Interviewed By Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen: You're the first person I've seen make the explicit connection between Manifest Destiny and the lebensraum policy of the Third Reich.

Ward Churchill: Actually, the first person I'm aware of to make that connection was Adolf Hitler. He stated clearly in Mein Kampf that he did not take any of the old empires of Europe as the model for what he saw as the destiny of the German people. Rather, he took the Nordic population, as he called it, of North America, who had had the 'strength of will' to exterminate an 'inferior' people and put their land to its own use, making of itself in fairly short order a continental power capable of projecting a global influence on the course of events.