Posted on 02/12/2005 4:02:25 PM PST by Jacob Kell
If you think Ward Churchill is controversial in his academic setting, you should see how divisive a force he is in the Indian world.
The University of Colorado professor, who has set off a firestorm with the publicizing of his 3-year-old essay rationalizing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has been a lightning rod for years among those involved in American Indian arts, academics and activism.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
Ping.
If you think Ward Churchill is controversial in his academic setting, you should see how divisive a force he is in the Indian world.The University of Colorado professor, who has set off a firestorm with the publicizing of his 3-year-old essay rationalizing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has been a lightning rod for years among those involved in American Indian arts, academics and activism.
He simultaneously inspires great admiration and loathing.
"He is horribly divisive, and he is a thug," said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morningstar Institute in Washington, a national American Indian rights organization. "He's gone on the attack against a lot of good people."
But Noam Chomsky, the noted political author and MIT linguistics professor that Churchhill cited as an intellectual ally, said much of Churchill's work is "excellent, penetrating and of high scholarly quality."
"Entirely separate from this is his right to free speech and academic freedom," Chomsky said. "That has to be defended, vigilantly, whatever we think about his beliefs and writings."
Many of Churchill's Indian critics base their complaints on a belief that he is actually a white man posing as American Indian.
Churchill says he is at least one-sixteenth Cherokee and also Creek, and that it has been verified by several Cherokee researchers. But he hasn't offered the name of any ancestor who has been shown to be American Indian. Critics who researched his family tree found only white branches.
Churchill, who didn't respond to a request for an interview for this story, has earlier said he resents being treated like a dog that has to establish its pedigree.
Russell Means, a Lakota Sioux and early AIM leader, traveled to Colorado this week to again stand in solidarity with Churchill.
"We are the only ethnic group in the world that has to prove our blood like the dogs and the horses," Means said Tuesday night at Churchill's CU appearance. "Ward is my brother. Ward has followed the ways of indigenous people worldwide."
Others see it much differently.
"He's Indian for the purpose of profit," Harjo said. "When I met him in 1989, he wouldn't answer my questions about who his Creek people were. I mean, talking about our people is just 'hello' for Indians. We want to find out if we're related. We're desperate for relatives!
"Here he was, a middle-aged person who didn't know anybody from the people he claimed to be part of," she said. "You can't have as many white relatives as he does and think you're Indian."
Harjo, a Cheyenne and Muskogee, said Churchill has "almost no influence" among American Indians except in Denver. "His influence is with other white people."
Artist David Bradley, of Santa Fe, N.M., a Chippewa, said he and Churchill ran afoul over Bradley's support of a law saying that people holding themselves out as American Indian artists are required to show they are actually Indians.
"That's what caused him to first attack me, before I ever heard of the guy," Bradley said. "Out of the clear blue sky, he published this attack."
Bradley said that Churchill "destroys our credibility."
"He's a white man who earns his living masquerading as an Indian. He's a pseudo-Indian profiteer. He takes opportunities intended for our people, our legitimate speakers, who can honestly speak about the American Indian experience."
Churchill's supporters and detractors alike say that personal feuds over leadership and style have fueled the animosity as much as anything.
He has feuded mightily with brothers Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt, Ojibwes who operate the National American Indian Movement in Minneapolis. Names prominent in AIM have chosen sides, and Churchill is only one of many issues dividing them.
Supporters on both sides took turns drumming each other out of the movement in separate tribunals in the early 1990s. Each side accuses people on the other of being government spies or provocateurs.
"I've been trying for years to expose Churchill's fraud," Vernon Bellecourt said. "He took on this Indian identity and fooled a lot of people. But this thing (the Sept. 11 essay) has proven to be a big embarrassment to many of our people."
But Joe Geshick, another Ojibwe from Minneapolis who opposes the Bellecourts, said Churchill is one of the brave people who will take on American Indian leaders.
Means drove to Denver this week from Pine Ridge, S.D., with three carloads of friends to stand with Churchill at his Tuesday speech in Boulder. He often supports Churchill and other Colorado AIM leaders such as Glenn Morris, of the University of Colorado at Denver, in such efforts as stopping Denver's Columbus Day Parade.
"The Bellecourts have no credibility in the movement," Means said. "Ward Churchill and Glenn Morris, when they were appointed to leadership positions in AIM, changed its image. They're credible and award-winning academics.
"Ward is a prolific writer and, aside from his academic credentials, he has done enormous education about the American Indian both here and internationally. The education he has given to non-Indians is phenomenal."
Morris, a political science professor, applauds Churchill's blunt style.
"No one has written more, both in an academic and a popular genre and format, than Ward has in his unapologetic criticism of U.S. Indian law and policy," Morris said.
Penny Schoner, a leftist social activist from San Francisco who supports Churchill, said the attacks on him by American Indians come from right-wing sources.
"They're attacking anyone who speaks out and is effective," she said. "There's right-wing and left-wing among Indians just like anywhere else. It's the McCarthy era all over again."
Shoner is a freak, who appears to believe our government was complicent in the Sept. 11th attacks for a variety of reasons... conspiracy theorist...
Morris is Churchill's co-director or something like that of the Autonomous AIM group in Colorado that is not affiliated with the National AIM group. He, like Churchill, is just a tool for Russell Means' ends...
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