In an attempt to understand how rival narratives of genocide compete even at the cost of disavowing other historical experiences, this article considers how the U.S. national media represented and framed Red Lake in the wake of Ward Churchill's emergence on the national radar. The first section of this article examines how nineteenth-century discourses of Manifest Destiny and stereotypes of noble and savage Indians informed media images and phrases that emerged to describe the events at Red Lake. The second section further contextualizes Red Lake and Minnesota within nineteenth-century historical events that epitomize the United States' genocidal policies enacted against African Americans and American Indians that resolve into Jim Crow, lynching, and the largest mass execution to occur within the United States. In the final section, the author discusses how Ward Churchill's controversial rhetoric and reactions to it and him are symptomatic of deeper U.S. anxieties about Indigenous peoples, genocide, and authenticity. (Contains 37 notes.)