He’s Not Indian Enough To Say It

This is one of the local media’s favorite claims: that Ward Churchill’s not even a real Indian. In fact, it’s been repeated so much that it’s sort of become accepted fact around the internet. The problem being that it’s almost entirely a concoction by the Denver local media.

To begin, we need a little background in the American Indian Movement.

As the local media well knows there was a split in the American Indian Movement during the late 80s and early 90s, partly due to the refusal of Glenn Morris, Ward Churchill, Russell Means and George Tinker, among others, to express solidarity with the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The Sandinistas were engaged in what they now like to euphemistically refer to as a failed program to modernize Nicaragua’s indigenous people, but was, in fact, little more than a deliberate program of genocide. Taking the stance that genocide against indigenous peoples is, well, genocide against indigenous peoples, Russell Means and Glenn Morris even traveled to Nicaragua to join in solidarity with the indigenous people thereof and were fired upon by Sandinista soldiers.

As such, there are now two AIMs: (1) A grassroots national-liberation entity known as The International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement, of which Colorado AIM is a part, and, (2) The National American Indian Movement, an incorporated entity headed by Clyde Bellecourt, Vernon Bellecourt and Dennis Banks, of which Ward Churchill was never a member. (Kind of disproving another favorite myth: that Ward Churchill was expelled from the American Indian Movement.)

The enmity between NAIM and Churchill is legendary. And they jumped on the opportunity to go after him when the scandal broke. One of their members, Carole Standing Elk, was on the air within a week, accusing Churchill of spitting on her and breaking her wrist (an event which she claims she couldn’t bring herself to report to anyone in any official capacity at the time), and Vernon Bellecourt and Dennis Banks decried Churchill as a dangerous madman to anyone who would listen. But the NAIM supporter at the heart of the “Ward Churchill is a fake Indian myth” was a woman named Suzan Shown Harjo, and the degree to which she infiltrated the local media was nothing short of amazing.

Which shouldn’t be surprising. See, as Faith Attiguile describes in her 1998 essay Why Do You Think We Call It Struggle?, Harjo’d been honing her technique in concert with NAIM for fifteen years, engaging in the kind of dirty tricks that would’ve made Borat blush in shame. Including, my personal favorite, coercing drug addicts to protest outside of Churchill’s speaking engagements.

At a Northern California AIM/Radio KPFA fundraiser in Berkeley, NAIMI’s Carole Standing Elk, surrounded by what appeared to be a contingent of about fifty people, rose to inform an audience of 2,000 that while she agreed with “just about everything this man [Churchill] says, he’s not Indian enough to say it.” It turned out, however that her own group consisted of no more than six people. Closer attention provoked by her action revealed only six out of her contingent were known to work with her regularly. The rest were substance abusers assigned to Standing Elk’s husband Darryl, a Bay Area drug and alcohol counselor who had used his influence to instruct them to show up at the auditorium that night. (In the midst of Carole’s racist pronouncement, one of these confused “protesters” approached one of the many AIM people supporting Churchill to ask, “What’s going on here, George?”). The next day, someone identifying himself as an “AIM representative” - but not of the Northern California chapter for whom Churchill had done the fundraiser - talked $795 of the benefit’s proceeds from one of its ticket vendors, Black Oak Books.

Keep reading.

Not that Ms. Harjo’s shady backstory vis-à-vis Professor Churchill was ever referenced by the local media. Instead, Ms. Harjo was made their primary source on Professor Churchill’s ethnicity, not to mention his character.

Examples?

How’s about this article by Rocky Mountain News reporter Charlie Brennan.

Meanwhile, other prominent American Indians were challenging Churchill’s claim of American Indian ancestry. They insist Churchill would not have his job if he hadn’t said he was an Indian.

“I sent a letter to the university in 1992 saying he’s not a native person,” said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute. She says she received a response from a university official saying Churchill had not been hired because he was an American Indian.

Or this May 20, 2005 article, also from Mr. Brennan.

Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morningstar Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based Indian rights organization, and a woman who has sparred for years with Churchill over his claimed Indian ancestry, said the latest statement from the United Keetoowah Band changes nothing.

