[NYTr] Refuting Cointelpro Tactics Against Churchill/Pt 1 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:19:54 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Sent by The Freedom Archives - Feb 15, 2005 Part 1 of 2: Footnotes & complete article are at this site: http://www.americanindianmovement.org/papers/struggle.html# [This may be lengthy, but is well documented and important to understand that publications like News From Indian Country & Indian Country Today, now being quoted by Fox news as authoritative sources, have been spewing this anti-Churchill stuff for over 10 years. -claude] Why do you think we call it struggle? by Faith Attaguile Contributing Editor, Dark Night Field Notes darknight@igc.apc.org With special thanks and gratitude to Lance Kramer and Michele Cheung whose voices ring throughout this document February 1998 The Problem It's coming from the sorrow on the street; the holy places where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat -Democracy, Leonard Cohen, 1992 Talking the talk doesn't mean we're walking the walk. Neither does it immunize us from aping the power structure we claim to oppose. When we embrace unsubstantiated information as "facts," when we rush to judgment, when we reflect greed, authoritarianism, competition, and racism in our internal politics -we undermine our struggle as much as any cop can. It is not enough to master politically correct rhetoric to express our worldview. What really counts is behaving and modeling the ways that yield that worldview. We are not doing this when we accept sound bites long enough to convey an impression of substance but too short to allow informed analysis. Neither are we when we slavishly honor the word in print or from the podium without investigation. Such unquestioning acceptance of half-truths or speciously documented assertions make us as fatally vulnerable to disruption from within as it does dissent from without. Whether systematically introduced by outside agitators or stemming from authoritarian or competitive tendencies from within, innuendo and rumor mindlessly repeated as "facts" have several devastating effects. They lend a progressive veneer to motives formed by the very values and aspirations they claim to scorn. Their easiness further absolves members of the movement from committing to the hard and deliberate work necessary to yield informed judgments. Only a routinely and rigorously developed historical and analytical consciousness can protect our work from manipulation by old tricksters in progressive clothes, and keep us from becoming "progressive" Talking Barbies playing up to the very forces we are aligned to confront. "Trust me" should weigh as much in our political analysis as it should in the back seat of a Chevy. You can object that this kind of self-examination is just one more thing that keeps a movement divided and unable to focus on its outer-directed aims, but no movement can survive, much less achieve its goals, without regularly assessing itself on this score. Shattering a Movement I've seen nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all but love's the only engine of survival Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going any further: Get ready for the future; it is murder. -The Future, Leonard Cohen, 1992 The years since the 1970s height of the American Indian Movement's (AIM) activism provide a monitory example of how internally adopted disinformation tactics can destroy a grassroots movement's potential and impact. The extent to which externally implanted disinformation rocked the movement prior to the mid-70s has been amply documented,1 but many factors have contributed to an unhealthy reluctance to examine how much the movement's own behavior contributed to its hollowing out during and subsequent to that period. A quarter century after its birth, after splits, attempted reconciliations and spotty and coordinated resurgences, AIM sadly illustrates how vulnerability from within can open a movement to self-destruction, susceptibility to the enemy, and diversion from organizational goals. All progressive movements, each in its own way susceptible to the same failings, can learn from it. Among several sharply disputed origin stories, there is consensus that what emerged in the 60s and 70s as AIM was a loose coalition of several groups of young Native Americans who saw the era's general unrest as an opportunity to move native concerns and aspirations into public consideration and debate. It arose as a movement rather than a political party. In Cleveland, in Minneapolis, in Omaha, in San Francisco and elsewhere in the late 60s, young Native Americans, mostly urban with no reservation associations or substantial ties to their tribal traditions, came together to consider the plight of native peoples and to advocate for redress of both current and historic grievances. These local organizations, tied by an agenda of native self-determination and liberation, produced the informal alignment now known as AIM. The accomplishments of those who struggled under its banner then, while open to interpretation and debate, were unarguably significant. Not only did they halt the continued disintegration of North American native cultures by asserting their fundamental vitality and strength; they also demonstrated willingness to act aggressively against continued abuse. The bravery of the early AIM activists cannot be contested. Even those who disagreed then and now with AIM's policies or tactics respect their early audacity. But after COINTELPRO neutralized AIM in the 70s, the movement survived through the 80s more in individual attitude or commitment than as an organization, barely recognizable in form.2 Even its most ardent supporters had been stunned by the federal might thrown against it without protest from either the American public or the progressive community. But the 100th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre and the Columbus Quincentennary in 1992 awoke voices that had been silent since the federal repression of the 70s on a host of issues. The continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier on fabricated charges since 1976; the continued desecration of native gravesites