''associate member''
I don't know, but this doesn't sound like a very scientific term when determining someones ethnicity. Especially when your livelyhood is staked on it.
"..In the Keetoowah Band we have 78 tribal members..."
"..Before, and prior to May 1994, we had three categories of membership: honorary, associate, and full fledged members. This has changed; the governing body has changed membership requirements to read: a person must be 1/4 degree of Cherokee Indian ancestry or above to be a member of the United Keetoowah Band. We are talking about a little bit of the past, honorary could have been any nationality of people which the governing body wanted to honor, as an honorary membership. Associates were and still is those persons that are of 1/4 degree of Indian, Cherokee Indian ancestry and that's below that. And our full fledged members are 1/4 and above..."
From the above I take it that Associate members are supposed to be 1/4 Cherokee. But since the new information is that:
"..According to Jodi Rave, a well-known Native journalist and member of the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara Three Affiliated Tribes, Churchill was enrolled as an ''associate member'' of the Keetoowah by a former chairman who was later impeached. The one other known member of the same program, since discontinued, was President Bill Clinton. Rave said that she made this discovery as a student in a journalism class at the University of Colorado..."
It is probably the case that Ward Churchill has no Cherokee ancestry whatever and is hyping his temporary Associate membership in the band as if he had, though he is certain to deny this.
He was probably enrolled in the small band for the fame he had as a writer as was Clinton for being a public figure.
Ward Churchill could for a time properly claim that he was a member of the band, but to deceive people that he was a Native American as the Head of ethnic studies program may well fall below the, "minimum standards of professional integrity" and be ground for dismissal as a tenured professor, if the powers that be in the University look at it that way.
I doubt the will fire him for his writings, however reprehensible they are, but they can fire him for violation their, "minimum standards of professional integrity". They would be on stronger grounds against him in any lawsuit he later files and he has already said he would file one if he is dismissed.