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By a contributor March 25, 2005
After a seven-week long "investigation," that did not involve any interview with Churchill, The University of Colorado Board of Regents has adopted the strategy of saying that Ward Churchill's speech in his essay "Some People Push Back" is no longer the issue, but only his disputed indigenous ancestry and alleged plagiarism. That way, the Board may think if it fires Churchill, it will be more difficult for Churchill to sue for violating his civil rights. Trickster Phil DiStefano and others must be prosecuted for conspiring to violate Churchill's civil rights.
As Ward Churchill's attorney David Lane recently said and MIM Notes pointed out before that, "[e]ven if the university could prove that Churchill isn't an Indian, it would then have to prove 'that he knew he's not an Indian,' Lane said. 'So I wish them the best of luck.' "(1)
Ward Churchill's detractors on the identity "question" need to put out or shut the h*ll up. If they cannot actually prove that Churchill lied about his indigenous ancestry, which is not always decisive in indigenous identity anyway, then they should butt out.
The media has completely contradicted itself on such presumably basic questions as what was Churchill's status in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee. Some say that "the tribe's principal chief told CU that Churchill is [currently] an honorary associate member, not an enrolled member."(1) David Yeagley claims that "in 1996, all such memberships were revoked, and the records were destroyed. This, according to Keetoowah tribal employee Marilyn Craig, is the state of affairs."(2) But according to another news story, former UKC enrollment committee member Ernestine Berry said "The tribe no longer offers associate memberships, although it didn't revoke any existing memberships, Berry said."(3) Another news article confirms that Berry "said Churchill is no longer listed on any tribal rolls, even though his associate membership has never been revoked."(4) Patti Jo King completely fumbles and suggests that the issue is whether Churchill is enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, but Churchill has never claimed to be fully enrolled in any blood-based indigenous nation bureaucracy, and even his 1980 resume distributed by his enemies shows that, that he said he was "unenrolled." (His enemies are far from being able to understand potential reasons for that.) Also, the Cherokee Nation (as an organization which must be distinguished from the ethnicity) is not the same thing as the UKC. (5) From the article by Patti Jo King, we're not even certain a regular writer for "Indian Country" knows the difference between an organization and a nationality. In fact, as is typical of Churchill's indigenous critics generally, Patti Jo King takes a different political approach than Ward Churchill and says nothing about the "crafty American government" herself. It goes to show that these issues are delicate even for indigenous people themselves, and not appropriate for lynch mob review.
David Yeagley claims that Marilyn Craig said the associate UKC memberships were revoked in 1996. But Jefferson Dodge, reporting on Craig's statements, only paraphrased Craig as saying that "the group stopped offering associate memberships in 1996."(6)
This writer could not find independent confirmation of David Yeagley's purported private conversation with Marilyn Craig.(7) We suspect the media goes easy on Yeagley and similar detractors, unlike how the media treats Churchill, because Yeagley is a Republican as are most media customers in the Rockies, so the media's motivations have to be questioned too. If the media want to make an entertainment affair of persynal attacks to make a buck, the media should spread the attacks evenly!
It is not clear from the lynch mob's media what is going on with the associate membership status issue: maybe someone removed records of Ward Churchill's associate membership after the original stories about his Dark Night essay broke, or Churchill just didn't know that the records were destroyed. The fact that Churchill could not even know about the records demonstrates the artificial nature of the identity attack on him. The whole controversy demonstrates the lack of thinking process by Churchill's critics. All they have proved with their hack jobs is that it is possible to manipulate enrollment bureaucracies. In the end, Uncle $am does not decide who is indigenous and who is not anyway: no nation in the world operates that way. More importantly, considering that the University of Colorado hired Churchill in 1978 and offered him tenure in 1991--long before the bureaucratic and after-the-fact political process in 1996 concerning his identity described by Yeagley--the whole discussion is irrelevant. It only tends to prove that Ward Churchill has been attacked for his views and then smeared persynally through his whole long career. The real story is why anyone on the enrollment committee would change his/her minds about his associate membership--and the motivations for that, again if a sport of persynal attacks is the bourgeois media's business.
It is clear that the detractors' accusations, insinuations, innuendo and outright lies about Ward Churchill's indigenous identity are baseless. Churchill has never claimed to be fully enrolled in any federally recognized or State-recognized "tribe" though he probably could have enrolled in the organization called "Cherokee Nation" for instance. For certain reasons he applied for membership in the UKC instead even though the UKC has a relatively restrictive blood quantum requirement. Again, Churchill has a long history of opposing the blood quantum practices and the whole bloodline theory, as well as advocating the concept of nation, instead of tribe, in indigenous identity. Churchill has been talking about these things for years. It's nothing new.