and remains; the continued federal attempts to destroy the integrity of native cultures; and the continued native efforts to recover lands and rights lost through treaty manipulations led to a resurgence of activism. Yet these efforts were stilled almost as quickly as they had risen, the early gains of the 90s wasted through internal controversy. Today AIM consists of two fundamentally different movements. One wing, with all the trappings of an organized political party, describes itself as National AIM, Inc. (NAIMI) and is headed by Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, whose subordination of native liberation to their own personal advancement amplifies and documents talking native talk while walking the corporate walk. NAIMI is nicely organized under the statutory provisions defining corporate structures, evincing the characteristics of a privately-held business enterprise replete with corporate offices, regional subsidiaries, a self-appointed command structure, membership rolls, fees and dues, fundraising capabilities, and vanity license plates. NAIMI, by its own admission, is heavily funded by the US government and by neoliberal corporate structures dictating governmental policies towards indigenous peoples throughout the world. The other wing of the movement consists of a loosely knit collection of local groups describing themselves as the Confederation of Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement (autonomous AIM). The autonomous chapters each tend to operate with a more locally-focused agenda and scrupulously avoid anything approximating a central command or decision structure, a means of governance they associate with the dominant culture, and one inconsistent with native ways. Consciously eschewing the organizational trappings, the fascination with money, and financial ties with either the US government or corporate America, autonomous AIM's structure remains closer to the spirit of the AIM of the 60s and 70s than the corporate edifice that is NAIMI. While autonomous AIM's focus is primarily local, many local leaders also actively address national and international indigenous liberation issues. The conflicts and disinformation campaigns leading to and following AIM's fracture are indeed unfortunate. If their roots lie in the behavior and methods that created and perpetuate the conflicts, their continuation rests in the extent to which the native liberation movement and associated progressive movements refuse to undertake the analysis needed to reach their own conclusions regarding such conflicts. Smearing an individual Give me back my broken night, my secret room, my secret life. Its lonely here - there's no one left to torture. Give me absolute control over every living soul and lie beside me, baby. That's an order! -The Future, Leonard Cohen, 1992 How the post-fracture divide has been fueled by unconscious imitation of the dominant culture's values, values at odds with the original movement's liberatory aims, can be seen in the history of a single man -Ward Churchill.3 There exist two diametrically opposed views of Churchill, a University of Colorado professor, Colorado AIM leader, international indigenous activist, and strong critic of the neoliberal world order. The first view is accessible in his numerous books and articles as well as his unrelenting support of indigenous liberation struggles in North America and globally.4 The other view is put forth by the NAIMI Bellecourt brothers, whose claims to leadership of the "American Indian Movement" seem to require silencing any voices not in harmony with their own. They use the same methods to create and perpetuate the conflict that COINTELPRO used to devastate AIM in the 70s. The result is that the conflict itself effectively reduces the American Indian Movement to fringes so focused on internal dynamics as to have no positive impact on the struggle for native liberation. A Chicago Example My attention was focused on these issues through my association with the April 1996 CAN-Free Mumia benefit in Chicago. A coalition of Chicago groups supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Philadelphia Black Panther and progressive radio commentator sentenced to die in Pennsylvania's electric chair on the bogus charge of killing a police officer,5 invited Churchill to participate in an event they were holding. The invitation was not his first from Chicago-based activist groups. Unlike some speakers, he frequently assumes travel expenses to make such appearances. As on other occasions, he accepted CAN-Free's invitation, traveling at his own expense. His name was duly put on the promotional material. Shortly thereafter, CAN-Free Mumia coordinator Marguarette Powers received a phone call from a woman named Kim Feike who said she was a member of a Chicago-based antiauthoritarian group. She announced that it was time for "white activists to take a stand." She said she had been in contact with Vernon Bellecourt of the "American Indian Movement" (NAIMI) who had advised her that Churchill was "not Indian;" had been expelled from the "American Indian Movement, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" as "a provocateur, disruptive and dishonest;" and that he was under investigation by the University of Colorado for "his false claims of being an Indian." She further explained that she felt obligated to demand that Churchill be prevented from "misrepresenting Indians" by speaking on behalf of a condemned black activist, and threatened to picket the event if Churchill spoke there. Powers, mightily puzzled, told Feike that the coalition had invited Churchill because of his well-established expertise on political repression in the United States.6 When it was clear that the invitation would not be withdrawn, Feike simply hung up. Soon after, Powers received three calls on her answering machine. The first came from Vernon Bellecourt of NAIMI, who repeated Feike's allegations, suggesting that Powers call him back so they could "talk further" and offering to send "documentation" if Powers wished. Another came from one Tom Pierce who called Churchill a "fraud" and an "FBI agent." The third came from "Charlotte from the American Indian Movement," who