ABSTRACT
As Dirk Moses points out, “although indigenous people often regard assimilation and development policies as genocidal or at least culturally genocidal, we know that they have no legal protection from the UN genocide convention. So what of indigenous peoples in the world today, and specifically those living under settler-colonial rule? How should we think about the continued assimilationist pressures they face from the spread of global capitalism? Regardless of whether indigenous peoples live in wealthy states like Canada, the USA, Australia or countries in South America and Africa, their stories of dispossession, environmental degradation, and appalling social statistics including endemic suicide, very high levels of infant mortality and exotic diseases, are remarkably similar. Despite the cultural adaptation that has seen the “survival” of many indigenous peoples today, there is still value in Raphael Lemkin’s point regarding twentieth-century Maya culture that is pertinent to the issue of cultural genocide.
