Posted on 06/14/2005 7:55:43 AM PDT by Millee
This thread reminds me of something I read here a week or so ago. I think it was rdb3 who said "I'm not black; I'm choca-licious!"
I insist on being called a native American.
I was born here, my parents were born here.
I am a native.
(Actually I just insist on the American part.LOL)
American Indians are not native Americans. Finds over the last 10 years have shown other migrants came first. If Ward is not Amerindian, he's got a good shot of being a native American. Too bad we don't know definitively who the first Americans were but if they were German or Keltic people, I want a percentage of casino profits.
Ha--- me too.
With the Indian tribes, it matters because the tribal governments are sovereignties of parallel authority with the states. It will not do, therefore, to have people simply claiming to be Indians in order to move onto the reservation and live tax free, or get distribution checks from those tribes who have successfully litigated or have successful casino operations.
Logically, it should be the tribal governments that decide who is on the rolls and who is not. But this key element of tribal identity was stripped away in many cases by the government for its own reasons.
At any rate, with the Indians, it has an important legal significance and it matters.
Affirmative Action gives another, less tangible reason to claim minority status. Obviously the Affirmative Action boost is of a different nature than US Treaties with Indian tribes. Affirmative Action is a sort of collective act of expiation for a guilty conscience, but could be altered, taken away, changed, modified at will depending on what and whom is decided to be favored or not. Indian Treaties are US Treaties, the Supreme Law of the Land, according to the US Constitution. They are formal legal contracts of the US Government and the sovereign tribes with which they were concluded, and cannot, therefore, be unilaterally changed by political action in Washington.
The other huge difference is that there are really not many Indians, probably 1-2 million overall (including those not on the rolls who should be).
As to Hispanics from Mexico and South America being Indians, that is true. They are. But they are not American Indians. The distinction is important. Nobody can pretend for an instant that what happened to the Latin American Indians was not brutal. It was. In many, many ways, it was worse than what happened to most tribes in America.
But the crucial difference is that the government that did that to those people was Spanish, Spanish or the local heirs of Spain. The American people and American government did NOT oppress the Latin American Indians.
The American government made treaties with certain tribes of American Indians, and it is to those tribes, based on those treaties, that the US government and American people are bound. The plight of the Tupi in Brazil and Maya in Mexico is tragic, but the American people had nothing to do with it. America had something to do with the Cherokee and Sioux, Chippewa and Apache and Navajo. It concluded treaties, formal, binding legal contracts, with those people. And it is those contracts which much be respected, with regards to the people formally on the rolls of those tribes.
Honoring Indian treaties made by the US is no act of charity. The constitution and the law DEMAND it. It is not OPTIONAL for the US Government to do so. Affirmative Action IS optional, and always was.
This distinction must be remembered. American Indians, of tribes with whom the US concluded and ratified formal treaties, are sovereign nations who have affiliated themselves by formal, enforceable legal documents to the US Federal Government. They are individual sovereigns in union with Washington DC, like the States are.
Everyone else, including Latin American Indians and Blacks, are people with a tragic past that is not wholly - or even mostly - the responsibility of the United States, and there was never any treaty between sovereigns. Affirmative Action is charity, out of the good of America's heart. Indian Treaties are peace treaties, legally binding contracts, made for the best interests of the US Government and - putatively anyway - the Indians.
Different cadre, different things.
Affirmative Action can go away.
Indian Treaties can't unless both parties agree.
And that is why tribal rolls matter much, much more than other ethnic backgrounds.
The school should not be holding meetings to decide Churchill's Indian ethnicity. They should be consulting the tribe. What the tribe says is the law for that tribe. If it says you are not a member, you are not a member. Just as if the United States removes citizenship from a person and takes his passport. He can claim he is an American until doomsday, but he is not anymore. That is the way it works, and the university should treat it that way. Ask the tribe.
Trouble is, the tribe already answered the question: Ward Churchill is not an Indian. He was made an HONORARY member of the tribe for things he wrote once. That's like getting an HONORARY PhD. Can you go and teach with it? No. Because an honorary anything is not real.
In the slave days, anyone with 1/64 black blood was considered black (the one-drop rule). These laws stayed on the books of many southern states til the 1960s. I presume that good people today decry these laws.
Yet, now, you can find people with three white grandparents, and one black grandparent who call themselves black.
Why? Do these people pine for the good old slave days?
In science, or in any logical construction of things, if you had 3 parts X and 1 part Y and you had to call the result either X or Y, would you not call it X?
So, why is race different?
Sen. Barak Obama is exactly 50% white and 50% black. He was raised exclusively by his white mother. All family members with whom he associated were white. His black Kenyan father was absent. He was raised in Hawaii, and rarely encountered blacks. Yet he calls himself black. I presume he condemns the old 1/64 or "one drop rule," so why, considering that his 50/50 mix would allow him to logicall fall into either the white or black label, does he call himself black--especially since he was brought up in a white culture?
The reason is government policy and politics that rewards people for being non-white.
Prove who you are, sir! Mullatto? Quadroon? Octaroon? Return to Jim Crow, anyone?
"..and a dog can decide he's a cat. Everyone happy now?"
I am not happy. You didn't include cats deciding they are dogs, or human slaveowners. My cat is proudly both. The great thing about a cat who thinks he's part dog and human is this. He's smart enough to adopt only the good qualities of dogs and has enough self respect to not accept the role of slave and scavenger.
Since Churchill is a known liar, his claim of tribal ancestry are denied by the tribe itself, and his claim was essential to securing his position--yes, he should prove his claim. Anyone who doesn't make such a claim shouldn't have to prove anything.
Well pooh! Guess I can't please everybody. : )
get a grip, Ernesto - DNA testing can establish genetic heritage easily, no political committee approval required
The university created the need. Churchill simply stepped forward.
Great pic!; #7.
Native Americans get tired of pretenders running around claiming an "Indian Princess" as their grandmother. It is sort of a "I was Tslagi when Tslagi wasn't cool" thing. {insert favorite tribe, as applicable}
I don't believe Churchill could even make a convincing case standing in front of a store holding a bunch of cigars.
That's a great "troll" picture, come to think of it. The kitties are probably viking kitties pointing out that there's a troll among them. Yes...I have a rampantly wild imagination.
LOL!
I'm a macaroon. Or is that a macarena?
See Denver Rocky Mountain News article on Ward Churchill's genealogy:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3841949,00.html
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3841642,00.html
I'm not white. I have a disibility. I am melanin deficient and I want a government check to pay for all the sun screen I need to live a full productive equal life. And I demand my children get a special college scholarship from from a special fund set up for melanin deficient children. After all I was born this way. Maybe I can sue for wrongful birth and life since my mothers physician did not tell her I might be born with this disability.(hence she did not have the info she needed to decide if she wanted an abortion) Oh the injustice.
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