made the same unsubstantiated claims. Only Bellecourt left a phone number. When Powers identified herself on returning his call, Vernon claimed to be on another line and said he would call Powers back. The call never came. None of these callers who claimed to be representatives of the "American Indian Movement" expressed interest in the event itself or even token solidarity with Abu-Jamal. Instead, just before the event, the coalition received a letter from Feike with classic disinformation "documentation" presenting unsupported allegations as "facts." Nothing passed on by Feike could have been considered substantiation for the serious charges she made against Churchill, and despite her efforts Churchill remained on the roster of speakers.7 He ultimately delivered an eloquent and stirring speech, but overall attendance was much sparser than expected. Whether this was a result of Vernon Bellecourt's maneuverings is not certain. What is certain is that his attempted impairment of Churchill's credibility was a move to mute one of the more stimulating voices for liberation on today's scene. To the extent Bellecourt might have succeeded, the major loser was certainly Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man in desperate need of all the help he can get. The already weakened organizing capacity of the Chicago left was further disorganized, and the only tangible winner was the state, Bellecourt's and NAIMI's professed oppressor. Bellecourt's efforts to deny Churchill a platform were taken without regard for their impact on either Abu-Jamal or his advocates. Feike's blind obedience of Bellecourt's commands tucked her into the same bed of lies. If this attack on Churchill were an isolated incident, no matter how unsavory, it wouldn't be worth extensive remark. All public figures are subject to occasional irrational attacks. However, over the past five years, similar occurrences have followed Churchill in such far-flung locales as Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawai'i, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, reaching as far as Canada and Europe. Concurrently, at least two well-circulated periodicals, Tim Giago's Indian Country Today and Paul DeMain's News From Indian Country, have devoted themselves to a pseudo-investigation against Churchill and a seemingly coordinated campaign of comparable defamation has been conducted on the internet.8 The details alleged differ slightly from place to place and time to time, many of them contradictory. In the San Francisco Bay area, a woman named Carol Standing Elk attributed to him the protean ability of being simultaneously a CIA agent, an FBI agent, a New Ager, a Moonie, a hoax and a Klansman.9 Similarly, in a single 1994 editorial, News From Indian Country editor Paul DeMain first claimed that Churchill had only "very recently" joined AIM, then (citing FBI counterintelligence specialist David Price, no less) completely reversed his thesis, suggesting instead that Churchill was already well enough placed within the movement by 1975 to have brought about the Jumping Bull firefight resulting in Leonard Peltier's imprisonment.10 The supposedly factual basis for these allegations is no less logically muscled. In Colorado, David Seals' "proof" of Churchill's supposed intelligence connections is Churchill's brief employment by Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1977.11 All these accusers, from Indian Country Today publisher Tim Giago to Carole Standing Elk, have a more than cordial relationship with NAIMI and the Bellecourt brothers. By 1993, they had systemized their campaign against Churchill using the time-worn tactics known as "badjacketing," or "snitchjacketing." 12 They contacted his employer, publishers and speakers bureaus. They also reached his real and potential political associates and students, the local press, and the sponsors of virtually every speaking engagement he accepted that was publicized in advance. The Tactics I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me. -Anthem, Leonard Cohen COINTELPRO enabled the FBI and police to exacerbate the movements' internal stresses until beleaguered activists turned on one another... Otherwise manageable disagreements were inflamed by COINTELPRO until they erupted into hostile splits that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and drove dedicated activists out of the movement. Government documents implicate the FBI and police in the bitter breakups of such pivotal groups as the Black Panther Party, SDS, and Liberation News Service, and the collapse of repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions across racial, class, and regional lines. While genuine political issues were often involved in these disputes, the outcome could have been different if government agencies had not covertly intervened to subvert compromise and fuel hostility and competition. -War at Home, Brian Glick Modus operandi The CAN-Free Mumia benefit incidents display NAIMI's modus operandi. Someone purporting to be an official of "National AIM Inc." contacts those hosting an event in which Churchill is an announced participant. The standard set of accusations and allegations are spewed out as facts. In most cases, documentation is promised, but when and if it arrives, it contains a pair of "expulsion letters" crafted by the callers, repeating the allegations in some detail but offering no substantiation. To create an illusion of corroboration, the letters are usually accompanied by several "news" articles and editorials by Giago and DeMain, again merely repeating the accusations. Where possible, local allies - mostly ignorant of the issues involved but eager to please and "take a stand"- are solicited to support "AIM's National Office." Especially if they meet resistance, the local press is alerted to the "controversy" generated, and the callers wind up their contact with hints of violence - or at least disruptive pickets - unless Churchill's engagement is cancelled.13 Sometimes, a NAIMI speaker is offered as a replacement for a hefty fee (Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt have indicated they'd "need" a minimum of $1,500 plus expenses to do what Churchill does better out of political commitment).14 The threats have mostly turned out to be bluffs. No protesters have ever actually materialized in Chicago, for instance.15 With few exceptions, the Bellecourts and their agents do not use the time, place and audience the event affords to confront Churchill in an open forum or expose their allegations to public inquiry. A look at the exceptions indicates why any tactician would recommend their confining their operations to the background. 