“We Didn’t Kill Enough Indians”: The Cost of Shrugging Off Genocide

On Dehumanization, Media Complicity, and the Psychological Toll of Being Erased

I wish I could say I was shocked when Ann Coulter posted on X:

“We didn’t kill enough Indians.” Instead, I felt that familiar, weary grief Native people know well. What hurt most wasn’t the cruelty, it was the silence.

Her comment went viral, viewed over 10 million times, before platforms flagged it, and as I write this, it remains posted on her account. It felt like the country collectively shrugged, muttering, “Just Ann being Ann.” But when genocide is normalized, that shrug becomes permission. That alone shows how normalized this kind of hate against Indigenous people has become.

Native people, tribal leaders, scholars, and advocates across the country condemned the post immediately, calling it what it was: genocidal hate speech.

A few outlets—ICT, KOSU, Yahoo News, CBS Austin, Front Runner NJ—covered the outrage. But where was The New York Times? CNN? NPR? Where were our allies?

But worse than silence was what did show up.

The replies.

Thousands of them. Not correcting her. Not challenging her. Applauding her.

“She’s just saying what everyone is thinking.”

“I love Ann Coulter more than words could describe for posting this.”

“White man saved America from savages.”

“The Trail of Tears wasn’t long enough.”

“We did our best, but ran out of (smallpox) blankets.”

One user said “these people and their children should be sterilized” as a “moderate option.”

Every comment flows from the same source: centuries of dehumanization that positions Native people as disposable, optional, even reviled.

Mark Ruffalo did speak up, calling Coulter’s remarks “truly sociopathic.” But his protest shouldn’t be exceptional; it should be baseline. Because when genocide is joked about as a casual comment, the floor rises for violence.

Coulter’s comments were a reaction to Diné professor Melanie Yazzie, who in 2023 spoke on Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, and climate justice. That vision for a better shared future triggered a genocide joke instead of a response. The fact that this comment landed, went viral, and met silence tells you how deeply this hatred is baked into our country’s psyche.

But the psychological wounds run deeper than rhetoric.

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The Slow Burn of Dehumanization

Imagine seeing that message sprayed across your screen, "we didn’t kill enough of you.” Now imagine that being excused as humor. That’s not just a targeted insult, it’s permission. Permission to see Native people not as humans, but as disposable. And when that message is normalized, the damage goes past “hurt feelings”, it lodges deep and translates into real violence.

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Violence By The Numbers

Comments like Coulter’s aren’t just cruel jokes. They’re part of a pipeline that starts with dehumanization and ends in real-world violence.

Indigenous women and girls face the highest rates of violence in the United States. Over 84% have experienced physical or sexual violence. Nearly 96% of that is committed by non-Native perpetrators.

Native Americans are killed by police at nearly three times the rate of white Americans.

Then there are the "deaths of despair”. Indigenous youth die by suicide at 2 to 3 times the national rate. In Canada, the suicide rate for First Nations children is six times higher, and for Inuit youth, it’s up to 24 times higher.

None of that is accidental.

These deaths are not individual failings. They’re systemic outcomes. They’re what happens when a culture allows, and even encourages, the erasure, humiliation, and dehumanization of a people.

And that erasure doesn’t just happen in violence. It happens in silence. In what’s not said. In what’s laughed off. In who gets defended, and who doesn’t. These are patterns, fueled by centuries of erasure and contempt embodied in words like Coulter’s.

These are not just statistics. These are our children, our nieces, our nephews.

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From Mascots to Mental Health: Why Symbolic Violence Still Hurts

Let’s talk about mascots.

While Native communities were still reeling from Ann Coulter’s genocidal tweet, the media turned to Donald Trump, not to ask whether he condemned that violent rhetoric, but to ask if he would consider bringing back the name “Redskins” for Washington’s NFL team.

That moment said a lot.

Instead of addressing hate speech aimed directly at Indigenous peoples, the national conversation pivoted to a football team name that has long been denounced by Native communities as a racial slur. And Trump’s response? He said the name was “superior” and claimed he never would have changed it. No denouncement of Coulter’s comment. No acknowledgment of the harm.

This is the context we’re living in: genocidal rhetoric is met with shrugs, while the real focus becomes whether it’s time to reinstate a team name that was rooted in bounty hunting, literally, a price on Native lives. “Redskins” means dead Indians. When the media chooses spectacle over substance, it allows the harm to go unchallenged. It reinforces a system that treats Indigenous suffering as secondary, if it’s acknowledged at all.

The same week Coulter’s tweet was ignored and Trump praised a slur, the Native American Rights Fund released a campaign reminding people that “Banning Native Mascots Is Not Discrimination—It’s Protection.”

