Cultural Genocide: Destroying Fourth World People

Rudolph C. Rÿser, PhD, Amelia A.M. Marchand, M.A.,, Deborah Parker, M.A., Aline Castañeda Cadena

Abstract

Raphael Lemkin invented the word “genocide” after spending decades researching the consequences of kingdoms and states colonizing peoples in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Melanesia and the Pacific Islands from the 15th century to the present. He concluded that colonization had the effect of destroying peoples “in whole or in part” by destroying their cultures. In this essay the authors introduce and examine the major characteristics of cultural destruction, or in Lemkin’s words, “cultural genocide.” Recognizing that when the United Nations debated and adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948 it did so to implement the significant Universal Declaration on Human Rights containing provisions such as, “Everyone has the right to
freely participate in the cultural life of the community...”. The authors note that the provision of the 1948 Convention on Genocide includes neither the word “culture” nor the word “people” in the text. Lemkin’s primary definition of genocide (“the destruction of a people’s culture”) is ignored in favor of defining genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial, or religious group” – killing, causing bodily harm, physical destruction, prevention of births, and the forcible transfer of children. Lemkin argued that the domination of a people with the intent of destroying or replacing their culture in whole or in part is the first stage of genocide that can lead to violent killings and bodily harm. This essay comprises an overview of the development of Cultural Genocide as a concept, Heritage Elimination and Cultural Cleansing.