|
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 5, 2005, by a contributor
Despite retraction of one news story by a Honolulu newspaper that said Ward Churchill was not a native North American, the news media and thugs from the Internet continue to focus on questions relating to Ward Churchill's indigenous identity and persist in misrepresenting what Churchill has said about his indigenous identity. For instance, an individual nicknamed "roothog229," in a blog post appearing in Google News search results for 'Ward Churchill' as of today, completely misses the mark and calls on the Cherokee Nation to dissociate themselves from Churchill, but Churchill has never claimed to be enrolled in any of the three U.$.-recognized Cherokee tribes.(1) Churchill has never claimed to be fully enrolled in any tribe, only saying that he is an associate member of the Keetoowah band of Cherokee, a membership that was never revoked according to "UKB historian and former tribal secretary" Ernestine Berry.(2) But these people lying about what Churchill has said pretend to be defending indigenous people. Oh-so-concerned, the white nationalists supposedly defending other nations' bloodline purity do not bother to do any research at all.
On The O'Reilly Factor, March 3, 2005, Bill O'Reilly repeated his lie about Churchill "using his questionable data in getting his job in the first place and in sustaining an academic record."(3) O'Reilly, like others, evidently does not know what "unenrolled" means on Churchill's résumé and is obscuring the University of Colorado's responsibility for hiring Churchill in the first place. The University of Colorado should object to O'Reilly's making them look so incompetent: the critics of Ward Churchill make it look like University of Colorado does not really know what "unenrolled" meant, and did not bother looking into what "unenrolled" meant. Moreover, Churchill explicitly says and clarifies on his résumé that his " tribal heritage" (my emphasis) is "Creek/Cherokee (unenrolled)"; although, he would not have been unjustified in saying that his nationality or "ethnicity" was indigenous without any qualification.
The National Ledger, which has repeatedly published blog-like articles appearing on Google News in what appears to be a sustained effort to attack Churchill's character, repeats the lie that Churchill is a "fake Indian college professor."(4) There is absolutely no evidence for this claim. Even if we indulged the blood quantum argument, there is no evidence showing that Churchill knew he had no indigenous blood quantum, which he does. By other criteria, such as community recognition, Churchill is of First Nation ethnicity.
Others, such as Hawaii Reporter editor and president Malia Zimmerman, have recently insinuated that Churchill is lying about his indigenous identity, saying that he "ducks the subject" of "his claims to be an American Indian."(5) Zimmerman has also spread KHOW and Michelle Malkin's lie about what Churchill said at a bookstore in August 2003, in quotes taken out of context from three hours of audio publicly available on the Internet (http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7592).(5) These files, which have long been on the Internet, are not "tapes," and they were not "obtained" by Dan Caplis, Craig Silverman, or any other persyn.
In a racist, Ann Coulter-inspired fashion, blog thug Ralph Kinney Bennett, appearing in Google "News" search results, repeats as fact the lie that "li'l Injun that could" Churchill is a "pseudo-Indian."(6)
A Pacific News Service writer pointed out recently that the idea of blood quantum has been used to attack indigenous people and even to deny resources to individuals who have an indigenous blood quantum, but who cannot join Uncle $am-recognized tribes.(7) Honorary white oppressor David Yeagley, on FrontPageMagazine.com, builds up an argument that could actually prove that Churchill has an indigenous blood quantum: some actual First Nations people refused to register themselves as such with the u.$. government, but then he makes a ridiculously simplistic argument about how Churchill "advocates the non-existence of the Indian race" because he doesn't believe in measures of "Indian blood."(8) In actuality, Yeagley's argument is the equivalent of Uncle $am's not recognizing Italians as Italians. What gets left out is that nation-formation of Italian ethnicity is not left up to Uncle $am, but Italians.
In Ward Churchill's 1993 Indians Are Us? : Culture and Genocide in Native North America , for example, Churchill writes extensively on misappropriations of indigenous culture. Churchill does not say that a white persyn should be able to declare him/herself native whenever s/he wants. In fact, it is David Yeagley who threatens the existence of the indigenous population in North Amerika by defining "native" in such a way as to make the number of indigenous people decline over time on the basis of blood quantum. Yeagley talks about a dilution of indigenous blood, but there is no scientific basis for saying that blood quantum by itself determines nationality. Genocide is the destruction of peoples, not specific genes.
Where the "blood" of a people is sufficient to sustain a strict blood-related approach to enrollment in a nation, MIM does not oppose a small First Nation's using blood criteria-- and this is an exception MIM makes for only the smallest nations in the world. In particular, the idea that someone would marry into the dominant culture and then expect to receive tribal benefits may in fact be not very helpful to First Nations. On the other hand, writing off a couple that is half white or three-quarters white may also be sacrificing that much native "blood," so thanks to the white man's genocide, there is no easy answer for small First Nations. The truth is that there are some strict bloodline First Nations approaches in North America and most are not. Most of the time, the choice of spouse and other questions can be handled as a cultural question, not a bloodline one. If a persyn has gone to the First Nation's own schools instead of the white man's schools, that persyn makes a good spouse for culture-building purposes, not because of bloodline. In the choice between a white who just so happened has gone to First Nation schools and a full-blooded "native" who abandoned First Nation schools and other First Nation ties, blood is subordinate to culture. Even having hundreds of years of native ancestors is no perfect guarantee that someone will not completely abandon First Nation culture and take up 110% assimilation into imperialist empire.
