The other wing of the movement consists of a loosely knit collection of local groups describing themselves as the Confederation of Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement (autonomous AIM). The autonomous chapters each tend to operate with a more locally-focused agenda and scrupulously avoid anything approximating a central command or decision structure, a means of governance they associate with the dominant culture, and one inconsistent with native ways. Consciously eschewing the organizational trappings, the fascination with money, and financial ties with either the US government or corporate America, autonomous AIM's structure remains closer to the spirit of the AIM of the 60s and 70s than the corporate edifice that is NAIMI. While autonomous AIM's focus is primarily local, many local leaders also actively address national and international indigenous liberation issues.
The conflicts and disinformation campaigns leading to and following AIM's fracture are indeed unfortunate. If their roots lie in the behavior and methods that created and perpetuate the conflicts, their continuation rests in the extent to which the native liberation movement and associated progressive movements refuse to undertake the analysis needed to reach their own conclusions regarding such conflicts. Smearing an individual
Give me back my broken night, my secret room, my secret life. Its lonely here æ there's no one left to torture. Give me absolute control over every living soul and lie beside me, baby. That's an order!
-The Future, Leonard Cohen, 1992
How the post-fracture divide has been fueled by unconscious imitation of the dominant culture's values, values at odds with the original movement's liberatory aims, can be seen in the history of a single man æ Ward Churchill.3 There exist two diametrically opposed views of Churchill, a University of Colorado professor, Colorado AIM leader, international indigenous activist, and strong critic of the neoliberal world order. The first view is accessible in his numerous books and articles as well as his unrelenting support of indigenous liberation struggles in North America and globally.4
The other view is put forth by the NAIMI Bellecourt brothers, whose claims to leadership of the "American Indian Movement" seem to require silencing any voices not in harmony with their own. They use the same methods to create and perpetuate the conflict that COINTELPRO used to devastate AIM in the 70s. The result is that the conflict itself effectively reduces the American Indian Movement to fringes so focused on internal dynamics as to have no positive impact on the struggle for native liberation. A Chicago Example
My attention was focused on these issues through my association with the April 1996 CAN-Free Mumia benefit in Chicago. A coalition of Chicago groups supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Philadelphia Black Panther and progressive radio commentator sentenced to die in Pennsylvania's electric chair on the bogus charge of killing a police officer,5 invited Churchill to participate in an event they were holding. The invitation was not his first from Chicago-based activist groups. Unlike some speakers, he frequently assumes travel expenses to make such appearances. As on other occasions, he accepted CAN-Free's invitation, traveling at his own expense. His name was duly put on the promotional material.
Shortly thereafter, CAN-Free Mumia coordinator Marguarette Powers received a phone call from a woman named Kim Feike who said she was a member of a Chicago-based antiauthoritarian group. She announced that it was time for "white activists to take a stand." She said she had been in contact with Vernon Bellecourt of the "American Indian Movement" (NAIMI) who had advised her that Churchill was "not Indian;" had been expelled from the "American Indian Movement, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" as "a provocateur, disruptive and dishonest;" and that he was under investigation by the University of Colorado for "his false claims of being an Indian." She further explained that she felt obligated to demand that Churchill be prevented from "misrepresenting Indians" by speaking on behalf of a condemned black activist, and threatened to picket the event if Churchill spoke there. Powers, mightily puzzled, told Feike that the coalition had invited Churchill because of his well-established expertise on political repression in the United States.6 When it was clear that the invitation would not be withdrawn, Feike simply hung up.
Soon after, Powers received three calls on her answering machine. The first came from Vernon Bellecourt of NAIMI, who repeated Feike's allegations, suggesting that Powers call him back so they could "talk further" and offering to send "documentation" if Powers wished. Another came from one Tom Pierce who called Churchill a "fraud" and an "FBI agent." The third came from "Charlotte from the American Indian Movement," who made the same unsubstantiated claims. Only Bellecourt left a phone number. When Powers identified herself on returning his call, Vernon claimed to be on another line and said he would call Powers back. The call never came.
