Cultural Genocide Thesis

The development of cultural genocide, and its definition, within international law can be seen from its origin, Raphael Lemkin, to the subsequent debate by the United Nations’ Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, to its omission from the Genocide Convention, and now to its reintroduction in the international arena by Indigenous peoples’ mobilization. Furthermore, the various components in the United Nations’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC), specifically article 2, have many particulars that work against addressing ‘cultural’ genocide, which results in the inability to appropriately and legally acknowledge the brutalities inflicted upon groups, which do not fit in the restrictive category of ‘physical' genocide

Although, one can argue that article 7 of the UNGC is somewhat enough, it still does not adequately delve into the nuances of genocide as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples does. Therein lies the downfall of the UNGC. The articles, allowing for freedom from cultural genocide, were eliminated from the UNGC due to the vested interests of the colonial powers who built their wealth upon the the exploitation of Indigenous people, through imposed cultural genocide. Indeed, claims of cultural genocide are often derided, and their indicators dismissed as benign effects of modernity and indigenous cultural diffusion. Therefore, in order to rectify the institutionalized euro-centric dispositions, there is a need to expand the meaning and connotations of genocide so as to include the aspect of ‘cultural’ genocide, which is arguably a good first step in addressing the atrocities committed against many groups, but particularly the Indigenous

Moreover, he discussed not only “mass killing and the physical elimination of such groups but also what is often referred to as ‘cultural genocide’ or ‘ethnocide.’” So it is important to note that Lemkin did give priority to the protection of cultural or ‘national” groups. Thus, “‘physical’ genocide was not, for him, simply a matter of individual killings in the aggregate; rather, it referred to the manner in which the mass loss of life debilitates the continuation of a ‘group.’” However, the continued ambiguity of cultural genocide still does not address the past plight of many groups, namely the Indigenous people. Rather, it categorizes and draws “boundaries around these peoples in a manner that imposes Western understandings of group identity and group spaces” which again points to the fact that the UNCG has unwittingly become yet another eurocentric tool for reframing Indigenous lifeworlds, rather than a resource for Indigenous justice. But it is precisely on this basis of demarcating ‘groups’ that one can argue for the inclusion of cultural genocide. Cultural genocide is more accurate than ‘forcible assimilation’ when it comes to the experiences of Indigenous people, because “groups with clearly defined identities were targeted as groups, rather than