“It sounds to me like his lawyer called their lawyer and they issued something saying the same thing they’d said before and saying to Churchill, ‘If you want to verify, if you want to pursue it, go to the Cherokee Nation, or go the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but don’t come to us, because as far as we’re concerned, you’re not eligible,’ ” Harjo said.

Or this article by Rocky Mountain News reporter, Kevin Flynn.

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.”

Or, always content to skim their stories off the Denver media, this February 15, 2005 article from the Boulder Daily Camera.

Churchill is backed by some Indian leaders including Russell Means, and scholars such as Noam Chomsky have praised his work. But Suzan Shown Harjo, president of an American Indian rights organization in Washington, D.C., has called him the “Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley of American Indian studies,” referring to journalists who fabricated stories.

Which the Camera’s editorial staff seemed to find inadequate. So they proceeded to run a whole column by Ms. Harjo five days later. A column that quoted the expertise of, you guessed it, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt.

AIM founders and leaders Dennis J. Banks and Clyde H. Bellecourt, both Ojibwa, state that “Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of (AIM), a situation that has lifted him into the position of a lecturer on Indian activism. He has used (Denver AIM) to attack the leadership of the official (AIM) with his misinformation and propaganda campaigns.”

You get the point.

And, given the intensity of the enmity between the two AIMs, you probably get why allowing Harjo to saturate the media as Churchill reference number one might be a problem.

But there’s another problem with using NAIM and cronies as a character witness vis-à-vis Churchill. See, NAIM has a real good reason to hate Churchill, and it ain’t got a thing to do with his being a fraud.

It has to do with his ongoing allegation that the leadership of NAIM was responsible for the brutal rape and murder of young American Indian activist named Anna Mae Aquash.

An allegation which has also been made by Russell Means, Glenn Morris and George Tinker, who have also come under fire from NAIM. An allegation which has also been made by Ms. Aquash’s family and dozens of other American Indian activists, scholars and artists.

An allegation which certainly seems borne out by the fact that one member of NAIM is already in prison for the crime and another has been extradited from Canada to stand trial.

Seems like that nugget might be pertinent, don’t you think?

But, murder, rape and etc. aside, there’s an even more obvious problem: you see, Suzan Harjo has no more evidence that Ward Churchill isn’t exactly who he says he is than anyone else. Her claims about Churchill’s ethnicity are entirely unsubstantiated.

The local media never once bothered to ask her to back up a single one of her statements.

Not once.

But it got even better when the Rocky Mountain News’ published “The Churchill Files”, a series of articles that were meant to provide the final investigative word on Professor Churchill. The series’ centerpiece was a long investigative article that purported to close the book on Ward Churchill’s Indianness, entirely refuting it.

Their evidence?

A substantial genealogical survey.

The kicker?

It was compiled by two anti-Churchill bloggers and a New Jersey cop.

Let me repeat that: two bloggers, and a New Jersey cop.

In the Rocky’s own words, from their June 8, 2005 expose:

The News’ genealogical research was conducted both in-house and in concert with several outside researchers.

Jim Paine, 51, of Hartsel, who heads several Internet database companies, maintains an anti-Churchill site at www.pirateballerina.com.

He worked with Bill Cullen, 35, a New Jersey police officer who plans to become a professional genealogist.

Jack Ott, 65, of Lakewood, a retired telecom planner, engineer and amateur genealogist, maintains an online Churchill tree at home.comcast.net/~jackott2/ahnentafel1.htm

It’s the kind of thing I couldn’t make up if I tried. You see, as the article acknowledges, there are professional genealogists who do this sort of work for a living. And the fact that the Rocky went with three amateurs, two of which are rabidly anti-Churchill, leads me to one of two possible conclusions:

Either (1) The Rocky couldn’t find a single professional genealogist west of the Mississippi with an hour or two of free time during the writing of the “Churchill Files” to vouch for the thing.

Or, more likely, (2) they just couldn’t find one who’d even consider signing off on their trumped-up smearjob, immediately understanding it was horseshit.

Either way, however, they still don’t have a single shred of evidence that Churchill isn’t exactly who he says he is.

But like most of the inconvenient truths which run contrary to the local media’s smears, that gaping chasm just gets kinda overlooked.