There is also a class question in assimilation. In Taiwan, the imperialists have managed to buy off so many people, that contrary to the situation of the 1949 generation, many do not consider themselves Chinese anymore. Many Taiwanese today would rather be the 51st state of the United $tates than Chinese, because of underlying economic influences. It goes without saying that if Uncle $am can exert that kind of influence from so far away on Taiwan, there will be those natives who also take the sugar-coated bullets of empire.
Interestingly, about one hundred Uncle $am- recognized tribes have "no minimum blood quantum requirement for enrollment."(9) Apparently David Yeagley is such a bloodline purist that he would encourage these tribes to adopt a specific blood quantum requirement--even when there are not enough "full-blooded" people to sustain the tribe's existence.
In 1985, the Canadian government amended the "Indian Act" (Bill C-31). Among other things, the amendments allowed First Nations to determine the criteria for membership in their own tribes. Between June 1985 and May 1992, First Nations adopted 236 membership codes, only 13% of which included blood quantum criteria. While the changes to the "Indian Act" had the effect of increasing total band membership, some bands were restrictive, fearing that federal funds would be spread too thinly if there were more members.(10)
Estimates of the indigenous population have varied wildly based on u.$. government definitions of who is native. According to J. Matthew Shumway and Richard H. Jackson:
Clearly, the number of individuals who are of Native American ancestry has been repeatedly undernumerated in the federal censuses of the population. When the census first began to compile figures for American Indians, the tallies were much lower than even the lowest estimates of pre-Columbian times and reached a low of 250,000 in 1890. . . . The greatest population increase occurred in 1960 after the Bureau of the Census adopted self-identification: Native American population rose to almost two million in 1990, a 455 percent increase in forty years.(11)
A cursory look suggests that there is still a huge difference between the Uncle $am-recognized indigenous population and the total indigenous population. Recently, the population of 96 (of 108 total) U.S. Government- recognized tribes in California was 51,385 persons.(12) But in 2000, there were 333,346 self-identified "American Indian and Alaska Native" (Census 2000 Summary File 1) persons in California. So, Ann Coulter and David Yeagley, exactly how many "li'l Injuns that could" are there?
Notes:
1. roothog229, "Ward Churchill and the Cherokee Nation," March 4, 2005, http://roothog229.redstate.org/story/2005/3/4/115935/1899
2. Eddie Glenn, "Controversial professor claims ties to UKB," February 4, 2005, www.tahlequahdailypress.com/articles/2005/02/04/news/top_stories/aaaaaaaprof.txt
3. Transcript 030306cb.256.
4. "Ward Churchill and Bill Maher, a Cute anti-American Couple," March 5, 2005, http://www.nationalledger.com/scribe/archives/2005/03/ward_churchill_7.shtml
5. Malia Zimmerman, "Ward Churchill Saga Continues," March 4, 2005, http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?3f60971d-b3bf-43ca-b732-153c8bf69809
6. Ralph Kinney Bennett, "The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened to Journalism," March 4, 2005, http://www.techcentralstation.com/030405B.html
7. H. Mathew Barkhausen III, "In Defense of Ward Churchill: A Legacy of Scapegoat-Ism," March 2, 2005, cificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d1fd4852463b3f1ee0974f7f79c7ddcd
8. David Yeagley, "Ward Churchill Exploits Indians," February 28, 2005, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17172
9. Russell Thornton, "'He loves His white children most'," Contemporary Sociology 19, no. 4 (1990): 577.
10. Megan Furi and Jill Wherrett, "Indian Status and Band Membership Issues," February 2003, http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/bp410-e.htm
11. J. Matthew Shumway and Richard H. Jackson, "Native American Population Patterns," Geographical Review 85, no. 2 (1995): 186.
12. "CSAC Fact Sheet on Indian Gaming in California," November 5, 2003, http://www.csac.counties.org/legislation/indian_gaming/fact_sheet2.pdf
13. Ward Churchill, "The Crucible of American Indian Identity : Native Tradition versus Colonial Imposition in Postconquest North America," January 1998, http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/jan98ward.htm
14. Christina Berry, "Blood Quantum - Why It Matters, and Why It Shouldn't,"http://happytrails_2.tripod.com/cherokeetrailsnewsletter/id45.html
Launch a quiet protest against the reliance on blood quantum to measure Indian authenticity. The next time someone asks you what percentage Cherokee you are tell them that they are asking a rude question and don't answer -- because the answer doesn't matter. Either you are Cherokee or you're not.(14)