Sidestep : The Selk'nam Genocides

We were banned for 30 days on Facebook recently for posting the picture below while discussing genocide, including Maori genocide against Maori, both via Ngapuhi and then by the two tribes that did the same to the MoriOri...

3 Sep 2022 - Your post didn't follow our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity.

Above is that photo we posted. It was about a particular genocide that makes me angry... as angry as what Ngapuhi did to many tribes in NZ, killing up to 30,000 of their own kind when they had firearms (just like the guys above did). Facebook also makes me angry, for they are complete idiots as this was a piece of history. This genocide pictured above occurred relatively recently and was akin to hunting wild animals, much like Ngapuhi did. Can you imagine the panic in being maimed and killed by an enemy weapon that was noisy, hit you without being face to face with something your mind could not comprehend. It would be like aliens arriving now and killing us with weapons we did not understand, nor could compete with. The Selknam, and in NZ, the Ngāti Whātua would not have been able to stop it. And then Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama did the same as the Europeans above in the Chatham Island.

Below are photos of the Selknam peoples that were left. At first gold was discovered, then ranchers moved in and tried to relocate the people and then the exterminations began in the early 1890's with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Bounties were even paid on the numbers killed.

These are ones on their own land.

Their dwellings

These ones were carted off to Europe for the human zoos of the day.

It is brutal story but you can research it for yourself. My purpose in this is to compare the treatment of Maori by Europeans to these people - a vastly different treatment as to that of their own supposed people.

There were many involved in the Selknam massacres - including some NZ shepherds. The one looking down on the body is that of Julius Popper. The large ranchers tried to drive out the Selk'nam, then began a campaign of extermination against them, with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia a bounty for each Selk'nam dead, which was confirmed on presentation of a pair of hands or ears, or later a complete skull. They were given more for the death of a woman than a man. Think about that one...

The last full-blooded Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974.

We will do a post next year called '5 genocides' discussing the Jews, the Tutsi, the Selknam, Ngapuhi and the Moriori - all either perpetrators or victims of planned and specific genocide. It's going to show skin colour has little to do with morality or evil behaviour for 3 of those five perpetrators are not European.

As of this week, we have a whole series on giants or related to giants around the world, twenty-six of them, one a week until end of April next year.