There were 24 separate volunteer state militia operations that are launched by California. They killed an absolute minimum of 1,340 California Indian people between 1850 and 1861. The militias inspired vigilantes who then killed a minimum of 6,460 additional California Indians during these same years.
In this extended interview, we speak with UCLA Associate Professor Benjamin Madley about his book, "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe," and discuss how newspapers, tracts, and paperbacks were an essential element in assisting and priming the public for the genocide of California's native population.
Prof. Madley's work was instrumental in our research for previous Citations Needed episodes - namely, "Episode 158: How Notions of 'Blight' and 'Barrenness' Were Created to Erase Indigenous Peoples" and "Episode 172: The Foundational Myth Machine - Indigenous Peoples of North America and Hollywood" - so we were thrilled to dig even deeper into his work on this special News Brief.