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Genocide of indigenous peoples is the mass destruction of entire communities or races of indigenous peoples.〔The definition of "indigenous peoples", is controversial. This article uses a definition of "indigenous peoples" similar to used by international legislation by UN, UNESCO, ILO and WTO, as well as by the majority of relevant scholarship which applies to those ethnic minorities that were indigenous to a territory prior to being incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of. This definition differs from the commonsense definition of indigenous peoples as being simply the first known inhabitants of a territory.〕 Indigenous peoples are understood to be ethnic minorities whose historical and current territory has also become occupied by colonial expansion, or the formation of a nation state, by a dominant political group such as a colonial power. While the concept of genocide was formulated by Raphael Lemkin in the mid-20th century, the earlier expansion of various European colonial powers such as the Spanish and British empires, and the subsequent establishment of nation states on indigenous territory, frequently involved acts of genocidal violence against indigenous groups in the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia. According to Lemkin, colonization was in itself "intrinsically genocidal". He saw this genocide as a two-stage process, the first being the destruction of the indigenous population's way of life. In the second stage, the newcomers impose their way of life on the minority group. According to David Maybury-Lewis, imperial and colonial forms of genocide are enacted in two main ways, either through the deliberate clearing of territories of their original inhabitants in order to make them exploitable for purposes of resource extraction or colonial settlements, or through enlisting indigenous peoples as forced laborers in colonial or imperialist projects of resource extraction. The designation of specific events as genocidal is often controversial. Some scholars, among them Lemkin, have argued that cultural genocide, sometimes called ethnocide, should also be recognized. A people may continue to exist, but if they are prevented from perpetuating their group identity by prohibitions against cultural and religious practices that are the basis of that identity, this may also be considered a form of genocide. The accusation of cultural genocide carried out by the Chinese during the occupation of Tibet is one example. Another is when the United States Government denied Native Americans access to their sacred sites, and enacted laws banning many of their religious practices and customs. These laws were largely intact until 1978, when they were overturned by the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.〔 == Genocide debate == The concept of genocide was defined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. After World War II, it was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. For Lemkin, genocide was broadly defined and included all attempts to destroy a specific ethnic group, whether strictly physical through mass killings, or cultural or psychological through oppression and destruction of indigenous ways of life.〔By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of an ethnic group . . . . Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.〕 The UN definition, which is used in international law, is narrower than Lemkin's, and states that genocide is: "...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: :(a) Killing members of the group; :(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; :(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions 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."〔Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2〕 Most attempts to define specific events as genocidal are disputed to various degrees, especially when the victims are minority groups such as indigenous peoples and the alleged perpetrator is a modern nation state rather than a colonial empire. In these cases, whether or not genocide occurred is a legal question to be settled in International human rights courts. The determination of whether a historical event should be considered genocide can be a matter of scholarly debate. Because legal liability is not at issue, the UN definition may not always provide the basis for such discussions. Historians may draw on broader definitions such as Lemkin's, which sees colonialist violence against indigenous peoples as inherently genocidal. For example, in the case of the colonization of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, when 90% of the indigenous population was wiped out in 500 years of European colonization, it can be debatable whether genocide occurs when disease was the main cause of population decline, since there are some instance of deliberate introduction of disease, but the vast majority of instances without the intent to cause death. Some scholars argue that intent of genocide is not necessary, since genocide may be the cumulative result of minor conflicts in which settlers, or colonial or state agents, perpetrate violence against minority groups. Others argue that the dire consequences of European diseases among many New World populations were exacerbated by different forms of genocidal violence, and that intentional and unintentional deaths cannot easily be separated. Some scholars regard the colonization of the Americas as genocide, since they argue it was largely achieved through systematically exploiting, removing and destroying specific ethnic groups, even when most deaths were caused by disease and not direct violence from colonizers. In this view, the concept of "manifest destiny" in the westward expansion from the eastern United States can be seen as contributing to genocide. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Genocide of indigenous peoples」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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