I get what you mean, but I don't think the difference is slight. Like, Algeria is fucked up by the French. Billions in wealth stolen, millions killed, culture destroyed, even today French is still a main language.

But that's no where near the degree to what happened in NA. Indigenous language barely exist, indigenous "sovereignty" is completely controlled thru the colonizers, and (obviously) most of the people in NA aren't indigenous whereas most folks in Algeria are Algerian

More importantly, it creates a different relationship to imperialism today (hence neocolonial versus settler colonial)