My wife (who has some Oklahoma Kikapu ancestry - she says they were nomadic and traders - brought peyote up from the Canon del Cobre Tarajumaras to the plains among other things) looked at something Ward Churchill wrote and noted that a tribal elder is denying that this guy's name appears in the tribal registry. She said, "I would think that any native group with whom he identifies would be proud to have him in the family. I wouldn't stand around asking a lot of questions about geneology."
The tribe and the Native American nations are all poorer without his fire and his command of the facts. I wonder about a lot of the so-called elders of the tribes, how they represent and look after their memberships' interests and what might be their arrangements with the Bureau of Indian Affairs bureaucracy and available perks.I haven't read much about this, but it's probably not much different from our so-called representatives. And it's no doubt similarly property ownership and class-based and therefore no boat-rocking is acceptable.
So Ward Churchill may be deprived of a livelihood for telling it straight ahead, too loudly and too many times. I look for other Native American spokespersons to sound off. I wonder if they are as narcotized in this culture of apathy as seems to be the case with many of the rest of us.
Ralph
Louis Proyect wrote:
Suzan Shown Harjo - president of the Morning Star Institute, a Native American rights group in Washington, D.C. - has Census data showing Churchill as born to parents listed as white. She said he had not shown up on the rolls of the tribes he said he belonged to.
These allegations surface from time to time. It might be possible that Ward is not even 3/16th Cherokee. Who knows. I do know this. The people who raise this question tend to be on the right side of the spectrum, most especially the Bellecourt brothers who also accuse him of being a government agent. Frankly, I could care less about his ancestry. What matters is his dedication to indigenous struggles on which he has no peers.
Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
