How to make your kids' elementary school's teachers' heads explode...
When they are learning about Native Americans, send them armed with a list of questions like:
1. Did Native Americans keep slaves?
2. How often did the Native Americans go to war with each other?
3. I've heard it taught that Native Americans didn't believe in land ownership and that they lived in harmony with the land and it's resources. If that is so, why did they go to war with one another so often? Was it territory disputes and/or wars over resources, or were they just xenophobic and hateful of other tribes?
4. How did they treat prisoners of war? Was mutilation common amongst Native American people?
5. If Native Americans lived in America long before Columbus came, and America is a particularly bountiful land, why didn't the Native American tribes flourish like the European people did?
And so forth and so on...
Uh oh........don't try to present facts to a lib/leftist instructor...it will only enrage them.
Actually, you are quite correct.
In fact, many heroes of the "indigenous people" committed the same vile or violent acts as Europeans.
But it is the intent of lib instructors to destroy western civ and replace it with....well, what exactly would they like to replace it with? There are few achievements of the "indigenous people" of the western hemisphere (or eastern hemisphere) that stack up against the achievements to world civilization of European explorers and peoples despite their occasional cruelty to conquered peoples.
And as far as death and destruction, what Genghis Khan and the other Mongols and Asian rulers "achieved" in their conquests far outstrips any killing Europeans have done. Even Hitler didn't kill as many people as the Mongol conquerors are reported to have killed.
And, unlike for example the Romans, the Mongols brought little in the way of contributions to world civilization other than innovative ways of slaughtering people.
The Islamic hordes who conquered vast swathes of Africa and Asia and made inroads into Europe were not much better than the Mongols.
Bring those things up to your standard anti-western civ. high school or college instructor, and watch their heads explode in anger. And let's see them try to counter your argument. They can't.