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.16 The closer attention her action provoked revealed only six out of her contingent who 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?").17 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 if its ticket vendors, Black Oak Books.18 In 1995 at Portland State University, five intoxicated Native Americans appeared at a public lecture Churchill was giving on behalf of the campus native student organization. After a five-minute disruption, they left at the request of Rose Hill, the university's Indian program coordinator. Immediately afterwards, they were overheard at a pay phone in the hallway outside, "reporting" on their adventure to Vernon Bellecourt. One student then followed them several blocks to a bar, where he observed them celebrating their accomplishment. "The whole thing was extremely embarrassing," says Hill, an Oneida. "Mr. Churchill was a guest of the students. He'd been invited to speak here, and he'd gone considerably out of his way to accommodate both our needs and our limited resources. His talk was powerful and well-received. Then these people attempt to destroy the dignity of the moment by displaying every negative stereotype of Indians held by the dominant society. One can only wonder what they thought they were achieving."19 NAIMI's tactic of demonstrations against Churchill are precisely those used by the right wing when it comes up with "citizen" initiatives completely funded and created by themselves. They have not been notably successful because such efforts require more money than they have to buy the kind of publicity that manufactures factitious community support. They are forced to rely on disinformation topped off with verbal bluster and vague threats which have the advantage of being cheap. If you put the Federal witness relocation program at one end of the scale and the anonymous letter at the other to measure degrees of sophistication and expense in disinformation technique, NAIMI's working up of community support is at the low end. While it is easy to scorn such pathetic performance, nonetheless it does collateral damage. Sometimes the strategy works, sometimes it doesn't. There is no way to ascertain the number of speaking invitations never extended to Churchill because of NAIMI's activities, but there are two instances in which invitations already extended were withdrawn at NAIMI's prompting. In 1993 and 1995 respectively, both SUNY Albany and University of New Hampshire administrators responded to what they perceived as "community pressure." At SUNY, the result was that no event pertaining to Indians was held at all.20 At New Hampshire, Clyde Bellecourt was accepted as Ward's replacement.21 The crudeness of NAIMI's strategy has sometimes backfired, however, especially when they are dealing with people who have more information or integrity than the Albany and New Hampshire organizers. In 1993, Churchill was asked to sit on a tribunal on Native Hawaiian rights. Organizer Kekuni Blaisdell received four increasingly vociferous phone calls from Vernon Bellecourt registering objections.22 The Tribunal not only retained Churchill but chose him for its rapporteur.23 Another result was that, based largely upon his performance in Hawai'i, Churchill was asked by the Chiefs of Ontario to serve as an advocate in a tribunal they will be convening to consider the rights of native peoples of Canada.24 At the University of Toledo, the run-up to a fall 1995 presentation drew "the most idiotic and concerted attempt at defamation I've ever encountered," according to organizer Dr. Tom Barton. Churchill not only was not disinvited, but was immediately invited back to participate in a spring American Studies symposium on the effects of the Cold War. "He seemed an ideal choice," says Barton, "Not only because he is an excellent speaker and scholar, but because much of our conference focused on McCarthyism, and he is so obviously being subjected to a contemporary manifestation of that very phenomenon."25 The integrity displayed by Blaisdell, Barton and others does not necessarily come without consequences. After Dr. Linda Pertusati (Oglala), head of the American Indian Studies Program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio rebuffed Vernon Bellecourt's phone calls concerning their invitation to Churchill to speak in 1994, she was visited by the FBI. "I don't know whether there was a direct connection," says Pertusati, "but it did seem a little strange that the agents were saying many of the same things as Bellecourt."26 Pertusati, too, asked Churchill back as a keynote speaker, an offer later countermanded by the university's higher administration.27 Pertusati, an established scholar with solid publications and teaching evaluations, perhaps the only American Indian in the United States to hold two doctoral degrees, did not have her faculty contract renewed the next year.28 That such contradictions and inconsistencies pass unchallenged in the movement is less a function of their authors' masterful fabrication than testimony to how uncritically such fanciful distortions are accepted as truth by native and non-native activists alike. The Disinformation Documents Most of these claims have by now been interwoven into a standard disinformation packet such as that used by Feike in Chicago and distributed around the country and abroad from the NAIMI home office in the Twin Cities. They largely revolve around hysterical accusations that Churchill's an agent and that he lacks "credentials" as an Indian and activist. As reporter Shelly Davis put it, "Vernon Bellecourt told me on at least four occasions that he would send me documentation to support what he wanted me to print as 'fact'about Ward