Benjamin Madley joins the show to tell us about his award winning book, American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 about the genocide of California’s Indian/Native population. Madley is associate professor of history, University of California, Los Angeles, where he focuses on Native America, the United States, and genocide in world history. He starts off giving a broad overview of some of the evens in California and why he believes what happened should be considered genocide. We talk about what’s at stake if we acknowledge that what happened in the New World was in fact a genocide. Would we owe reparations? Should we return public lands where massacres happened to tribes? We talk about placing the American Genocide alongside atrocities like The Holocaust and The Armenian Genocide. He tells us why genocide matters and breaks down the historical media portrayal of the savage Indian. And we started the episode discussing the passage of the WV Road Bond and the potential for new taxes.
Professor Madley’s has won the following awards:

016 Indian Country Today Hot List
Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Awards in category of History
True West Best New Western Author 2016
Winner, Gold Medal, 2016 California Book Award in category of Californiana
Winner, Inaugural Heyday History Award from Heyday Books
Winner of the 2016 Institute for the Study of Genocide’s Ralph Lemkin Book Award
Link to book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181364/american-genocide