Saturday, July 28, 2007

Ward Churchill, Academic, Literary and Indian Fraud

PRESS RELEASE

FOR RELEASE: Thursday, July 26, 2007
FROM: American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council
Ministry for Information

PRESS CONTACT: Vernon Bellecourt, WaBunInini
Indiz-Nikaz, Anishinaabe Ojibwe Nation
Member of the Executive Committee and Director of the
Ministry on Foreign Affairs for the American Indian Movement
Grand Governing Council

Ward Churchill, Academic Fraud, Literary Fraud and Indian Fraud

On Tuesday, July 25, following a lengthy investigation by a special panel, the
University of Colorado Board of Regents on a vote of 8-1 fired tenured professor
of Ethnic and Indian Studies, Ward Churchill. The charges were research
misconduct and plagiarizing the writings and research of other academics. While
we, the leadership of the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council
applaud the thoughtful and reasoned decision, we want to point out to all that
for more than 25 years the legitimate leadership of AIM’s Grand Governing
Council attempted to expose Ward Churchill as an academic, literary, and ethnic
fraud.

Churchill perpetuated his fraudulent Indian identity in order to get himself
streamlined into tenure and Director of the Ethnic and Indian Studies Department
as well to market his plagiarized and revisionist books. He has also plagiarized
the American Indian Movement’s intellectual property rights and tainted the
goodwill for Indian people that exists nationally and worldwide.

He has made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lecture circuit, promoted,
yet today, by Speak Out Speakers Bureau promoting him as Indian, all after we
notified them of his ethnic fraud. The result of this was to ignore the voices
of authentic Indian academics, intellectuals, leaders and activists.

Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as a member of the Keetoowah
Nation of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, which he is not. When challenged to show
proof of any Indian ancestry he waves an associate membership card that at one
time the Keetoowah Nation would give to anyone who would promise to help them.
Even former President Bill Clinton received one of these cards of associate
membership. Ernestine Berry who presided on the Keetoowah Enrollment Committee
and served on the tribal council for years stated to Denver Post writer, Howard
Pankratz on February 3, 2005 that Churchill was trying to get recognized as an
Indian. He could not prove he is an Indian. Berry said that he was given this
associate membership in the 10,000 member tribe based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in
the early 1990’s. “Churchill started coming around in 1992 or 1993 saying he
wrote some books and was a big time author, and convinced us he could help our
people,” Berry said, “and it was on that basis he was
given the associate membership card.”

Barry also said, “Churchill never fulfilled his promise to help the tribe, and
after he received his associate card, we never heard from him again.”

Due to this abuse and misrepresentation of the associate card by Churchill, the
Keetoowah Nation has discontinued the practice of issuing these cards.

Not only is Ward Churchill a literary and academic fraud, just as egregiously he
continues to fraudulently represent himself as being Keetoowah Indian, and a
member of the American Indian Movement’s chapter in Denver, Colorado. With
deceit and treachery, he has been able to manipulate the Denver Indian community
into giving him and his co-conspirator, Glen Morris, credibility and cover.
Glenn Morris is a professor at the University of Colorado who is another
Caucasian American masquerading as an Indian, This is designed to confuse
Indians and non-Indian alike. Following the decision of the University of
Colorado Board of Regents, he, along with former personality in the American
Indian Movement, Russell Means, created the illusion that AIM supports Ward
Churchill.

Because of disruptive behavior and ethnic fraud, both Churchill and Morris were
expelled from the International Indian Treaty Council by its International Board
of Directors on September 23, 1986. The International Indian Treaty Council, or
IITC is the international, political, and diplomatic Corp of the American Indian
Movement. Seven years later on November 23, 1993, following a lengthy
investigation, the American Indian Movement’s National Board of Directors
expelled Churchill and Morris from AIM.

While Russell Means has resigned from the American Indian Movement on several
occasions, he along with Churchill and Morris continue to manipulate the Denver
American Indian Movement community so that Churchill and Morris can perpetuate
their ethnic fraud on the academic, and literary community, and as well the
Indian and non-Indian people worldwide.

They are deceitful and treacherous to the point that they will always surround
themselves with innocent and naïve individuals of the Indian and non-Indian
communities, some who are well known who actually have endorsed their
revisionist, inaccurate, shoddy, and fraudulent writings. The result of this is
that without review of the contents of their publications, Indian and non-Indian
educators and educational institutions and libraries are using these books in
their curriculum. In doing so, they and our students become victims of this
fraud. Using the American Indian Movement to give themselves credibility, cover
and access, they have been able to infiltrate other organizations and movements
nationally and internationally.

They use publications like Houghton-Mifflin, Random House Publishers, South End
Press, and Speak Out Speakers Bureau who allow Ward Churchill and others to
perpetuate their literary, academic, and Indian fraud on the unknowing public.

What you can do to help:

The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council urges our friends and
supporters worldwide to expose and isolate these conspirators expeditiously.

We request that educators, Indian and non-Indians alike remove from their
curriculums and libraries all of their revisionist, inaccurate and shoddy
writings, and send them back to their publishers (a clear example of the problem
is the Encyclopedia of the North American Indian by Frederick E. Hoxie,
published by Houghton Mifflin, a subsidiary of Random House). Mr. Marc Jaffe of
Houghton Mifflin first contacted and met with Tim Giago, Oglala Lakota, founder
and former award winning publisher of Indian Country Today, and syndicated
columnist to do the book, and without notifying Mr. Giago, Mr. Jaffe selected
Mr. Hoxie who allowed Indian literary and academic fraud, Churchill to submit
the article, "Radicals and Radicalism, 1990 to the Present."

Discontinue utilizing Speak Out Speakers Bureau and publications from South End
Press, Zeta Magazine, and Common Courage Press until they agree to stop
promoting these frauds. We request that organizations such as the National
Indian Education Association, and the American Indian Higher Education
Consortium create a watchdog-type agency to review what books are being
published by these literary, academic, and Indian frauds so that their
revisionist writings are not finding their way into our education curriculum.
This problem is of epidemic proportions, and must be stopped. Remove all of Ward
Churchill’s books from your libraries and curriculums immediately. You owe it to
our students.

Press Contact:
PRESS CONTACT: Vernon Bellecourt, WaBunInini
Indiz-Nikaz, Anishinaabe Ojibwe Nation
Member of the Executive Committee and Director of the
Ministry on Foreign Affairs for the American Indian Movement Grand Governing
Council
AIM Council on Security and Intelligence
Email: aimggc@worldnet.att.net
Web Address: http://www.aimovement.org
Phone: 612-721-3914

Please see the following, “BACKGROUND: The United States Government War Against
the American Indian Movement” for more info:

http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/USvAIMbackground.html

http://aimovement.org/mckiernan.html

AIM BLOG-Rocky Mountain News-re: Churchill’s Ethnic Fraud
http://aimgrandgovcouncil.blogspot.com/

United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma Enrollment Office,
Liz Little Dave, Telephone: 918-453-9375

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