Churchill. When the material finally arrived, all it amounted to was a couple of letters Vernon himself had written, and a handful of newspaper clippings in which he's quoted saying the same things. There was just no substance to it at all."29 The disinformation package's overkill approach, attacking Churchill on many points at once, makes it difficult to answer succinctly. After taking on the task I found that the more I investigated, the more lies I uncovered. Some stem from ignorance of research procedures, some from racist assumptions, and some it would seem from conflicting political alignments, sheer jealousy and greed for power. I found that the authors of the disinformation package were learned students of the dominant culture, wrapping their campaign against Churchill in soundbites built on conscious lies, cynical innuendoes, and determined efforts to silence someone identified as a serious threat to their continued "mastery" over identified "turf" -a far cry from the early liberatory goals if AIM. "He's an Agent!" Only people unfamiliar with scholarly research processes and the implications of the Freedom of Information Act can deduce that "only a federal agent" could have had access to the FBI and CIA documents Churchill used to substantiate his groundbreaking studies of domestic counterintelligence operations, Agents of Repression and The COINTELPRO Papers.30 That Jim Vander Wall, their co-author, is never similarly charged for accessing documents in the public domain points up the emptiness of the charge. Yet this has given rise to the charge that Churchill "must be a fed," a "government infiltrator" and "provocateur," calling to mind the 70s adage that the "first to point out another as a government plant is usually the government plant."31 "We mainly relied on the archives of attorneys who have handled key political cases," notes Jim Vander Wall. "Jonathan Lubell, who handled part of Geronimo ji Jaga's appeal, provided access to something like 170,000 pages of FBI material obtained through a Freedom of Information Act suit. Flint Taylor at the People's Law Office in Chicago, who was co-counsel on the Hampton/Clark civil suit, provided access to another 110,000 pages on the Panthers. Bruce Ellison, one of Peltier's appeals team, provided about 12,000 pages on AIM. And, of course, there's a couple of million pages on everything from the Rosenberg spy case to Janis Joplin's love life available at the FBI reading room in Washington, DC."32Even if the Bellecourts do not understand the information gathering process in research, someone around them must. Certainly, antiChurchill polemicists Paul DeMain and Tim Giago know how to read and check source documentation. They illustrate a general and self-defeating reluctance in the native liberation and progressive movements to evaluate evidence or confine themselves to assertions for which they can assume personal responsibility. As a reflection of unconscious assumption of dominant cultural values, it evinces an antiintellectualism that gave rise to such shining lights of American history as the Know-Nothing Party. Another assertion related to the accusers' distance from firsthand familiarity with the material in question is that Churchill's and Vander Wall's Agents of Repression and COINTELPRO Papers are "filled with lies and inaccuracies."33 The lies and inaccuracies are never identified. They must be so hard to find that they passed the notice of people with acknowledged expertise on the subjects of the books, such as Noam Chomsky and the late William Kunstler who glowingly endorsed both works, and the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights at the University of Arkansas which bestowed a 1989 award upon Agents as one of the preceding year's best books on intolerance in the United States.34 Churchill's role at Soldier of Fortune was hardly that of a true believer. Says Churchill, "I was there for a couple of months in late '76 -early-77, just long enough to get a handle on who was who, and what they were up to. I've never made any secret of it because it was part of the research for articles I wanted to write about the facts and fictions of U.S. mercenaries. In fact, I've included the information that I managed to get inside Soldier of Fortune in every piece I've written on the matter."35 The articles in question include a seminal exposi of the activities of American mercenaries in South Africa. Published in Africa Today in 1980, antimercenary organizer Rob Shware called it "the best work available on the subject."36 Others include pieces in the Colorado Daily and Daily World, and a profile of the magazine's publisher, self-styled "king of the mercenaries" Robert K. Brown, published in the decidedly anti-CIA Covert Action/Information Bulletin in 1986, and in the Best of CAIB collection released in 1989.37 As columnist Alexander Cockburn put it in 1992, "It seems to me that Churchill should be commended for this sort of investigative journalism, not condemned for it.38 "He's not Indian!" The substantial effort to discredit Churchill' Native American identity buys into several of the dominant culture's racist assumptions and policies, ironically on the part of those who least stand to be served well by them. As in the attempts to link him to mainstream, right-wing or governmental agencies or organizations, the effort to destroy his credibility by playing the red race card is not only in itself racist but based on lies. The leader of the pack in this connection has always been Tim Giago, a notoriously anti-AIM South Dakota publisher who made his mark as chief propagandist and apologist for the lethally repressive COINTELPRO-supported Dickie Wilson rigime on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 70s.39 As early as 1988, trying to counter Churchill's exposis of what transpired on Pine Ridge during the 70s, Giago used his Republican-backed newspaper Lakota Times (now Indian Country Today), to announce that Churchill was an "ethnic fraud" and "impostor" who "changes his tribal identity like some people change socks."40 In point of fact, there are five criteria by which native people are normally identified in the US-self-identification, genealogy, tribal