WARD CHURCHILL IS TURNING ME INTO AN INDIAN

A Choctaw to be precise.

Background:

All my life I've known that I'm somewhere around one sixteenth Choctaw. My great great grandmother on my father's side was full blooded Choctaw. My great grandmother was half. My grandmother was one quarter. My Father and his older brother are one eighth. Indeed, my grandmother actually lived on a reservation when she was a little girl. My uncle, I believe, lives on one now, and if I'm incorrect about that (I haven't spoken with him in years), I know he's spent a great deal of time living on a reservation.

Really, this has only been an interesting curiosity to me for most of my life. The subject heated up a bit for me back in the early 90s when my Uncle, an amateur genealogist, told me that he had documented my ancestory well enough for me to be registered with the Choctaw Nation as one of them. For a while, I thought about what he was offering me: a change of ethnicity is not something to be taken lightly. However, laziness, more than anything else, won out. I decided that if I wanted to be a Native American, I would have to study Choctaw culture, visit Choctaw people, spend time among them. That's a big commitment, for which I felt I just didn't have enough time or motivation.

Earlier this evening, my father, who was in town with my mother to see the show I'm in, asked me if it was okay for him to go ahead and register me. He said, in fact, that he plans on registering himself and my two brothers, as well. "Well," I thought to myself, "if it's the whole family, how can I say no?" "Okay," I said in a heartbeat, not even thinking about the big commitment that had kept me in a holding pattern for years. Knowing that my father had been resistant to Indianizing himself for decades, I asked him why he had this sudden change of heart.

"Ward Churchill," he told me. He didn't have to explain.

From Wikipedia:

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American writer, activist, and academic. He is currently a tenured professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The author of over a dozen books and many essays, Churchill has written extensively on the use of police power to repress political minorities.

Churchill became nationally known in 2005 when talk show host Bill O'Reilly excoriated him for an essay he wrote immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This led to intense media interest in Churchill, which expanded to include examinations of Churchill's ethnic heritage, his academic qualifications and other writings, and his activities as an American Indian activist. Churchill's claim to partial American Indian descent is disputed by some Native American groups.

And

Churchill wrote an essay about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which he focused on American foreign policy actions which he argues provoked and justified the attacks. His critics reject the notion that anything could have provoked or justified the killing of 3000 innocent victims. The piece was later incorporated into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. (The "roosting chickens" phrase comes from Malcolm X's equally controversial comment relating to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy that Kennedy "never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon.")

The intense criticism of the essay in 2005 focused specifically on Churchill's comparison of World Trade Center victims to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Churchill wrote:

"If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

Click here for the rest.

I've avoided writing about the Churchill controversy here at Real Art because it seems to me to be something of a non-issue: he raises some good points about the banality of American evil and global oppression, but is purposely provocative, almost guaranteeing that his message will be totally misunderstood--comparing 9/11 victims to Nazi bureaucrats, despite the fact that there is a grain of truth to such a statement, is simply asking for trouble. I feel no need to waste time defending a fellow radical who shoots his mouth off too much.

But my Dad is a big Bill O'Reilly fan, and my least favorite Irish American went on and on for weeks about Churchill: much of O'Reilly's "commentary" was focused, apparently, on Churchill's unverifiable claims of Cherokee ancestory. So my father's personal take on the whole thing is that Churchill has managed to base much of his career as an ethnic studies academic on the idea that he is a Native American, which seemingly lends authenticity to his study of how ethnic minorities in the US are oppressed. To my conservative father, this is an outrage: he is definitely a Choctaw; Churchill either cannot demonstrate his heritage, or is simply making the whole thing up. This is what changed his mind about embracing his Choctaw identity.

Okay, I must admit that I still can't quite connect the dots of my father's logic, but it makes a kind of sense anyway. If some white Americans really are running around benefitting from a pseudo sense of ethnicity, then white Americans who really do have some aspect of non-white ethnicity ought to proclaim their heritage.

Look, I'm not saying I agree with this line of reasoning--it's weird, and doesn't quite make sense to me. But that's where my father is right now, and it's extremely difficult not to take his lead on this, even if I don't agree with how he arrived at the conclusion that we should be Native Americans. Like I said, I've always known about my connection to the Choctaw Nation, always wondered, "what if?"

But this presents some profound questions about my own identity. I have always self-identified as white. I have white skin. I have benefitted, and continue to benefit, enormously from racist white privilege. In short, for all practical purposes, I'm a white guy--hell, over the years, I've found myself, like many white Americans, far more interested in African American culture than in Native American culture. What does it mean to suddenly change my ethnicity? What does it mean to no longer be white? What does it mean to self-identify as a Choctaw? I have only vague speculations at this point. One thing I know for sure, I cannot use this new status in any way for my own economic benefit. I have not been personally oppressed in the way that people who have self-identified as Native American their entire lives have been. Gaming affirmative action laws with my new found ethnicity is clearly unethical.

Of course, one could argue that I have been oppressed because I have been robbed of my rightful ethnic heritage. But I don't feel robbed. And what the hell does "rightful ethnic heritage" actually mean? I just don't know. One thing's for sure: my conservative brothers and father are not going to be twisting themselves into intellectual knots over this the way I am. Ah, hell, my old man's probably going to get over his anger with Churchill and forget the whole thing. Unless, of course, O'Reilly keeps beating the war drums.

At any rate, I know that, whether I become an Indian or not, I really need to learn more about the Choctaw Nation.

Again from Wikipedia:

The Choctaws are a Native American people originally from the southeast United States (Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana). In the nineteenth century, they were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes," so-called because they had adopted a number of cultural practices of European-Americans.

Click here for the rest.

Hey, wow, Louisiana. I'm in the homeland. That's pretty cool.

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