National Native Organizations and Tribal Leaders Respond to Ann Clouter's ‘We Didn't Kill Enough Indians' Remark

Yahoo

12-07-2025

When conservative pundit Ann Coulter posted 'We didn't kill enough Indians' this past weekend, she wasn't just spreading hate speech—she was launching a direct attack on tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Native nations to exist.
Since Tuesday, national Native organizations and tribal leaders have issued statements in response. While excerpts from some of these have appeared in previous coverage, we are publishing the full, unedited statements received by our newsroom here:
Statement by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) emphatically condemns the hateful, genocidal statement of Ann Coulter on July 6, 2025, through a post on the social platform X, declaring: 'We didn't kill enough Indians.' There is no place in society for this direct incitement of hatred and violence toward American Indian and Alaska Native people.
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'These words are not provocative social commentary; they are a violent attack on Native people and Tribal Nations. Celebrating genocide against Tribal Nations crosses every moral line,' said NCAI President Mark Macarro. 'Careless comments like this glorify the darkest chapters of U.S. history and actively endanger Native peoples' lives today. We will not sit silently at attempts to normalize this abhorrent behavior. We demand an immediate retraction and public apology — and we expect leaders of every political persuasion to denounce this abomination without equivocation.'
'Free speech does not confer a license to advocate for or justify mass murder — past or present,' added NCAI Executive Director Larry Wright, Jr. 'When a public figure with more than two million followers romanticizes extermination, it fuels harassment, hate crimes, and political violence. Silence from elected officials and media outlets will only normalize this genocidal history. We call on them to speak up now.'
NCAI further demands that X enforce against vitriol like this and send a message that such inciting hate speech will not be tolerated by banning this individual from their platform. Instead of amplifying divisive and inhuman perspectives, let us turn our attention to celebrating the powerful, nation-building contributions of Tribal Nations to the United States.
NCAI encourages all Americans to learn more about the many contributions that Native peoples and Tribal Nations have made and continue to make to this country. Visit a Tribal Nation near you, explore the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., or New York, read from abundant award-winning literature produced by American Indians and Alaska Natives. We encourage all media outlets, elected leaders, educators, and individual Americans to uplift these living stories of service, innovation, and cultural resilience. In centering these and other Native achievements, we reject hatred and misinformation, celebrate our Tribal sovereignty, and honor our shared community and history.
Statement by John E. Echohawk, Executive Director, Native American Rights Fund
Yesterday, pundit Ann Coulter stated on X (formerly Twitter) that 'we didn't kill enough Indians.' The post was shared more than a million times. As a writer and a lawyer, Coulter knows that words matter, especially for someone with her platform. Suggesting that Native Americans—whose communities and cultures persist and thrive despite the American government having systematically taken Native lands, children, religions, and lives—deserve to die or were not persecuted enough, is ignorant and immoral.Although abhorrent, this language is not new. Getting rid of Native Americans has been the stated goal of a slew of U.S. policies from the Trail of Tears to the Termination Era. One hundred years ago, policy makers engaged in cultural genocide: killing the Indian to save the man. Many advocated to just kill the Indians. Genocidal language aimed at Native Americans was supposed to be something of the past. It was something that mainstream society had rejected and moved past—until Coulter's post.We call on all those who are decent, who have moral values, to denounce this type of hate speech. We should not treat each other in this way. The dark history of the United States' policies towards Native people should not be repeated. Join us in standing up for the rights of Native people and preserving our existence for generations to come.
Statement by the National Indian Health Board
The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) condemns the genocidal and hateful statement made by Ann Coulter: 'We didn't kill enough Indians.' This is not free speech, it is hate speech. And its consequences extend far beyond the digital space.
This kind of language is not a joke. It is violence—violence that echoes through generations, reopens wounds, and contributes to the devastating rates of depression, suicide, and trauma that too many of our Native youth are forced to carry. Words like these are not abstract; they directly impact how young Native people see themselves, their safety, and their worth in a country that has already tried to erase them.
Our communities are still healing from government-sanctioned boarding schools that attempted to strip Native children of their language, culture, and identity. These systems created lasting intergenerational trauma—trauma that Native families continue to confront and work through today. Reckoning with this truth is part of the healing process.
READ Native News Online's Editor Levi Rickert's Opinion on Ann Clouter's Remark
'Our children hear these words. They internalize them. And far too often, they are left to wonder if their lives matter in the eyes of this country,' said NIHB Chairman William 'Chief Bill' Smith, Valdez Native and Alaska Area Representative. 'When prominent voices glorify genocide, it sends a dangerous message—that Native people are less than human. That message threatens the mental health, identity, and future of Native youth everywhere.'