enrollment, blood quantum and community recognition.41 Churchill qualifies by all five standards. Let's start with self-identification and genealogy. Contrary to Tim Giago's claim that Churchill has identified himself as being of different peoples at different times, the record is absolutely clear that he has always identified as Cherokee (his mother's lineage). The first conclusive evidence of this dates from a 1970 article on the Alcatraz occupation.42 By 1975, having met his father for the first and only time in the interim, he added Creek, as in the identification he gave for an art show he mounted at the Sioux Indian Museum that year.43 Thereafter, he added Mitis -meaning one of mixed ancestry and culture - to accomplish what he called "truth in advertising."44 From 1979 onward, his self-descriptor was always "Creek/Cherokee Mitis," nothing else. Churchill has publicly challenged Giago to produce evidence of any other self-identification.45 Giago has not responded. Meanwhile, Paul DeMain has repeatedly printed that his "investigations" (what these are is never made clear) into Churchill's genealogy reveal that because Churchill is not of American Indian descent, he "hides" his family history. Churchill responds that his family is as entitled to privacy as anyone else's: "I don't accept that these guys have any prerogative to hassle my 90-year-old grandmother, or my mother for that matter, and I don't recognize their right to inspect these personal records any more than I would if they demanded my credit history or medical file." Moreover, he has already published the relevant general information.46 According to AIM leader Russell Means, a long-term friend with whom Churchill once shared his family documents, "Not only does Ward have Indian ancestry, he has more proof of it than I do."47 As to community recognition, Churchill has been active in several. In Boulder, where he has lived the last twenty years, Churchill's record speaks for itself. He was hired as an Indian by the 'committee of the Boulder Valley School District's Title-IV Indian Education Project in 1977. He was hired as an Indian by the all-native staff of the American Indian Educational Opportunity Program at the University of Colorado Boulder campus in 1978.48 "He has always been accepted as an Indian by the Indians in this town," says Norbert S. Hill, Jr., an Oneida and former director of the Educational Opportunity Program, now head of the Boulder-based American Indian Science and Engineering Society. Hill cites that Churchill has been repeatedly honored by the Oyate Indian Student Organization at University of Colorado over the years. "I don't agree with him on a lot of things," Hill concludes, "but I've never known anybody who worked harder for Indian rights."49 In the Denver area, the story is the same. Bellecourtian accusations in the local press in 1993 provoked an outpouring of letters to the editor from Indians and others supporting Churchill, including one signed by the entirety of the Elders and leadership Councils of Colorado AIM.50 Both Churchill and Glenn Morris, another Bellecourt target, offered to resign their positions as codirectors of the chapter if the membership felt the publicity blitz was detrimental to Indian interests or were in any way uncomfortable about either of their identities. They unanimously reaffirmed both men's leadership.51 Enrollment in a federally-recognized tribe is the point the Bellecourts, Standing Elk and others most fuss about. Their animus against Churchill outweighs any consideration of whether they should support a criterion consisting of certification from a non-Indian government -the United States -involving bureaucratic extinction of indigenous peoples, like the Abenaki of Vermont. Instead, NAIMI insists that maintaining "tribal rolls" based upon criteria set by a non-Indian government is an important aspect of native self-determination. To be a "real" Indian, you must be enrolled. The procedure essentially deeds to the US government the privilege of determining who is or is not an Indian. There is a certain perverse logic to this argument in the baleful light of the assimilationist nature of US Indian policy since as early as 1880.52 But the Bellecourts' application of the rule is anything but consistent. For instance, they never suggest that imprisoned Chippewa/Sioux activist Leonard Peltier is not an Indian because he remains unenrolled, or denounce former AIM national spokesperson John Trudell, an unenrolled Santee, as an "impostor." Their behavior exempts IITC's Antonio Gonzales, a self-identified Seri, and Andrea Carmen, who claims to be a Yaqui.53 Hogwash washes both sides of the hog. Yet in Churchill's case, federal certification isn't enough. Instead, the Bellecourts first trotted out David Cornsilk, a supposed "genealogist for the Cherokee Nation" to question Churchill's ancestry before the council of the Tahlequah, Oklahoma-based United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees (in which his roll number is R7627). The Keetoowah Band's refusal to impugn Churchill's status laid them open to bitter sniping.54 Cherokee Nation officials emphatically deny ever having employed Cornsilk as a genealogist.55 "David never had access to the material he'd need to form a legitimate opinion on Churchill's genealogy," says Cherokee artist Murv Jacobs. "He's just a guy who doesn't like Ward Churchill. As to the Bellecourt brothers, I wasn't aware that Chippewas had standing to decide who is and isn't Cherokee. Cherokee rolls are Cherokee business and nobody else's."56 The Keetoowah Band have their own genealogists. According to Band Chief John Ross, "When Ward applied for enrollment, and it should be pointed out that we invited him to do so, he had to provide documentation just like anybody else. We checked it out. He's who he says he is. End of story."57 The punchline is that the Keetoowahs formally verified that Churchill is "at least 3/16 Cherokee Indian by blood." This quantum accrues strictly from his lineage through his mother. "I was asked if I wanted to try to document my father's [Creek] side of things," Churchill recalls, "because he was at least as much Indian as Mom. But he's dead now. I never knew