Even before this recent controversy, Ward had made some powerful enemies:
http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.htmlExcerpt:
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 régime on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 70s.39 As early as 1988, trying to counter Churchill's exposés 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 Métis -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 Métis," 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
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