Benjamin Madley, a postdoctoral fellow in History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth, is a young scholar who has already played a major role in genocide studies. He focuses on “frontier genocide,” that is, mass assaults on indigenous peoples, whether by colonizers who covet the native peoples’ land, local government officials, or army units. Dr. Madley has written about a number of indigenous groups that were targeted for genocide, including the Yuki of California, Aboriginal Tasmanians, and the Herero of Namibia.
He is now transforming his award-winning doctoral dissertation, an examination of genocide in California, 1846-1873, into a book for Yale University Press. His talk on April 18 will deal primarily with the campaigns against the Tolowa, who between 1851 and 1856 lost more than 80% of their population, but he also will place this history in the context of the wider assault on California Indians, which cost as many as 13,000 lives.
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