Revealing the history of genocide against California’s Native Americans | UCLA

23.8.17

Revealing the history of genocide against California’s Native Americans | UCLA: Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, has been on a decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide.

“The history of genocide casts a shadow over California,” Madley said. “It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”

This largely forgotten history of state-sanctioned mass murder and heroic resilience is revealed in Madley’s book “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873.” The book, recently released in paperback, meticulously narrates the systematic and brutal campaigns of slaughter and enslavement during which California’s indigenous population plunged from as many as 150,000 people to around 30,000.