On the Identity Issue . . . continued
A view from within:
The criteria just discussed were invented by federal officials to further their aims. Their primary concern is to destroy American Indian sovereignty. But American Indian peoples have never lost their inherent right to self-determination.
If anyone knows about Ward’s identity, it would be Russell Means, a longtime leader in the American Indian Movement. This is what he had to say when he introducedbr Ward Churchill at his February 8, 2005 speech to an audience of over 1,000 on the CU-Boulder campus:
Russell Means:Thank you my relatives. I want to, first, apprise you [of] the many accomplishments of Ward Churchill among my people. We are the only ethnic group in the world that has to prove our degree of blood, like the dogs and the horses. It is because we live on America's concentration camps; the 'little Iraqs' called reservations, you know? We also don't have control of our natural resources, and the corporate might has been ripping us off from day one. That's part of the books, and part of the education that Ward has given not only to the university and its generations of students, but throughout the country and indeed, throughout the world.
I want you to know that we are forbidden from choosing who are our Indian people, by the United States government. My own twin brothers were 32 years of age, and it was only after the American Indian Movement, and one of the leaders being Ward Churchill in the late seventies, got the right to be enrolled on my father's reservation, where I am enrolled. I wonder how many of Clear Channel columnists and naysayers are gonna condemn my brothers for not being Indian. Ward is my brother. Ward has followed the ways of indigenous people worldwide. If you do not believe so, then go to Geneva Switzerland, to the United Nations office of the working group of indigenous peoples, and you will find out that we as one people in the world, we say, if you know your ancestry, then you are who you say you are. [applause]
In the writings of Adolf Hitler, he began his idea of separation by race . . . by following and reading about the Indian policy of the United States of America, and he wrote in Mein Kampf, or in other writings, that it was a good idea to put people in reservations; hence his labor camps, which became concentration camps. . . . Apartheid South Africa, in 1964, passed the Bantu Development Act thirty years after the United States government passed the Indian Reorganization Act. The act that institutionalized apartheid, by race and degree of blood, in South Africa was literally copied from the Indian Reorganization Act of the United States. Both of those governments no longer exist, and you have these corporate minions from Clear Channel and the corporate media telling us who is our Indian leaders! Telling me that my brother is not an Indian! Because he hasn't been adequately registered. . . . [applause]
Ward has received many, many honors from the non-Indian world; but the biggest honor and the only honor we can give him, and we have, for dozens of years, is to make him what we call in my language a leader, a statesman. And he's going around the country with that label, and it is a true label. And I don't care what Clear Channel says . . . . I cannot convey to you the amount of pride we have in Ward Churchill, and the amount of pride he gives us. . . . The American Indian Movement, when we had a together leadership, we appointed him as an ambassador, and he traveled internationally representing us and all Indian people because we are a free people.
So I want, from this day forward, every media person nationally, internationally and locally to know that we have ascertained that Ward Churchill is a full-blooded Indian leader. Thank you. [applause]
Click here for the full transcript from Counterpunch.
