"The word for the World is Forest" by Ursula Le Guin

The next book in the Hainish cycle happens chronologically after 'The Dispossessed' and before all other books. The League of All Worlds has just been formed and the ansible is just starting to get produced. Earth has its own set of colonies where they are pretty heavy handed in exploitation of resources and subjugating or destroying the native races. The same thing happens on New Tahiti, and ocean planet, with mild weather and large islands completely covered in thick forests, something that is worth more than gold to the Terrans as Earth seems to have been completely stripped of any trees or other major vegetation. The Terrans show next to no respect for the natives on New Tahiti, which are 1m tall, covered in green fur and with big black eyes. The emissaries from Hain and Tau Ceti make it very clear that the natives come from the same Hainish stock as any other race in the known universe, and for some reason have evolved further from the base than most of other races on planets seeded by the ancient Hainish. This does not prevent the Terrans from treating them like animals, using them as slave labor, torturing them, killing them for sport, and raping their women which ends in their death. Davison, who is one of the terran officers on New Tahiti is especially brutal and unscurpulous, calling the natives 'Creechees' and propagating 'tough hand' approach for them. He is the stereotypical animal-like soldier that does not want or cannot understand anything beyond brute force, animal pleasure and power play, and reproduction instincts. Le Guin overdid his character somewhat as he is so one-sided, he seems like a caricature, and not a real person.

There is the leader of the colony, the Colonel, who is not as bad as Davison, but overlooks most of his misbehaving in the name of providing the maximum amount of exports to Earth. Here is Raj Lyubov as well, apparently a Russian-Indian (all the races have merged in the Earth's future, and everyone is of brownish color, whites have dissapeared) who is the HILFer, researchign the local people, learns their language and customs and discovers that they are very advanced race in terms of social order with top role of 'Lucid Dreaming' where some trained individuals can dream at will, merging the Dream World and the Real World, both of which have the same reality for the locals.

After some heinous atrocities, mostly lead by Davison, the natives rebel, and although murder and war was unknown to them before, they adopt these concepts from the Terran colonist and use them against them, destroying several camps until all of the human colonies are reduced to rubble and the remaining humans (no females were spared as for the Terrans not to reproduce) are gathered in one place waiting for the ship to come pick them up. When the League learns of all the atrocities committed, proclaims New Tahiti a quarantine zone and forbids any colonization or exploitation of the planet. The ship comes and picks up the remaining humans and the Hainish envoy asks the leader of the local rebellion would they forget the concepts of war and murder after every non-local has left the planet. Sam, as he is called by Terrans when he was their slave, says that they will try to go back to live as they did before the Terrans arrived, but they will never forget murder and war, and it might reoccur.

Le Guin shows her anthropological background in this story, and draws inspiration on many native cultures on our own planet that were destroyed when more advanced civilization, which considers the natives savages and their culture primitive and unworthy, have moved in to exploit resources and bring 'civilization' to the locals. Because of self-righteous individuals who take upon themselves to judge the value of other people and civilization by their own rules and ignorance, unmeasurable harm has been brought upon weaker natives through countless centuries. It is a valuable lesson shown in the book, but it becomes too didactic at times and the character are too cartoonish, so from story-telling perspective is not as enjoyable as some of her other books.