Posted on 02/14/2005 5:16:57 AM PST by Miami Vice
It should not be a revelation to anyone that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill would write an essay that claims the murder of 3000 people on 9-11 was the result of American policies towards Iraq. He is a Baathist sympathizer and has been for a long time.
Churchill was a member of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC). This is the international diplomatic branch of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
The IITC was founded in 1974 by AIM. By 1979, they established diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party. This relationship proved to be profitable for them. The IITC received funds from the Baathists for their campaign to return ownership of the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Lakota tribe.
Unfortunately for the IITC - and AIM - one of their group, Vernon Bellecourt, began praising Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982. This was a major faux pas as Iraq and Iran were at war at the time. Iraq became rather indignant about the whole episode and immediately ceased its funding of this Native American version of the Palestinian Right of Return crusade. Iraq no longer donated to AIM’s dream of returning the Black Hills to the Lakota.
Churchill was expelled from the IITC in 1986. He was accused of trying to sabotage the negotiations between Iraq and IITC for his own personal gain.
The whole affair is indicative of the type of squabble that usually occurs in organizations like AIM as members try to obtain power and wealth – two things organizations like AIM publicly decry yet secretly covet.
Churchill was also expelled by the national AIM in 1993. He then formed a splinter group - Colorado AIM. This group is not part of the national organization.
These credentials apparently impressed the Colorado University administration because they furnished him with a six-figure salary, made him a professor and a chair of an academic department. They did this despite a resume that contained little in the way of academic achievement. They did this even though other Native American organizations felt that Churchill was not qualified.
Churchill was named the Chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department despite the fact that his degree is an M.A. in Communications. The other Ethnic Studies Department professors are PhD’s. Why Churchill became Chairman can only be explained by the Colorado administration’s political correctness.
Not only is he not a PhD, he has been accused of academic fraud. Thomas Brown, a sociology professor at Lamar University, stated Churchill fabricated a story about the U.S. Army intentionally creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837.
Then again, Churchill is not known for his veracity. His claims of being Indian are said to be a lie. He has also lied about his military service.
Given this track record, it is no epiphany that his now famous essay comparing the victims of the World Trade Center terrorism to Nazis is replete with propaganda. He wrote about the “pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” He omitted that these bombings ended a war started by the Japanese who actually were the first to bomb civilians.
None of these questions of credentials or credibility seemed to have mattered much to the administrators of the University of Colorado. Churchill’s only qualification for being a professor was his activism. This says more about the University of Colorado administrators than it says about Ward Churchill.
Nor does Churchill’s hate speech seem to matter much to the University of Colorado. Colorado’s Chancellor Phil DiStefano stated, "While I may personally find his views offensive, I also must support his right (guaranteed by the First Amendment) as an American citizen to hold and express his views, no matter how repugnant."
Is there any doubt that had Churchill said something derogatory about gays or blacks Chancellor DiStefano would have fired him immediately? None at all – there exists among liberals a double standard of what is or is not hate speech. This double standard is applied to academicians, entertainers, journalists, and politicians.
For example, when certain entertainers said President Bush was a traitor, liberals became indignant when people called those entertainers traitors.
In 1995, President Clinton said about Republican legislative proposals, “what they want to do is make war on the kids in this country.” No one condemned this.
Journalist Juan Williams, now a Fox News analyst, also in 1995, said after the Oklahoma City tragedy, that the fanatical militias that conducted paramilitary training in remote forests were, “angry white men in their natural state.” There were no repercussions.
Is it any wonder that Churchill feels that he can spout his venom?
Professors like Churchill are not uncommon. Their venom has been reported here and elsewhere. Anti-American, anti-religious, anti-capitalist, anti-military invective is common in academia.
While it is important that professors exercise their freedom of speech, there are two prerequisites. First, free speech must apply equally.
Recently Marquette University suspended a program established by the College Republicans called “Adopt a Sniper.” This program obtains funds to buy equipment and other items for US military snipers. Marquette felt this was improper. One wonders what Marquette would do with Churchill.
Second, professors must recognize that liberty must be accompanied with responsibility. Free speech cannot exist in a vacuum. One cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater - to paraphrase a famous Supreme Court justice’s opinion.
The dispensers of diatribes and division must recognize that every American has freedom of speech. If they do not act responsibly these purveyors of hate will learn that every American will exercise their free speech and criticize those who are irresponsible.
Is there any proof that the Lakota were the original inhabitants of the Black Hills? Or did they take the land from an earlier group?
Of course, I know Iraqis attacked the World Trade Center buildings. Everyone who is even minimumally informed knows this. Ward Churchill demonstrates he knows this also. (I hope someone challenges me on this!)
The Lakota took the Black Hills by force about 300 years ago. They moved WSW out of northern Minnesota, and pushed other tribes out of the way. This is when parts of the Apache were on the move, from Wyoming into Nebraska & Kansas, and on down to the Southwest. The Cheyenne &/or Crow moved out of the Black Hills....
Tribal territories were nothing if not unstable, and the "Noble Red Man" fought viciously for territory, meandering all over the continent as circumstances changed.