him, and I don't know my relatives on that side. So I just let it go. I make the reference in my self-identification out of respect, but I've never claimed the quantum because I don't believe in [quantum]. To me, it's no different whether I'm 3/16 or 3/8. You don't measure identity by either pounds or percentage points unless you're some kind of Nazi."58 The Bellecourts support blood quantum when it comes to Churchill, but not apparently when it comes to themselves. According to Joe Geshick writing for the Ojibwe News (published in the heart of Bellecourt "territory"), tribal records reveal that the brothers themselves are "essentially Frenchmen, possessing only 1/32 degree of Indian blood," information that never finds its way into News From Indian Country.59 Despite Chief Ross and others' repeated corrections of his intentional error, Paul DeMain continues to refer to Churchill as an "honorary Keetoowah, like Bill Clinton," editorially overriding the band's own determination as to his status.60 The blood quantum criterion, as historically tainted as tribal enrollment, is the pseudoscientific negative of the kind of racist thinking that created the one drop rule whereby one drop of negro blood makes you a negro. Blood quantum erases indigenous people by making Indians technically not Indian. Bellecourt-style identity policing, ignoring logic, history, and his movement's supposed ends, does anything but reinforce native sovereignty.61 It was such historical and political considerations that led Churchill to oppose the Act for the Protection of Indian Arts and Crafts in 1990. This act made it a federal crime for an artist to identify as an Indian without the official sanction of the government, that is, tribal enrollment.62 At this point, Federal lobbyist Suzan Shown Harjo, who actively promoted the bill by arguing that it should cover not just visual artists but writers, scholars, educators and many others, joined the anti-Churchill bandwagon.63 Another voice in the chorus was that of David Bradley, an artist from Santa Fe and leader of the law's cheering section. Churchill had openly accused him of selling out the unenrolled, by trying to boost his own sales at the expense of other native painters with a "blatantly racist restraint of trade measure" involving a "direct usurpation of indigenous rights by federal authorities."64 Eventually, Paul DeMain, who claims to have conducted a "two-year investigation" into Churchill's family tree without being able "to confirm a single Indian relative, let alone one real relative who can vouch for his tribal descent," added his voice to the babble.65 The Bellecourts frequently cite an "investigation" of Churchill by the University of Colorado. Operating on the racist assumption that Churchill's "Indianness" specially qualified him to teach subjects related to Indians and that such an assumption influenced his university's hiring him, Vernon Bellecourt made an appointment with University President Judith Albino in October 1993 to accuse Ward of ethnic fraud and misuse of public resources."66 President Albino then received an information packet from Carole Standing Elk and a letter from Suzan Shown Harjo expressing concern for the "safety of students" in Churchill's classes.67 The fraud charge was dismissed on its face, as Bellecourt was informed in writing a month later.68 As required by state law, the University responded to the allegation of misappropriation with an audit. Ward was fully exonerated: "It became painfully obvious that Mr. Bellecourt's accusations were completely gratuitous and intended as harassment," says Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of the Department of Ethnic Studies where Churchill is a professor.69 Harjo's claims that Churchill's students were victims of "physical intimidation" could be dismissed even more readily. Anonymous student evaluations of Churchill's classroom performance rate him at the A level not only for the semester of Harjo's complaint, but for every semester, his cumulative teaching evaluations ranking in the top five percent of all Boulder faculty. Ironically, while under attack from these quarters, Churchill received the 1994 Teaching Excellence Award from the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, one in a long string of teaching recognitions.70 "We concluded that Ward Churchill is one of our more productive and distinguished faculty members," says Dean of Arts and Sciences Charles Middleton.71 Standing Elk, Harjo and Bellecourt were all duly informed of this outcome more than two years ago, yet NAIMI continues to present this "investigation" as ongoing, never mentioning that it occurred solely through their own instigation. "He's not AIM!" Other charges reflect on Churchill's status as an activist for Native American interests. High honor is due those first AIM warriors who risked their lives to create the movement's great initial impact on native peoples' liberatory struggles. The talkers, however, treat presence in AIM's earliest days as a kind of Teflon coating protecting their reputations from any subsequent dishonorable actions. By the same token, they use accusations against those they claim to have falsely implied presence in the glory days as a shaming and powerful blow at the target's credibility. These tactics are not surprising coming from those who take the talk but steer clear of the issues. Thus, News from Indian Country editor Paul DeMain's fable that Churchill is only a recent arrival on the AIM scene who has "invented a history for himself" is supposed to be a powerful blow at Churchill's credibility. DeMain's musings do not survive minimal scrutiny, however. Friends from Churchill's 1973-1974 college days recall his being actively involved in AIM even then.72 Atlanta AIM leader Aaron Two Elk, formerly of Denver, confirms Churchill was part of the Colorado chapter "at least as early as 1978 or 79."73 Russell Means recounts Churchill's participation in AIM's Yellow Thunder Camp occupation, beginning in 1981.74 Winona LaDuke remembers that he was a "fully engaged AIMster, part of the Means crew" when she first met him in 1982.75 As Bob Robideau sums up: "I've worked with Ward Churchill for years. He's always