We are all aware of the brutal repression of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in America, but many do not know the true extent to which these atrocities contributed to the founding and perpetuation of our country.

It all began in the year 1492 with Christopher Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, which lead to more than 500 years of subjugation of the continents’ native people. When white Europeans came to America, they immediately began enslaving and committing genocide against Native Americans. The United Nations defines genocide as “Any…acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and there is a wealth of evidence to support that what Europeans did to indigenous peoples can be defined as a genocide on par with the Holocaust.

Most modern historians estimate that the pre-Columbian population of the area that is now the United States of America was around 10 million people. By 1900, less than 300,000 American natives lived in the same area. There is no way to explain the 97 percent drop in the native population other than the horrible acts committed by European colonizers.

The main killer of Native Americans was diseases brought from Europe. It is estimated that disease killed about 90 percent of natives across the Americas. Millions of people were killed by diseases such as measles, influenza, and cholera. There is evidence to suggest that these diseases were deliberately spread by white Europeans, as shown in a letter between two British military officers in 1763: “You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians [with smallpox] by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.” This shows the intention of European colonizers to exterminate an entire race of people that they believed were beneath them. These attitudes continued for many more years after the 1763 letter. The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native Americans from their lands by the US government. Andrew Jackson’s intentions for the removal of natives was to force them to “Cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community”. This is in line with the UN’s definition of genocide, as it shows the US government’s intention to completely erase indigenous peoples’ culture and way of life.

The oppression of America’s native people is still ongoing. The reservations that Native Americans have been forced onto are rife with violent crime because the FBI designates reservations as low priority areas. Native women are twice as likely to be victims of rape, and 80 percent of rape victims report their attackers as “non-Indian”. This is in part due to the disproportionately high alcoholism rates among indigenous people, as well as the low risk for offenders to be prosecuted. On top of this, American natives suffer from suicide at 190 percent of the rate for the national population, and suicide is the second leading cause of death for native people aged 10 to 34.

The indigenous people of America have underwent some of the most painful tribulations any ethnic group has gone through in history, and they are still suffering from unfair ethnic repression. Unfortunately, very little is being done by those in charge to help fix this. It is our duty, not as American citizens, but as human beings, to do our part in righting the wrongs that have been inflicted upon Native Americans. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”. Indigenous peoples did not consent to have their way of life destroyed by invading white Europeans, and as such, it is morally unjust for the American government to have any control over them.