Ward Churchill: Big Little Man

by Evan Ravitz

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get
you. Just because the right wing is after Ward Churchill doesn't
mean he should teach, except perhaps as an FBI or CIA agent, which
is what the National American Indian Movement (AIM) suspected him of
being when they expelled him in 1993. (See the AIM archive, including the
conclusion of their 7-page letter of expulsion.

They say the best propaganda is mostly true, to give "cover" to a
few manipulative lies. This may best explain Churchill, who starts
his infamous essay with what we already heard from bin Laden, that
9/11 was blowback for American foreign policy, which then-Secretary
of State Madelyn Albright admitted had killed 500,000 Iraqi
children. But Churchill called such atrocities, in a Boulder Weekly
interview, "what the Pentagon does as usual with no complaint at all
from the American public."

This is easily disproved: in 2003 there were massive protests
BEFORE the Iraq war and 72% of Americans said we should invade only
with U.N. approval.. In 1975 a Harris poll reported "65% of
Americans oppose military aid abroad because they feel it allows
dictatorships to maintain control over their population." (Zinn,
People's History of the U.S., pgs 545 & 558) In the 50s President
Eisenhower said "The people want peace; indeed, I believe they want
peace so badly that the governments will just have to step aside and
let them have it." (He was wrong, so far.)

But Churchill blames us, also victims of this worst kind of
government against The People, including the 3000 WTC dead.
Fortunately, when I travel, most people don't blame me for U.S.
foreign policy. Churchill's carefully worded urgings to violence
help put us all at risk.

I've been to about ten Churchill lectures in his 25 years here, I find
him a pretty mean person who'd rather use people like me as a "white"
screen to project his contempt on, rather than as a person to oppose
imperialism or seek democracy with. That's why I
held a sign saying "Ward: Big Little Man" at his lecture at CU on Feb
8. If you haven't see the great '70s movie Little Big Man, Dustin
Hoffman plays a white guy adopted by an Indian tribe and given the
name Little Big Man because he's small of stature with a big heart.

Ward's a 6'5" bully who seems to have a pattern of threatening
women. See how he flipped and recolored and sold as his own
the late Thomas Mails' art:

Thomas Mails, 1972 Ward Churchill, 1981

The full story of this graphic plagiarism was reported by Denver's
CBS News. Mails' son is disgusted.

It's notable that NONE of this area's real
Indian leaders have defended Churchill, including CU Professor
Emeritus Vine Deloria (named by TIME as one of the 11 leading
religious thinkers of the 20th century), Executive Director of the
American Indian Graduate Center Norbert Hill and Native American
Rights Fund attorneys John and Walter Echohawk. (Deloria has since died.)

As a 20-year professional entertainer, let me give Ward credit for sensational
performance art on Feb 8, when he and actor Russel Means and some
Colorado AIM people (disowned by National AIM) took the University
Memorial Center Ballroom stage in a storm of drums and armed AIM security,
evoking a standing ovation before anyone spoke. You'd have thought Custer was
dying for our sins all over again.

Is Churchill a real Indian? Exhaustive investigation by the Rocky Mountain News
shows "no evidence of a single Indian ancestor." No tribe claims him. His way of using and
dividing people is against everything I know about Indian ways, having
sought them out from Colorado to Guatemala. Consider this from Pan Am
Gold Medalist Waneek Horn-Miller, a Mohawk: "The native concept of
power is how much you can empower people around you. You bring them up
to your level, you make them feel good, you make them feel strong, you
make them feel confident, whereas the non-native concept of power is
how many people you can control."

Churchill and the federal government have a lot in common, if he isn't
actually their agent. Thanks to the professionalism of the secret
services, we may never known.

Evan Ravitz was voted "Best Activist" by Boulder Daily Camera readers
in 1992, for work which evolved into the Vote.org project