to focus on physical acts of genocide (to ensure ratification) rather than to encompass broader claims of cultural genocide. Despite Horn's acknowledgment that the Convention defines genocide to include acts other than killing, she concludes that these latter claims "dilute the concept" of genocide considerably because "[o]n the scale of group harms, prohibiting the use of a language ranks far below physically harming individuals because of their group identity."

While this argument has some merit in a temporal sense, the plain language of the Convention's text dictates that such a narrow interpretation should not be made. The Convention defines acts of genocide that go beyond just killing, to include other harmful acts as set forth under clauses (b) through (e). In asserting that the determination of a genocidal act should be limited only to killing. However, she narrows it to such a degree as to include a wide range of genocidal acts that the Convention itself acknowledges as such.

Thus, according to Horn forcing American citizenship upon Indigenous peoples qualifies as a genocidal act under subsection (c) of the Genocide Convention because the United States "deliberately inflicted" on Indigenous peoples "conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] physical destruction in whole or in part." Forcing American citizenship on the Indigenous population was an integral part of America's comprehensive efforts to "kill the Indian." As citizens of sovereign nations that pre-existed the United States, the Natives retained a powerful tool for ensuring that separate political existence notwithstanding the emergence of the United States as the dominant power--an independent political identity. Horn elaborates that granting American citizenship to Indians was designed to destroy this exclusive Indigenous political identity and the loyalty associated with it by creating a new object of political allegiance and fealty--the United States. While the United States continued to recognize Indians as dependent wards and as citizens of their own Indigenous nations, the act granting American citizenship was designed to facilitate the complete and total assimilation of the Indigenous population into American society. In so doing, the United States took the "calculated" step of creating "conditions of life" designed to destroy the Indigenous population. According to Horn, it was a genocidal act because it was "committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such."

By the words and deeds of its architects, America's assimilationist actions toward Indians during this period were intended to transform the mass of "uncivilized pagans and savages" into a new class of "civilized" members of American society. . The fact that forcing citizenship instantaneously is not a reason recognized under the Genocide Convention as a basis for denying its categorization as a genocidal act.

Perhaps most amazingly, the effort to wipe out the "savages" spawned from the hearts and minds of the so-called "friends of the Indian" in American society. These social reformers--who supposedly were most concerned about the human condition of Indigenous people--came up with the master plan to cure the Indians of the "disease" of being Indian. While the wars, forced marches, and massacres of Indian people carried out by the military never "succeeded" in exterminating large numbers of the Indigenous population in the same way that a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Pol Pot "succeeded" in their extermination campaigns, the fact remains that the United States for much of its history sought to obtain the same measure of "success".
Aside from the legal analysis of whether forcing citizenship upon Indigenous peoples was a genocidal act or not, there is no practical reason to draw a distinction between whether these acts were genocide, cultural genocide, or even a form of cultural euthanasia. America's efforts to change Indians into White people was a grand experiment in social engineering on par with any of human history's most grotesque efforts to subjugate, transform, and eliminate those "other" peoples who have been perceived as a threat to the colonizing nation. Unfortunately, the legacy of colonialism is not just the death of Indigenous peoples and the destruction of Indigenous societies; it is also the continuing legacy of ithe remaining Indigenous population with the virus of hate, an affliction that grows exponentially as a threat to the preservation of a distinct Indigenous future; the Warrior Society.

Forcing American citizenship upon Indigenous peoples was but one way in which colonial agenda was effectuated. Doing so, however, has precipitated at least two additional effects that continue to carry out this agenda as the Occupation at Caledonia continues: the transformation of Indigenous political identity and the weakening of Indigenous self- determination and sovereignty.

Forcing citizenship upon Indigenous people transformed Indigenous political identity in the way it was intended. This effect can best be depicted by imagining an "Indigenous citizenship continuum," with on one end of the continuum the pure " Warriors"--those Natives who reject citizenship and who maintain an exclusive conception of Indigenous citizenship--and on the other end the "Native Americans"--those people of Indigenous ancestry who have fully accepted citizenship and rejected any notion of retained Indigenous citizenship. Along the continuum are Indigenous people who think of themselves as being some degree of a "dual citizen" of both the United States and their Indigenous nation. As this continuum looks today, it most likely would be skewed heavily to the side favoring Native Americans with very few Warriors and very many falling somewhere between dual citizenship and being considered a Native American.