been AIM. If he's a cop, then I'm the tooth fairy and we're all about to have an encounter with the Wizard of Oz."76 Interesting in light of his "recent arrival" hypotheses, DeMain has elsewhere insinuated that Churchill was the "orchestrator" of the Oglala firefight 1975. Thus, by implication DeMain implies that Churchill is responsible for the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier. To that, Peltier's cousin and codefendant Bob Robideau gives a humorless chuckle. "Gimme a break," he says. "No offense to Ward, but that's the stupidest thing I've heard all year. It's insulting and degrading to those of us who were involved, including Leonard. What we did was an act of self-determination, but Paul DeMain tries to make it sound like we were just manipulated by some white FBI infiltrator."77 Peltier's answer to Churchill playing any sort of behind-the-scenes role at Oglala was a succinct and immediate "Bullshit."78 Mining the same vein are the charges of Churchill's reputed "expulsions" from other native activist organizations, such as the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC), the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), and AIM. Leonard Peltier Defense Committee "expulsion." In 1994, Churchill received a letter from Leonard Peltier asking Churchill to either "disassociate" himself from Dark Night field notes or resign as Peltier's four-year national spokesperson. Dark Night field notes, although based in Chicago, originated as a project of those involved in Leonard Peltier Support Groups throughout the midwest region. Those on its board viewed it as a critical tool for publicizing Peltier's plight within the larger context of the struggle for human liberation. Peltier and his Lawrence, Kansas Defense Committee had a problem with an article in the first issue of Dark Night field notes that addressed specific tactics used by Dennis Banks' Walk for Justice for Leonard Peltier. Apparently, the journal's identification of someone whom Peltier had deeply respected cashing in on his name, usurping the authority of his own defense committee and diverting funds ("Free Leonard! Make your checks payable to the Dennis Banks Fund") was too painful for Peltier to credit. A primary objection raised was the old bugbear that such attempts to clean house in public are themselves divisive. Left unaddressed were the questions of whether or not such "divisiveness" is less destructive than letting such issues fester, or how Peltier would be served by this.79 International Indian Treaty Council "expulsion." Churchill's accusers fall over their own assertion that Churchill is not a longstanding AIM member in their own September 23, 1986 IITC "expulsion" letter, a Bellecourt disinformation packet document. Since Churchill's original membership in "AIM's international diplomatic arm" would have entailed his being regarded as an AIM member, their own document implies that at least some of the current NAIMI race-baiters considered him an Indian over ten years ago, and that they had for some time.80 Denver, Colorado AIM leader Glenn Morris, fellow recipient of the letter, says "Both Ward and I had already separated ourselves from IITC because we disagreed with the organization's position on Nicaragua. That was in 1985. A year later, we get letters 'expelling' us from something we weren't even part of."81 "Expulsion" from AIM The logic chasm widens when seven years later, on November 24, 1993, Churchill and Morris received what might be called preemptive expulsions from NAIMI, an organization to which they had never belonged in the first place and in fact had openly opposed.82 The expulsion took the form of letters whose length indicated that the intended audience was not so much Churchill and Morris as those to whom copies would be sent for their disinformation.83 "It would be just as valid for the Republican National Committee to write a letter expelling Bill Clinton and Al Gore," commented Churchill, "or for my Peruvian citizenship to be revoked. I think it's kind of fundamental that you first have to be part of something before you can be thrown out of it."84 This goes well beyond the revisionist impulse that drives people to fire someone after they quit because reality was not so psychologically accommodating. But NAIMI's false implication that Churchill had once belonged to NAIMI, if believed, would allow them to dismiss anything he might say against it as so much sour grapes. As Aaron Two Elk observes, "This is the kind of thing Vernon Bellecourt has been doing for the last twenty years. He's always lied and manipulated things for his own purposes. Some of us old-timers should have dealt with him long ago, but we didn't. Now, maybe it's too late."85 Portrait of a Movement Fractured By now it is clear that the Bellecourts' and others' persecution of Churchill is driven by a powerful animus. Few people inside the movement(s) or outside have enough pieces of the picture to immediately perceive much more than that there are two sides here, and there is a strong natural tendency to let already existing personal sympathies and connections determine which side people will sympathize with. It is the nature of the kind of disinformation tactics that the Bellecourts are using, that few will make the admittedly difficult effort to pull together the scattered information that supplies the answer to what drives them. However, the Bellecourts own behavior did drive a segment of the native community to make that effort in a formal tribunal. The understandable desire to avoid the appearance of a house divided against itself led those investigators to confine their findings within the native community. Unfortunately, this internal housecleaning has hardly put a dent in the Bellecourt's activities or the public's susceptibility to their tactics. Only a more open viewing of NAIMI and the Bellecourts can reveal the utterly disingenuous motives of the primary instigators of the campaign against Churchill, and the disservice it does to all who are engaged in the struggle for human liberation. continued in part 2... * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org =================================================================