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"pettifoggern 1: a person (especially a lawyer or politician) who uses unscrupulous or unethical methods [syn: shyster] 2: a disputant who quibbles; someone who raises annoying petty objections [syn: quibbler, caviller, caviler]"
The General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887 has become a center of contention between Ward Churchill and his critics. On May 16th or 17th, the University of Colorado released its 125 page report on Ward Churchill in which one of the main contentions against him was misrepresentation of the Dawes Act.
Upon release of the lynch mob committee tract, and based on reading that plus professional and less than professional papers on this subject, it seemed to MIM that the likely source of the problem is a conflict between authoritarian literalists and theoreticians. Five minutes research on this subject proved that that would be an overly generous take on the event.
What we thought all along about Ward Churchill's critics was something like this:
"Critic: Duh, I can read, and 'blood quantum' is not in the General Allotment Act.
Churchill theorist: The General Allotment Act established the use of blood quantum in the definition of 'Indian.'"
Upon first reading of the report issued by the Great Oppressor Cultural Counterrevolution Group (GOCC Group) at the University of Colorado, it seemed that our hypothesis was vindicated:
"The Committee concluded that Professor Churchill’s descriptions of the General Allotment Act of 1887, while perhaps slightly more accurate than Professor LaVelle credits them with being, are nevertheless literally incorrect."The GOCCers spread more about Churchill perpetrating a "hoax" on this point. The committee then goes on to say that Churchill has the better of the debate in the long-run.
Here we find it ridiculous that some empiricist literalist reading of history stands in the way of theory. The General Allotment Act (as the title sounds) is about handing out land. It is therefore an obvious suspect in the political economy behind the creation of relations with the oppressor white nation.
When Ward Churchill says that law established a blood quantum in defining "Indian," he is not just partly correct. He is more correct than literally correct.
The pettifogging report writers point out that a court case (United States v. Rogers, 45 U.S. 567 (1846)), before the Dawes Act also used blood quantum to define "Indian." This is a typical nitpick by the anti-Churchill people, because there is no way that murder cases were going to affect a large number of people or their ethnic definition. The court case is an example in the superstructure of an attitude that Churchill said was there, but it was only an example. To really put the pedal to the metal, we had the Dawes Act systematize a eugenics code. Now there was a path to First Nation people's internalizing the ideas of the white man, with the backing of land distributed by the white man.
Even worse for our empiricists, such blood quantum reasoning was not used consistently in courts, because jurisdiction in courts depended on other factors in national struggle with the oppressor nation. To this day, some matters for say the Onondaga Nation or Mohawk Nation go to white courts and some are handled within indigenous law. It does not mean that when the question is murder people are no longer "Indians," but when the question is drunken behavior on the street, they are. In contrast, the Dawes Act could have a fairly consistent and observable effect. Churchill correctly emphasized it, while empiricist morons wasted the reading public's time.
The argument of the GOCCers would be like going to France and having their court rule you can't have your U.$. passport back because you don't like McDonalds. Sure, that affects Amerikanness, but it's not going to establish much other than an opinion in one case. Notso for the Dawes Act. Crucially, the Dawes Act intervenes in the self-governance of the First Nations. The impact of the act was widespread and internal to the First Nations themselves and was thus more far-reaching.
We would have thought that this was just another case of people not understanding political economy, how the power of land distribution affects the creation of indigenous pseudo-government. It would be the force of land distribution that took all the eugenics ideas in the air and made them concrete in puppet tribal governments and relations with Uncle $am.
In actuality, Ward Churchill's critics are more evil than just willfully ignoring the theoretical mechanism of how white to First Nation relations formed. As it turns out, the University of Colorado GOCCers are also literally wrong in their own pettifogging empiricist way.
The 125 page report against Churchill claims:
"The requirement of Indian blood did not originate with either express or implied requirements of the General Allotment Act of 1887, as Professor Churchill claims."The same anti-Churchill GOCCers say:
"The evidence indicates that during the allotment period, for a brief three-year window from 1917 to 1920, a half-blood quantum test was employed, albeit not for the purpose that Professor Churchill claims."That's it. So the GOCCers try to support the literalists who say they did not see "blood quantum" in the law. Wow, a computer search did not find the phrase. Genius.
The claims by the anti-Churchill pettifoggers are wrong as five minutes research easily reveals. Prior to 1917 and easily available on the Internet is a document showing exactly as Churchill said, the Dawes Act and blood quantum. Here it is, and it was long before 1917:
I'm having trouble with the link, so if no graphic appears below, try clicking here.
See also, http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/dawes.php .
Notice a few things in this document. On the far left we see "Dawes" specifically mentioned. After "age" and "sex" we see "blood" clear as day. "IW" stands for intermarried white. Now notice the dates and authorities involved. 1903 is there. So much for claims about 1917. If blood quantum is not involved with the Dawes Act, if the Dawes Act did not actively formalize eugenics thinking, then what is that blood column doing there on the form a few columns after the word "Dawes"? The way to disprove Churchill, and we do think it is important to try, is to go back and find tribes that took rolls like that before the white man. As far as all eugenics histories MIM is aware of, these were all the white man's ideas, not First Nation ideas. The pettifoggers are obscuring the truth.
It's long, long past due for people to recognize that throwing a thousand different charges against Churchill is wrong. He is like the soccer goalie and they keep extending the goal posts. Eventually they extend the goal posts to be on both sides of the field. So David Horowitz says that Churchill is not an authority, because he is not a real "Indian." Other Nazis say blood quantum should be used to separate indigenous people from white people. Then comes the University of Colorado committee and instead of pointing out the many ridiculous charges against Churchill that are wrong, the GOCCers move the goal posts. Now Churchill is not wrong because he's not "Indian": he's wrong because other indigenous people agreed with him and allowed him to ghost write for them. So on the one side, we have most of the oppressor nation public saying he's a "fraud," because he's not an "Indian." Then there is the other side in the University of Colorado bureaucracy, who say, no, no, the real problem is that other indigenous people do agree with him. Supposedly he is simultaneously not real enough and yet real enough that he is guilty of self-citation because some other indigenous people agreed with him so much that they let him publish in their name. It's have-it-both-ways, white nationalist petti-foggery.