Disclaimer: I am not an Indian. I am not a scholar. I am not a Colorado University "professor".LOL
The land belongs to the latest victor. Here in Ohio, the Shawnee are putting forth the lie that Ohio is their ancestral homeland in an attempt to build casinos that others are racially forbidden to do. Casinos are against Ohio state law. Anyway, the Shawnee did not come into Ohio until around 1750, the same time white settlers were arriving. "Why do some people not know when they are conquered?"
That's why later explorers found folks speaking the Sioux languages and using the Plains Indians sign language at Cahokia (across from St. Louis).
So, who might the original inhabitants of the Black Hills be?
Wrong question ~ no inhabitants ~ just visitors, and uncomfortable visitors at that, although during periods of drought when the herds died off, people might well have lived there.
I think the Sioux or Lakota took the land from the Blackfoot tribe.
No doubt more than one Shawnee managed to camp overnight upriver in what is now Ohio.
This will be a slam dunk for them because Shawnee artifacts may be found all over the Midwest EAST of the Wabash in deposits readily dated to before 1750.
On the other hand, the fellows who lived at what is now Cleveland probably do have, at best, a very tenuous claim to that territory, and I bet if the Iriquois had known about it some taxes would have been collected!
You have to go most of the way toward Toledo to find permanent Shawnee towns directly on the Great Lakes in earlier centuries.
Someone may know of one ~ I don't and haven't come across a reference to any.
read later
You could well be right, though the Cheyenne were also involved in battles for them, at least one not a half mile from where I'm sitting.
They all wanted the hot "medicine" springs here, as well as the "relatively" easy buffalo hunting the local topography provided.
The Blackfoot and the Sioux are not exactly interchangeable but the Sihasapa are called the Blackfoot Sioux.
Before the Europeans arrival, the native American lived a stone age existance of innumerable hardships: disease, famine, war, brutality through superstition, and the plain bitterness of lack of technological advancement. North American Indian did not have the wheel.
Ok, I am willing to stand corrected by anyone with a better grounding in Indian history. It was my understanding the Indians were given the Black Hills by the Government in exchange for driving them from other territories. It wasn't until Custer's soldiers discovered gold in the area that is now near Deadwood that the indians were pretty much driven out. The government should have put a stop to any encroachment on the land, but in typical fashion for the day, they turned a blind eye to it.
Seems like an ignoble end.
On the other hand, when the Egyptians were barely out of the New Stone Age, the Andean cocaine cartel reached out to them in its compassion giving them relief from their aches, pains and other troubles.
The Indians were driven out because the were warring with the United States military and killing the civillians that they would encounter. Can you come up with a better reason to drive a people away?
I'm sure there's a point in your reply some where. I'd love to hear it.
We bought it from the French so they would have to deal with the frogs.
I think that is a dramatic oversimplification. Warring with the United States military did not justify the numerous butchery inflicted on Indian women in children and the general attitude that the only good Indian was a dead indian. No one argues there weren't atrocities committed on both sides. But show me a treaty that was ever honored by the US government. Whatever the reason, the Indians were given areas that are now part of the BLack Hills and promised it would be theirs forever, and then gold was discovered.....
At a first glance this looks like out and out theft. On the other hand the whole reason for the Indian relocations was humanitarian. It had finally been recognized during Thomas Jefferson's administration that Indians who lived in the presence of white people or black people tended to have short lifespans, a high infant mortality rate, and suffered extensively from diseases that were a relatively minor problem for non-Indians.
The plans for the relocations, including payoffs, were made under Jefferson. They began to be executed under Jackson (rather brutally), and continued on under later administrations.
Once whites started moving into the Black Hills in large numbers, the whole purpose of assigning that territory to Indian people was undermined.
In any case, that wasn't the worst bit of double-dealing to ever happen ~ the Oneida Indians were determined by the State of New York to be "white people". Since "white people" were not allowed to own Indian land, the Oneida could then be expelled from their country and the land sold by the State of New York to illegal immigrants.
The Oneida were then assigned some malarial swamps in Wisconsin. It's noteworthy that Indiana had been selected initially as an exclusively Indian homeland, but the New Madrid quake, and subsequent land movements, drained off most of the Wabash valley turning it into the sort of place that would be highly prized by whites. If the great quake had been a tad later in history, the Onedia would have been sent to Indiana, first, which would have been stolen from them, and then to Wisconsin where they could die of malaria.
These poor people were America's allies in the American Revolution.
Ward Churchill is the kind of guy who cries about the Cherokee "trail of tears" and condemns the Oneida for making a living off of two of the most popular casinos in the United States.
While your ancestors were huddled in caves picking lice the Egyptians had what passed for the highest civilization on Earth.
Indians were not entirely uncivilized ~ they did not have the use of bronze and iron however. When it comes to hallucinogenic, thereapeutic or tasty plants and compounds, the Indians had already developed a pharmaceutical and spice supply that exceeded that available in the Old World by many times.
That they were able to ship at least one boatload of cocaine to Egypt is significant.
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