The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

48 modernity’s edges
the masters felt that their subjects had to be taught a lesson. Acts of resistance or
rebellion were often punished by genocidal killings.
A classic example of this, out of the scores that might be cited, was the German
extermination of the Herero in Southwest Africa (see Drechsler 1980; Bridgman
1981). The German administration of their Southwest African colony decided
that German settlers should pasture their cattle on the best grazing lands in what
was by and large an arid region. This meant that they would take over the lands
where the Herero had traditionally grazed their cattle. Since there were no alternative
grazing lands, the Herero would thus be deprived of their cattle and left
without other means of subsistence than to work for the German settlers. The German
administration argued that it was in the interests of higher development and
virtually a part of natural law that indigenous peoples become a class of workers
in the service of the whites. The Herero did not see it that way, however, and when
they were evicted from their grazing lands they fought back. The Germans therefore
mounted a punitive expedition in 1904 that massacred thousands of Herero
and drove the rest into the waterless desert. General von Trotha then established
a line to ensure that no Herero could re-emerge from the desert, where they were
starving to death. He insisted that they should all leave German territory on pain
of being shot. The result was the virtual extermination of the Herero, who were
reduced to a few thousand landless fugitives.
Genocides against indigenous peoples were not, however, solely a function of
colonial policies. Genocidal massacres continued to be committed in the years of
decolonization and beyond, only their rationale was different. Such massacres are
now less frequently committed in the search for profit, though they still occur. The
notorious treatment of the Ogoni in Nigeria is a case in point. 4 Oil has been extracted
in large quantities from Ogoni lands since 1958, but few of the proceeds
have found their way to the Ogoni themselves. Instead the Ogoni have seen their
land turned into one vast environmental disaster by oil spillage, oil flaring, and other
side effects of oil drilling. The health of the Ogoni has suffered and continues to
do so, while their subsistence activities have been spoiled, their society disrupted,
and their population reduced by illness and destitution. This is a classic case of an
indigenous society being forced to suffer in the name of development.
The development rationale is in fact the modern version of the older justifications
for mistreating indigenous peoples. In previous centuries, imperialists insisted
that they were doing the peoples they conquered a favor by bringing them into the
civilized world. That was, for example, the thinking of the German administration
in Southwest Africa when they drove the Herero into revolt and then exterminated
them. Nowadays indigenous peoples frequently find themselves threatened
by a particular aspect of modern “civilization,” namely “development.” It is
all too often argued by governments and developmental planners that indigenous
peoples “must not be allowed to stand in the way of development.” In fact, being
accused of “standing in the way of development” these days is to stand accused of
something between a sin and a crime. So, all too often, projects or programs are