None of these callers who claimed to be representatives of the "American Indian Movement" expressed interest in the event itself or even token solidarity with Abu-Jamal. Instead, just before the event, the coalition received a letter from Feike with classic disinformation "documentation" presenting unsupported allegations as "facts." Nothing passed on by Feike could have been considered substantiation for the serious charges she made against Churchill, and despite her efforts Churchill remained on the roster of speakers.7
He ultimately delivered an eloquent and stirring speech, but overall attendance was much sparser than expected. Whether this was a result of Vernon Bellecourt's maneuverings is not certain. What is certain is that his attempted impairment of Churchill's credibility was a move to mute one of the more stimulating voices for liberation on today's scene. To the extent Bellecourt might have succeeded, the major loser was certainly Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man in desperate need of all the help he can get. The already weakened organizing capacity of the Chicago left was further disorganized, and the only tangible winner was the state, Bellecourt's and NAIMI's professed oppressor. Bellecourt's efforts to deny Churchill a platform were taken without regard for their impact on either Abu-Jamal or his advocates. Feike's blind obedience of Bellecourt's commands tucked her into the same bed of lies.
If this attack on Churchill were an isolated incident, no matter how unsavory, it wouldn't be worth extensive remark. All public figures are subject to occasional irrational attacks. However, over the past five years, similar occurrences have followed Churchill in such far-flung locales as Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawai'i, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, reaching as far as Canada and Europe. Concurrently, at least two well-circulated periodicals, Tim Giago's Indian Country Today and Paul DeMain's News From Indian Country, have devoted themselves to a pseudo-investigation against Churchill and a seemingly coordinated campaign of comparable defamation has been conducted on the internet.8
The details alleged differ slightly from place to place and time to time, many of them contradictory. In the San Francisco Bay area, a woman named Carol Standing Elk attributed to him the protean ability of being simultaneously a CIA agent, an FBI agent, a New Ager, a Moonie, a hoax and a Klansman.9 Similarly, in a single 1994 editorial, News From Indian Country editor Paul DeMain first claimed that Churchill had only "very recently" joined AIM, then (citing FBI counterintelligence specialist David Price, no less) completely reversed his thesis, suggesting instead that Churchill was already well enough placed within the movement by 1975 to have brought about the Jumping Bull firefight resulting in Leonard Peltier's imprisonment.10 The supposedly factual basis for these allegations is no less logically muscled. In Colorado, David Seals' "proof" of Churchill's supposed intelligence connections is Churchill's brief employment by Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1977.11
All these accusers, from Indian Country Today publisher Tim Giago to Carole Standing Elk, have a more than cordial relationship with NAIMI and the Bellecourt brothers. By 1993, they had systemized their campaign against Churchill using the time-worn tactics known as "badjacketing," or "snitchjacketing." 12 They contacted his employer, publishers and speakers bureaus. They also reached his real and potential political associates and students, the local press, and the sponsors of virtually every speaking engagement he accepted that was publicized in advance. The Tactics
I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me.
æ Anthem, Leonard Cohen
COINTELPRO enabled the FBI and police to exacerbate the movements' internal stresses until beleaguered activists turned on one another... Otherwise manageable disagreements were inflamed by COINTELPRO until they erupted into hostile splits that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and drove dedicated activists out of the movement. Government documents implicate the FBI and police in the bitter breakups of such pivotal groups as the Black Panther Party, SDS, and Liberation News Service, and the collapse of repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions across racial, class, and regional lines. While genuine political issues were often involved in these disputes, the outcome could have been different if government agencies had not covertly intervened to subvert compromise and fuel hostility and competition.
æ War at Home, Brian Glick Modus operandi
The CAN-Free Mumia benefit incidents display NAIMI's modus operandi. Someone purporting to be an official of "National AIM Inc." contacts those hosting an event in which Churchill is an announced participant. The standard set of accusations and allegations are spewed out as facts. In most cases, documentation is promised, but when and if it arrives, it contains a pair of "expulsion letters" crafted by the callers, repeating the allegations in some detail but offering no substantiation. To create an illusion of corroboration, the letters are usually accompanied by several "news" articles and editorials by Giago and DeMain, again merely repeating the accusations. Where possible, local allies - mostly ignorant of the issues involved but eager to please and "take a stand"- are solicited to support "AIM's National Office." <SNIP> -- Michael Pugliese