Thanks to colonialism- and imperialism-caused displacement, assimilation and genocide (and other reasons that even David Yeagley mentions but which Yeagley does not get into the implications of), it is difficult for many First Nations people to obtain official recognition for their blood quantum even if they wanted to cooperate with the Uncle $am-controlled bureaucracy and go that route. This is partly why blood quantum for example continues to be controversial among many First Nations people. The other issue is that definite indigenous ancestry is not necessarily decisive in indigenous identity. This is not the same thing as saying that a Euro-Amerikan should be allowed to declare him or herself indigenous whenever wanted. As Yeagley unintentionally shows with his after-the-fact manipulation of one Cherokee bureaucracy, it is probably much easier to fake blood than it is to fake culture. All it would take is getting a bureaucrat to change a lineage report on a card somewhere--something these critics are not mentioning anywhere, because of their crypto-Nazi agenda.
Whether someone is really part of any First Nation depends on multiple criteria, and not just blood quantum-- unless the First Nation in question decides it should be just blood. The whole associate membership question concerns only one bureaucracy for one part of the Cherokee nation as an ethnicity.
Only racialists believe that indigenous people should be denied the right to call themselves indigenous if they are indigenous in every other way but unable to conclusively prove their definite indigenous ancestry. The American Indian Movement of Colorado, Russell Means and Ward Churchill have, before January 2005, said it is possible to prove Churchill's ancestry and even blood quantum in the official senses of the term, but Churchill is understandably unwilling to indulge the various white nationalists who insist on harassing him about disclosing his ancestry and ridiculing him as a "little Injun that could" for not proving his First Nations blood in the eyes of the white man. It is just disgusting racist ignorance saying that the only thing that matters is blood in indigenous identity. It paves the way for people to make comments such as it is okay for Kyle Cline to portray Chief Illiniwek as a university sports mascot because Cline has Illini ancestry (http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/ingenuity/1103/top-scouts.html). Ward Churchill does not have to prove anything to crypto-Nazis in the white nation and they certainly have not proved a thing against him.
It's time the media ceased its bias and started covering the lack of proof of the attackers and started questioning their motivations instead of spending time solely attacking Ward Churchill persynally. The Republican Party activists are seeking to stir up white votes with their (native) holocaust denial and attacks on indigenous people as "fakes." Simultaneously this is how Republicans exact revenge and make excuses for why the academic world provides so little support for Republican Party ideology.(8) Meanwhile, others attacking Ward Churchill are busy seeking money for new programs from these same Republicans. To these critics worried about the political fall-out, we say that the ability to fight for the truth is more important than Uncle $am's welfare programs.
Notes:
1. "CU's Churchill: Indian Or Not?" http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_084174926.html
2. David Yeagley, "Ward Churchill Exploits Indians," February 28, 2005, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17172
3. Howard Pankratz, "CU prof affirms Indian heritage," February 3, 2005, http://denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E23827%257E2689334,00.html
4. Eddie Glenn, "Controversial professor claims ties to UKB," February 4, 2005, www.tahlequahdailypress.com/articles/2005/02/04/news/top_stories/aaaaaaaprof.txt
5. Patti Jo King, "King: Ward Churchill -- Questionable identity and questionable scholarship," February 24, 2005, http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410417
6. Kate Browning, "United Keetoowah Band Leader Resigns Under Pressure," July 19, 1998, http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/Cherokee/News/Jul98/KB980719b.htm
This article provides this link only as a point of fact, not to involve itself
in UKC leadership questions.
Jefferson Dodge, "Churchill wants statement from regents more than cash,"
March 10, 2005, http://newmedia.colorado.edu/silverandgold/messages/4254.html
7. David Yeagley, "Is Churchill a Pathological Liar?" February 24, 2005, http://www.badeagle.com/journal/archives/2005_02.html#000583
8. No less than arch-conservative William F. Buckley Jr. admitted that accomplished intellectual people are the most "left-wing," but he does not have a good answer to what that should mean to him and his ideology. The faculty of the land has succeeded in moving people politically he says and calls it "indoctrination": "Let the person who wants to wrestle with these statistics blurt forth his secret belief that there is a correlation between 'level of education' and 'political liberalism.'" (William F. Buckley, Jr., Up From Liberalism NY: Bantam Books, 1968, pp. 58-9) The bottom-line problem with these know-nothings is that they want to substitute church and advertising "indoctrination" for public education.
9. "Introduction to the Symposium," http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/ingenuity/1103/top-scouts.html
Having to do with Ward Churchill and Chief John Ross.