Template:Did you know nominations/Native American genocide in the United States

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 20:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Native American genocide in the United States

Created by CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk). Nominated by SashiRolls (talk) at 22:19, 1 February 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Native American genocide in the United States; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

  • The article is new enough, long enough, and no copyright issues detected. The image is only tangentially related to both of the hooks and the article topic and for this reason it is not a good candidate to be featured at DYK. The hook facts can not be verified to the cited sources; at least not on those particular pages. Calloway doesn't use the word genocide at all on page 73 and seems to be linking the events to "germ warfare". That's not really the same thing. Likewise, Stannard also does not use the word genocide on page 124 although the chapter title does... Calloway links the events described to a death march but again that is not really the same thing as a genocide. Is there more obvious text somewhere else in these chapters that explicitly links these events to "genocide". If so, where? Unfortunately DYK review does not lend itself well to inference or original analysis of sources. There really needs to be a hook that can concretely reflect direct text.
Further, I am concerned with some of the use of "ongoing research" and "ongoing debate" type sentences within the lead and body of the article. The sources being cited for these statements in many cases date back to the 1990s and early 2000s. While these statements certainly may be an accurate representation of research and debate in 2024, I don't think we can use sources published in the 1990s or 2000s to verify those assertions. If you are going to make comments about current or ongoing research or current or ongoing debate then these statements need to be cited to something published post 2020 and ideally in 2023 or 2024 (such as a literature review in a journal or doctoral dissertation). Sources published from twenty to thirty-five years ago can't be used to verify statements about the year 2024. They can only tell us about the state of research and debate at the time of publication. Ultimately there needs to be better and more contemporary sources added to verify those claims, or the text needs to be modified. In general I would avoid making blanket claims about ongoing debate and research, because that is an unstable claim that can change with time and the older the source is the less reliable it becomes.4meter4 (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
  • I've added a 2015 reference from the body to the lede (Oxford Encyclopedias). There are quite a few more recent books among the references, but that gives an overview. I agree with you that the photo isn't appropriate (it's not on the page). I'll remove it from the nomination. -- SashiRolls 🌿 · 🍥 01:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
@SashiRolls I updated my review of the hooks above. I am a concerned that the word genocide isn't to be found on those pages. We really need a hook verified to a source with concrete language that uses the term genocide (and preferably "Native American genocide") in the text.4meter4 (talk) 01:54, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
I agree the source for the first hook does not use the word genocide. This is another reason why I prefer the second hook, it is incontestably sourced: when Stannard writes on that page "[...] more than 8000 Cherokee men, women, and children died as a result of their expulsion from their homeland. That is, about half of what then remained of the Cherokee nation was liquidated under Presidential directive, a death rate similar to that of other southeastern peoples who had undergone the same process--the Creeks and the Seminoles in particular." the words appear under two headers "American Holocaust" (book title on the even pages) and "Pestilence and Genocide" (chapter title on the odd pages). Four pages earlier he was quite explicit in the thesis statement of this part of the chapter (subheading III) which talks about the Trail of Tears: "The European habit of indiscriminately killing women and children when engaged in hostilities with the natives of the Americas was more than an atrocity. It was flatly and intentionally genocidal." (118-119) -- SashiRolls 🌿 · 🍥 02:25, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I am inclined to agree that viewing the chapter as a whole the meaning behind the Alt1 hook fact is strongly inferred if not directly stated within a concrete quote. But as I said earlier, I'm not sure that inferred context is enough to approve a DYK hook. Usually we require a hook fact to be explicitly stated within the text. I am going to place a note on the DYK talk page and ask others to comment to make sure this isn't an issue. I personally would be ok with Alt1, but I could see a promoter possibly raising a red flag. Best.4meter4 (talk) 02:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)