And it is.

The American Psychological Association has been clear for years: Native mascots aren’t just outdated symbols, they’re harmful. They reinforce damaging stereotypes, chip away at the self-worth of Native youth, and teach non-Native students that Indigenous people are relics of the past, cartoonish figures to be laughed at or ignored. Not human. Just props.

And when that’s the only reflection you see in public life, when your identity is distorted or degraded every time it appears, it leaves a mark. That kind of pain doesn’t always shout. More often, it sinks in. Quietly. Steadily. It becomes internalized.

From a psychological perspective, internalizing pain means turning it inward. Instead of feeling you are seen or validated, allowed to speak out, protest, or push back, many young people, especially those already living in environments shaped by systemic racism and intergenerational trauma, swallow it. They start to believe the lie: Maybe I am the problem. Maybe my voice doesn’t matter.

That’s how despair begins.

It starts with invisibility. Then comes shame. Disconnection. Silence. Until what’s left is a heaviness that some kids carry alone. And for too many, that weight becomes unbearable.

That pain sinks in. And over time, it becomes something else entirely: despair.

What We Normalize, We Endorse

This is why Coulter’s post matters. Why Trump’s response matters. Why silence matters. Because in this system, Native life is still seen as expendable. And Native pain is still treated as either invisible or deserved.

But we see it. And we’re not imagining it.

The silence of powerful institutions and the thunderous agreement from thousands of online voices tell us exactly how much room we’re allowed to take up.

Which is why we won’t be quiet.

How This All Adds Up: When Dehumanization Becomes the Norm

We’ve learned that when we speak up, whether it’s about mascots, police violence, land theft, or public hate speech, our voices are often either ignored or punished. Native people are gaslit constantly, told we’re overreacting or being too sensitive, while genocidal fantasies are shrugged off as jokes.

But there’s nothing funny about how this all adds up.

Coulter’s “joke” and Trump’s mascot nostalgia aren’t two separate things; they’re part of the same machine. One says we didn’t kill enough. The other asks if we can still brand a team with the spoils of that killing. One is a genocidal comment hurled into the air, the other is a slur dressed up in nostalgia and stadium lights. And both land on Native children.

These symbols, these silences, these statements, they’re not abstractions. They become patterns. They show up in school policies, in media representation, and in courtroom decisions. And they show up in the staggering violence our communities face every day.

What happens when you grow up in a society that only sees your people in history books, or on the side of a helmet? When your classmates come to school in redface for “spirit week” and no adult stops them? When your teacher shrugs at the mascot but says your regalia is “a distraction”? What happens when your identity is constantly flattened into a stereotype or spectacle?

The result isn’t just sadness and weary grief—it’s erosion.

You begin to disappear from yourself.

When we talk about “deaths of despair,” we’re not just talking about suicide and overdose as isolated events. We’re talking about what it feels like to live in a world that tells you, explicitly and implicitly, that your life is a problem. That your history is a myth. That your future is optional. That even the worst hate speech about your people doesn’t merit a single question from the press.

That is despair. It’s slow, cumulative violence.

And let’s be honest: that violence is also profitable. Some media platforms didn’t just ignore Coulter’s post, they boosted it. The algorithm rewarded it. Her followers loved it. Her brand got stronger. Meanwhile, Native kids logged in and saw that message being shared, liked, and reposted. That is harm. That is reach. That is exposure therapy for genocide.

And still, we’re told to be civil.

To calm down.

To explain ourselves, gently, again.

If you’re still reading, thank you for sitting with this. I want you to understand that there is no neutral ground when it comes to dehumanization. If you are silent in the face of hate, you’re not standing in neutrality, you’re standing with the hate. The culture of casual cruelty that lets Coulter’s tweet thrive is the same culture that makes jokes about drunk Indians and comments that Indians should be sterilized. It is the same culture that asks the man who is currently the president if he’ll bring back a slur instead of asking if he’ll condemn the genocidal rhetoric against Native folks.

So yes, I am weary. But I am not going to look away.

Because our kids are watching. Because our elders are watching. Because we are still here, and the world needs to reckon with that, not just with our trauma, but with our presence. Our humor. Our brilliance. Our fight.

There’s no single fix for what we’re facing. But there are steps. Listen to Native voices. Share them. Cite them. Support the people doing the work on the ground. Learn the history that wasn’t taught to you. Challenge the mascots in your community. Call out dehumanizing language when you see it, whether it’s from a politician, a friend, or a viral tweet.

Because ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

And silence, as we’ve seen, is never neutral.