Cultural Death: Destruction of a People in Whole or In Part
Dr. Rudolph C. Rÿser
Volume 22, Number 2 (2023) 22 (2): 1-13
Keywords Culture, Cultural Genocide, Historical Trauma, Rafaël Lemkin
Abstract
Genocide is a term now commonly used to refer to the mass murder of a group resulting in their destruction in whole or in part. The inventor of the word “genocide” did not originally conceive the concept in narrow terms but in broad and inclusive terms. Mass murder as a crime is a narrow reading of the term that prevents state-based legal and political institutions from holding perpetrators accountable for the destruction of indigenous peoples. The phrase “cultural genocide” was initially contemplated as one of three forms of genocide by the drafters of the 1948 state-based International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. When the United Nations finally adopted the new Convention that came into force in 1951, the phrase “cultural genocide” was not included. Cultural genocide means “cultural death” for millions of individuals, their families, and their communities in the Fourth World. Rafaël Lemkin, his legal colleagues, United Nations diplomats, and political leaders decided instead of including cultural genocide in the Convention, they would view violations of culture as a matter of “human rights” to be appropriately discussed, evaluated, and remedied as a policy within and under domestic state laws. The decision directly prevented Fourth World peoples from being considered and understood as a distinct subject of international law when their cultures were violated. In this essay, we consider the meaning of “cultural death” and the decisions that led to Fourth World peoples becoming dismissed as populations to be ignored as targets of genocide.
Dr. Rudolph C. Rÿser
Published January 1, 2023
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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