In an attempt to debunk the 'Mandan Smallpox blankets' which Churchill and others claim were distributed on purpose by the US cavalry, Brown cites:
"a physician was dispatched for the sole purpose of vaccinating the affected tribes while the pestilence was at its height."
Honestly, this could be construed as "help", or it could have further contributed to the epidemic. There's no information here to prove that there were no cavalry contaminated blankets distributed. There's no proof *either* way.
I don't like the way he uses his cites (Worse than Churchill ;^)
I think Mr. Brown has an axe to grind, and he's grinding it.
Either that, or he thinks that he can make a carreer of being the Amazing Randi www.randi.org to Ward Churchill's ' Uri Geller'.
See: http://hal.lamar.edu/~BROWNTF/
But I want to focus on *why* an underachieving Johns Hopkins Phd, who ends up tenured as an assistant professor would want to step up to the plate and take a swing at Ward Churchill?
Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America. (book reviews) The American Indian Quarterly; 1/1/1996; LaVelle, John Ward Churchill. Monroe, Me: Common Courage Press, 1994. 381 pp., notes, index. $14.95 paper.
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:18832333&refid=hbr_flinks1
<...> This peculiar wholesale condemning of Indian tribes by reference to the universally hated 1887 General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act)--assigning blame, as it were, to the victims of nineteenth century federal Indian policy--derives from Churchill's insistence that the General Allotment Act imposed an eligibility "standard" of "one-half or more degree of Indian blood" (p. 62) on Indians seeking land parcels under the Act. According to Churchill, this insidious "standard" was then imitated by tribes, in puppet-like fashion, in formal enrollment procedures "as a matter of U.S. policy implementation" (p. 333). And so, according to Churchill, Indian tribes today deserve to be violently opposed for implementing tribal citizenship standards that, in Churchill's scheme, are nothing more than a mirror-image of the oppressive General Allotment Act's "formal eugenics code" (p. 333).
The main flaw in this federal/tribal conspiracy theory is that it rests on--and propagates--demonstrably false information concerning the contents and impact of the General Allotment Act. Contrary to Churchill's claims, the General Allotment Act did not require Indians to be "one-half or more degree of Indian blood" in order to be eligible for land allotments. Churchill's asserted General Allotment Act "standard" does not exist anywhere in the text of the Act. This, in turn, explains why Churchill never once provides a citation to any provision of the General Allotment Act (25 U.S.C. [sections] 331 et seq.) wherein that dubious "standard" can be found. <...> ~~~~~~~ If you do a search on the web for "one-half or more degree of Indian blood", you will see how far this apparently documented (I did my best checking) untruth has travelled through the information universe.
Just last semester, the local community college was teach this as fact... .
If you take into consideration a non-biased proposal that the tribes *somehow* picked that standard up from the government and used it, (many *do* use that standard) therefore the standards used to judge Native Americanhood (?) intrinsically squint toward genocide (Churchill uses historical census figures to illustrate this), there is some sociological validity to what he is saying, it needs researching and action.
The vehemence you detect in the review author's tenor has other tribal political issues attached that I wouldn't feel qualified to speak to.
However, the facts seem to be: the US government never *codified*: "one-half or more degree of Indian blood"
** Ward Churchill uses trickery to get peoples attention on the subject the way
*he* wanted it seen, as a formal US policy, to (temporarily, at least) solidify
and validate his position... and he "runs with it" from there.
That's "framing" (as a one-man stand up routine)
Just ask the Swift Boat Vets... it works.
He is the 'Trickster'... confronting a pack of mongrel dogs on the road, who just scavenged and ravaged his village, and are on their way to the next village to do the same.
Furthermore:
I believe what has happened to Ward Churchill is *not* because of what he said, but because he allowed the critics of what he said to turn it into a bunch of one liners with no contextual basis.
Framing... Phase One: Modify or control the context of the debate. (Think Rathergate...)
Phase Two: Discredit and destroy.
I suspect that some are worried that Ward Churchill's scholarly works on the suppresion of the First Americans will somehow "connect" our personal social contracts to the world, and the genocide that *America* has committed, and is still commiting... A scholarly discrediting of our "moral high ground".
It would be daunting, intellectually and sociologically on the American "psyche", at a time when fascistic conformity is required to accomplish certain "imperial" goals, and there is an attempt to nip it in the bud. [discredit & destroy]
I also believe Mr. Churchill has been "used", to frame, for public consumption, the concept that individual Americans are *not* reponsible for their nation's actions (Zero tolerance for personal complicity) in the short, or long term.
cf. UBL's "pre-election speech" November 2, 2004, per NewsDay. "In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No. Your security is in your own hands."
The intellectual bloodletting of Ward Churchill could be seen as a form of "Sociological innoculation", aversion therapy for the masses to keep the questions about a citizen complicity in the policies of their government within a pre-defined framework.
This is where Thomas Brown fits in... disposable academic "hit man".
There is an attempt to keep Ward Churchill "pinned down" answering his critics, instead of continuing research potentially damaging to the empire.
The "little eichman" snipe could potentially drive a wedge into the "character armoring" (cf. Wilhelm Reich) of the American populace, coming from someone whose scholarly works are in regard to the mis- treatment of Americas indigenous people.
Ward Churchill is attempting to make an academically legitimate case for his belief that the genocide continues, and perhaps is being exported with little or no modification of technique, to Iraq.
That's gotta make him an 'Enemy of the state".
Speaking of Wilhelm Reich...
Reich was chased out of Germany before WWII, shortly after the publication of a tract he titled "Listen, little man", in which he pretty much described the psychological profiles of quislings and "little eichmans", in plain German, for every German to see... and warned of the danger ahead.
Is it one of *THOSE* coincidences ?
L
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