NIHB joins with Tribal Nations and Native organizations across the country in calling for a full retraction, public apology, and immediate accountability from all levels of leadership and media. We further urge social media platforms like X to enforce community standards and ban voices that incite racial hatred and violence.
From suicide prevention to cultural revitalization, NIHB and its partners work every day to help Native youth heal from historical and contemporary trauma. But we cannot do this work alone. We need a country that respects our children enough to condemn hate without hesitation.
Native Nations contributed to the earliest forms of American democracy and continue to lead in public health, medicine, and community care. These truths must be honored.
As Americans, we must not repeat or excuse past harms—we must learn from them and walk forward together in healing and truth.
There is no health without respect. There is no healing without truth. And there is no excuse for celebrating genocide.
Statement by Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., Cherokee Nation
Ann Coulter's post this evening on X that 'we didn't kill enough Indians,' is beyond abhorrent. It is dangerous hate speech designed to inflict damage on a marginalized community and designed to arouse support in the deepest darkest gutters of social media. Although it is tempting to decline to dignify her regressive attack on Native Americans, I cannot and will not. This is no time for timidity.
Coulter's statement, on its face, is a despicable rhetorical shot trained on the First Peoples of this continent, designed to dehumanize and diminish us and our ancestors and puts us at risk of further injury. We have faced enough of that since this country's founding. Such rhetoric has aided and abetted the destruction of tribes, their life ways, languages and cultures, the violation of treaty rights, violence, oppression, suppression and dispossession. It should not be lost on any of us that Coulter's lament that 'we didn't kill enough Indians' takes place against the backdrop of our relatively low average life expectancies, high suicide rates and the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous people, just to name a few aspects of our continuing struggle.
The cruelty of Coulter's comments are, of course, self-evident to decent human beings from all quarters. We have made much progress in the United States as it relates to federal Indian policy. Conservatives, liberals, Republicans and Democrats have had a hand in advancing this cause, which is so special to me as Chief of the nation's largest tribe, particularly over the last half century. Coulter's statement tonight would be extreme even by 19th century standards (though I believe President Andrew Jackson would like and share her post if he lived among us today.)
Though her star power has faded over the decades, Ann Coulter remains an opinion leader in the United States and beyond. Her account on 'X,' formerly Twitter, has 2.1 million followers. Her post has been shared over 1.4 million times as of this writing. She is a published author and appears frequently in television media. Her opinion, though peppered over the years with vitriolic attacks on marginalized populations, matters.
It is not simply that Coulter chose to attack Native Americans that moves me to speak out this evening. It is my deep concern that these sorts of attacks aimed at minorities and other marginalized populations in the country is at risk of being normalized. Her attack does not take place in a vacuum and it is not an outlier. It occurs at a time attacks on marginalized populations seem to be on repeat, used to score political points, to advance policy agendas, and sometimes to scare people to advance all of that and more. The country frequently seems on the verge of political violence. Coulter's post implicitly encourages it.
We can get used to the frequent attacks and watch silently as this group and that group is dehumanized and diminished. Hatred in the public will become white noise, accepted as 'just the way it is.' Alternatively, we can speak out against it.
What Ann Coulter said is heartless, vicious and should be repudiated by people of good faith regardless of political philosophy or party. Some things are simply wrong and we cannot validate it through our silence. I will not and cannot chase every hateful social media comment aimed at Native Americans. But, at a moment when I remain optimistic that people of good will across parties, faiths, philosophies, regions, races, political status can work to unify the country, denouncing Ann Coulter's regret that we 'did not kill enough Indians' is surely the right thing to do. Please join me.
Statement by Chief Ben Barnes (Shawnee Tribe), Chairperson, United Indian Nations of Oklahoma
United Indian Nations of Oklahoma condemns Ann Coulter's comments on Native Americans
Shawnee Chief and UINO Chairperson Ben Barnes today released the following statement repudiating conservative media pundit Ann Coulter's inflammatory statement regarding Native Americans.
'Ann Coulter's vile comment that 'we didn't kill enough Indians' is not only morally repugnant—it is a stain on the conscience of this country.
As a Tribal Nation whose people endured forced removals, massacres, broken treaties, and generations of erasure, we do not need reminders of America's darkest chapters. We live with the consequences every day—yet we continue to stand, speak our language, raise our children in our traditions, and govern ourselves with dignity.
Ms. Coulter's words dishonor every value this nation claims to uphold, and they have no place in any civilized discourse.But let us be clear: we do not respond with hate. We respond with truth, resilience, and the strength of our ancestors. We are still here. We are still sovereign. And we are not going anywhere.'
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