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Thanks to the emergence of the indigenous people's rights movement worldwide, the issue came to the fore in full force in the 21st century. It couldn't be otherwise. Ethnic zeitgeist cannot be wiped out. At best it can be forced to remain subdued for an inordinately longer time. The physical presence of ethnic entities can be made to become veritably non-existent, but their spiritual selves are non-erasable. Normally on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, the leitmotif revolves round the oppression and persecution let loose on these peoples by the so-called mainlanders. This year was no exception.
In today's world, whenever the question of brutal persecution of aboriginals arise, the educated people readily point the finger at the vast North America, notably the US and, lately, Canada. In the past, the Indian Sub-continent, East Asia, notably Laos, and a few other countries in the eastern part of the continent and northern Africa used to be singled out as being ethnically skewed. Vast Australia's merciless treatment of its Aborigines has long been etched prominently in the annals of history. For the last few decades, the revised national conscience of the country has accommodated scopes for absolving itself of the return of the past spectres. The pervasive ghost of ethnic intolerance and its leftovers continue to prick the conscience of the nation. The forced taking of the Aborigine children away from their parents' families into the state custody still plagues the Australian social scenario. To the relief of human rights protection groups, the practice comes to a halt at a certain point. In Canada in the last century, the forcefully picked children were not made to become a part of cultural assimilation, but a 'cultural genocide' --- and finally to their deaths. At least two burial places containing unmarked graves of Canadian native children stand proof to these brutal practices. Those were orchestrated by the country's churches of the time.
In the relatively backward and colonised regions and countries, the mechanism of persecution was different. As the indigenous communities in many parts of these regions put up resistance against the colonial forces, the scenes emerged different and unique in character. But they resembled the anti-colonial battles in North America. The Santal, the Munda, the Oraon and the other tribes' fight against the British soldiers, equipped with firearms, reminds of the American Indians' bows and arrows becoming playthings compared to the invading French and British soldiers' cannons. The defeats of the native fighters were inevitable. Yet their bravery in demonstrating their courage and defiance has warranted their place in history. They fought alongside the local people, also colonised and oppressed like them.
Socio-economic oppressions on the indigenous peoples have been part of nearly traditional practices in many corners of the world. The perpetrators, the so-called superior nations, of these injustices in time would feel no compunction as they resorted to genocidal killings. These countries, including a few empires, began letting loose crimes like ethnic cleansing and racial profiling. They received tacit support from a small but powerful section in society nurturing hatred for the earliest settlers in different lands.
Apart from the USA, Australia and Canada, many smaller countries adopted the abhorrent policy. In executing their plans, these nations would normally choose the times of civil war, tribal warfare and social anarchies. One can cite the case of the Hmong, a dominant racial component in Laos. After the 1975 victory of the communist forces in the country, the Hmong began fleeing their ancestral land en masse to avert persecutions. Their offence, as had been revealed, was their alleged anti-communist stance in Laos. Many analysts point the finger at the Vietnamese anti-US communist forces for creating the anti-Hmong feeling among the common Laotians. Today, the few Hmong who cling to their motherland in spite of widespread adversities are compelled to live in pockets lying in the remote areas of dense forests in the country. Vast numbers of them have fled to the US. The government has reportedly given them political asylum. The Hmong community is considered one of the most economically thriving and culturally enlightened displaced peoples in the US. They are scattered all over the country. They follow the Chinese, the Vietnamese and many from the formerly communist countries.
While dealing with the persecutions let loose by different governments on the world's ethnic minorities, the US itself cannot deserve to be given a clean chit. History unveils a few dark chapters in America's recent history. These episodes centre round the decades of the 1950s and the 1960s. The period shows the country's incredible nonchalance towards its minorities being used as veritable guinea-pigs. At this place one is tempted to recall the country's programme of determining the extent of nuclear fallout impact on people during an atomic war. The then US Atomic Energy Commission chose an Alaska village and its people for the test. The hectic attempts were resisted by the nuclear scientists and the people of the Alaskan village which forced the authorities to drop the test. The Alaska project had emerged as a critical phase in the initial days of the Cold War. The time was only five to fifteen years after the US dropped two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the already devastated Axis power, Japan, in 1945 --- the year the World War-II ended.
The Alaska project warrants lengthy elaboration. It was picked by a Norwegian documentary movie director and his crew as the subject of a film. The movie was called 'Project Chariot'. To speak in brief, the US Atomic Energy Commission planned to detonate thermonuclear bombs at a site near the indigenous village town Point of Hope. The modus operandi of the project couldn't be kept hidden from the Alaskan villagers. By joining hands they organised protest demonstrations at the site. The series of events took place at a time when the world had yet to see the start of full-scale anti-nukes movements and those aimed at stopping the process of the aboriginal peoples' extinction. Meanwhile, no atomic tests were carried out at the chosen site. But it was later revealed that the designated area was radioactively contaminated by another secret experiment. It saw the government burying several thousand pounds of radioactive soil in the same venue without informing the people living there. As feared, the impact was disastrous. Continuous increase in the rates of cancer became endemic to a vast area in Alaska. The indigenous Alaskans had to go through the ordeals of the nuclear tests fallout for years in a row.
Along with these nuclear power-related excesses and abuses, the US had already emerged as a champion of the 'boarding school' system beginning in the 19th century. It targeted the Native Americans in the main, with its hidden goal being wiping out the rich indigenous culture. Outwardly, it championed assimilation of the backward Native American way of life with the Euro-American cultures of the 'civilised world'. In reality, the schools came up as the hotbeds expediting the extinction of the Native Americans' distinctive identity including its rich past and the languages. The project succeeded to a great extent in helping the American-Indians' age-old spiritual identity vanish in the following period. In the modern times, the Native Americans and their way of life are preserved in the US as 'showpieces', being confined to autonomous areas. In those areas the Native Americans are allowed to lead their lives in pure 'Indian' ways. Chiefly built to catering to the curiosities of tourists, many US states, once known as Native American-dominant, have their own Indian villages. People living in these enclosures follow their own legal and judicial systems, and native rites and rituals. One of the largest Native American colonies in the US is located in New Mexico. It is reserved for the fast disappearing Pueblo Indians.
Although seemingly similar to the fate of the American blacks, the plight of the Native Americans is strewn with brutal conquests and annihilation campaigns of the past. Like these racial profiling exercises, the wiping out of the natives of different countries continues unabated. Europe and, lately, the US could free themselves of the Albatross. But the curse of native persecutions haunts many newly emerged economic powers --- be they in South, Southeast and West Asia or northern Africa.