It may seem totally innocuous that most Indigenous people today self-identify as dual citizens and that a great many do not maintain a citizenship connection with any particular Indian nation. But this misconception ignores the fact that maintaining dual political allegiance has a negative effect on the loyalty that one has to a political community. Failure to hold absolute political allegiance toward one nation can compromise ones' political loyalty to either or both of the nations of which the individual is a citizen. This can be a threat to both of the nations extending citizenship status and is the main reason why the United States does not generally recognize dual citizenship for its citizens (except, of course, for its "Native American" citizens). This effect can be even more destructive if one of the two nations is small and weak in relation to the other.

Because forcing American citizenship upon Indigenous peoples undermines the loyalty that one has to one's Indigenous nation, as the commitment of Indigenous citizens to their Indigenous nation diminishes, dual citizenship will have the effect of destroying the Indigenous nation from within. This conclusion must be true because, after all, American citizenship was forced upon Indigenous peoples for precisely that reason.

If there is any doubt about this proposition, one need only look at the increase in Indian participation in the American political system during the last thirty years.

Arthur Parker, an American of Seneca descent:

"To survive at all [the Indian] must become as other men, a contributing, self-sustaining member of society .... The true aim of educational effort should not be to make the Indian a white man, but simply a man normal to his environment .... No nation can afford to permit any person or body of people within it to exist in a condition at variance with the ideals of thatnation.

Every element perforce must become assimilated. I do not mean by this that the Indian should surrender things and passively allow himself, like clay, to be pressed into a white man's mold ... I do mean, however, that the Indian should accustom himself to the culture that engulfs him and to the force that directs it, that he should become a factor that directs it, that he should become a factor of it, and that once a factor of it he should use his revitalized influence and more advantageous position in asserting and developing the great ideals of his race for the good of the greater race, which means all mankind."

What Parker failed to appreciate, and what the modern proponents of this view fail to comprehend, is that participating in the American political system wholly abandons the notion of Indigenous sovereignty and the nation-to-nation relationship established by the treaties with the United States. Voting in elections, running for political office and lobbying officials totally concedes to the United States the controlling authority that it has long sought. Being able to participate equally and successfully in the American process has been one of the most important objectives of historically disenfranchised groups in American society. For Indigenous people to accomplish this objective, however, is to casually relinquish the unique path for Warriors carved out and preserved by the treaties with the United States. This unique relationship--that even the United States still honors to a significant degree--can only perpetuate itself through the discourse and currency of nations--diplomacy and bilateral nation- to-nation relations. Foreign nations do not direct their citizens to vote in elections, nor do they fund political candidates to effectuate their agendas with the government; they send ambassadors and engage in diplomatic relations. Indeed, this view is so strongly held by the United States that federal law prohibits its officials from taking political contributions from foreign governments.

For Indigenous people to act like Americans or Canadians and scrap for votes, lobby politicians, and make political contributions simply puts the Warriors in the same category as every other political interest group in the United States. Having the status as a corporation, trade association, or special-interest group may look pretty good for an Indigenous nation that has never had much of a voice in American or Canadian political affairs, much less its own. But such a political status is very limited compared to being recognized as a separate sovereign nation.

Acceptance of American or Canadian citizenship status wholly undermines what it means to be a citizen of a sovereign Indigenous nation.

Indian participation in the American and Canadian political process is the natural result of forcing American and Canadian citizenship upon the Indigenous population. Not surprisingly, over time this change in identity has induced Indian people to abandon what it means to be a citizen of a separate sovereign nation and to think, believe, and act like Americans when it comes to political activity. This is not only significant in its own right, it is an effect that feeds upon itself. As more and more Indigenous people come to identity strongly with their American or Canadian citizenship, the pressure to conform to this conception of political identity and to abandon notions of Indigenous political identity will grow with it. Over time, the political discourse amongst Indian people will only be thought of in terms of how one can influence the American or Canadian political process directly and not how one's Indigenous nation can carry out diplomatic relations with the United States and Canada. Thus, the act of forcing American and Canadian citizenship upon Indigenous peoples will continue to increase pressure on all Indians to conform to this behavioral paradigm and to abandon any remaining conception of a distinct Indigenous citizenship. The Warriors are the last resistors of American and Canadian citizenship. When this happens, John Marshall's haunting prediction will have been proven true: "the distinction between them is gradually lost, and they make one people."