Has John McCain Been Reading Ward Churchill?
May 15th, 2008
(This is a guest editorial from Grad Student.)
As part of my research for my MA thesis, I was watching a documentary on Indian land tenure the other night. I’m not recommending the film to anyone because it’s too long by half and for the most part deadly dull. Still, there came a point at which I was jarred out of my detail-induced torpor by a completely unexpected scene. There, on the screen, was Arizona Senator/Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain holding forth on how “our long history of exploit[ing] Native Americans [began] with the Pilgrims providing a local tribe with some blankets infested with smallpox”!
I replayed the senator’s remarks three times, just to be sure I’d heard him right.
It occurred to me, of course, that among the other accusations recently sustained by an investigating committee at the University of Colorado against Professor Ward Churchill is that he’d “fabricated an historical incident” by describing very much the same Pilgrims/blankets/smallpox scenario as McCain. The professor’s rebuttal, as I recall, was—at least in part—that, he’d been hearing variations of the story from the time he was a grade-schooler, therefore could not have been its inventor, and in any case saw it as falling within the realm of commonly-accepted historical fact.
For their part, the committee members professed never to have heard any such story—making them, as I heard Professor Churchill put it in a subsequent radio interview, “perhaps the only five people in all of North America who haven’t”—implying that he’d made that up as well. Their report, including a finding to that effect, was submitted in May 2006, at roughly the same moment that Senator McCain was making the statement quoted above.
Now, either McCain had been reading Ward Churchill’s material, and had been sufficiently influenced by it that he was simply repeating information he’d encountered therein, or he’d heard the same stories as Churchill and, like the professor, believed them to be a recounting of historical fact. Either way, if I were Ward Churchill, I’d be calling John McCain as a witness during my upcoming lawsuit against the university.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Excellent plan Grad Student, and nice catch.
On a side note, anyone keyed in on Bud Peterson’s attempts to create an endowed chair of conservative studies?
May 17th, 2008 at 2:41 am
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May 17th, 2008 at 2:51 am
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May 17th, 2008 at 3:15 am
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May 17th, 2008 at 3:27 am
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May 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
As Jacqueline Woodson puts it on page 18 of her award-winning work of children’s literature, “The Dear One” (Delacourt Press, 1991), even third-graders “knew that the Pilgrims had given the Indians blankets with smallpox on them” by the time John McCain went to elementary school.
It looks to me like the only people who slept through class the day that one was covered were Jim Paine, Fred, and the members of CU’s investigating committee.
May 17th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
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May 17th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
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May 17th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
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May 17th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
The army was there in the 19th century. There are documents by the department of war where they listed tribes they favored and didn’t favor (such as the mandan, who wouldn’t sign over their land), and they had a plan involving distribution of vaccine to the favored groups.
May 18th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I’m not quite sure what either “the army” or the 19th century have to do with the Pilgrims, Ulrike, but you’re basically correct in what you say.
Just to sharpen your point, though, the Arikaras and the Blackfeet were the actual targets of the War Department’s policy of withholding smallpox vaccine during the 1830s. The Mandans, Hidatsas, Assiniboins, and other peoples along the upper Missouri River were merely collateral damage.
And whether the Mandans were willing to “sign over their land” was not an issue. The object of the genocide by microbe undertaken by the U.S. Army in 1837 was to reshape power relations in the region as a means of facilitating commerce.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Grad Student,
I was about to write a rather scathing message on another board that blasted McCain for not taking a strong stance against the anti-Muslim rants that one of his self-described spiritual guide has made, but after reading your guest editorial I decided to give him a break for now since he is a potential witness for the side of Ward Churchill.
Besides, after thinking some more on this I came to the realization that what Rod Parsley has said in regards to the colonization of the Americas is right.
For instance, Christopher Columbus went exploring in order to find new trade routes for the looting of treasure with the intention of bringing new wealth to Europe. The primary purpose was to create a global dominating force especially one that would dominate the Islamic World, which was at that time a far more advanced civilization than was Europe. Western historians even label 1492 as the beginning of the Modern Age.
Rod Parsley worded it a bit differently of course. Here is what he said:
“…I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed…”
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
May 18th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
oh, right before it was automatically deleted, there had been a Snapple statement about the pilgrims in North Dakota in the 18th century.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Pilgrims blankets smallpox eh?
Floated the ole Mayflower up the mighty Mississip did they? Right into Mandan territory? Those scoundrels.
This piece ranks up there with Sean Hannity’s reporting of the Board of Ed in Oakland using Black English as a foreign language gambit to raise more money for a much-needed program.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Golly, gee, duh, Bradford. And “nope,” besides.
You’re off by about two centuries. The “Pilgrims blankets smallpox” events occurred between 1615 and 1625. The army’s infection of the Mandans occurred in 1837, and the Pilgrims were not involved.
Mandan territory was/is along the upper MISSOURI River, not the “Mississip.” The boat on which smallpox-infested blankets were transported upriver from St. Louis to Mandan teritory was the “St. Peter’s,” not the “Mayflower.”
The “St. Peter’s” was commanded by Captain—later General—Bernard Pratt, Jr. The blankets were handed out by Major William Fulkerson.
Anything else you’d like to know before accepting that newly-created position for a “conservative historian” at the University ofColorado at Boulder? Or would having a clue what you’re talking about make you unqualified for the job?
May 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
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May 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 am
Saaaaay…
This “Bradford” feller wouldn’t happen to be the famous Wild Bill Bradford,once touted by both Bill O’Reilly and Jim Paine as a “credible source,” would it?
I’m of course referring to the ex-law professor, the exposure of whose fraudulent claims not only to be a “Chiricahua Apache,” but that he’d been wounded and awarded the Silver Star while serving as a Special Forces Colonel during the Gulf War, led to his abrupt resignation from the University of Indiana.
Sure sounds like the same asshole to me.
Funny, ain’t it, how neither O’Reilly nor Paine ever mention him anymore?