Scandal

Abstract

Scandal Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (bio) The pall that has been cast on the academic discipline of Indian studies by the behavior and subsequent charges against the long-time professor of ethnic studies Ward Churchill, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is incalculable. One thing is obvious, Native scholars who have spent the last thirty years developing what they describe as "an empowerment epistemology" directed for and by indigenous populations have been smeared with the brush of Churchill's recently documented fraud. Because of the actions of a wayward "wannabe" and a complicit university faculty and administration, not very different from a hundred other administrations across the land, the inchoate structure called Indian studies has the potential to become the pariah of academic scholarly ambitions and intentions. Who is responsible? Churchill and the university that hired him some twenty years ago. To some observers of the academic scene in 1980 and 1990, ethnic studies seemed the answer to the inherent hegemony in American scholarship and research; thus, the "umbrella" paradigm gathered up the flotsam and jetsam of what was seen as the "diverse" populations of America, i.e., Latinos, African Americans, women, Asians, and American Indians, and an academic structure until then unknown outside of sociology was born. For those indigenous scholars who had nurtured for many prior decades the idea of an autonomous discipline called Native American studies, such "umbrella" thinking spelled doom, though, unfortunately, little was heard of their objections. Presently, we [End Page 85] are witnessing the results of universities hiring controversial speakers with national visibility, activists on their ways to becoming notorious public figures, instead of those who do the quiet, thoughtful, serious scholarship, teaching, and writing of academe. Just like the poor countries around the globe that have been the losers in the global trade-policy talks, Indian studies has been the loser in the academic dialogue of scholarly autonomy. In short, Native populations have been badly served by much of what goes on in the academic world. Native populations in America are not "ethnic" populations; they are not "minority" populations, neither immigrant nor tourist, nor "people of color." They are the indigenous peoples of this continent. They are landlords, with very special political and cultural status in the realm of American identity and citizenship. Since 1924, they have possessed dual citizenship, tribal and U.S., and are the only population that has not been required to deny their previous national citizenship in order to possess U.S. citizenship. They are known and documented as citizens by their tribal nations. Indians in academia, therefore, have never enthusiastically clamored for a placement in the paradigm called ethnic studies. The truth is, many native scholars have suggested that American Indian intellectual traditions have been directly and negatively affected by ethnic studies, which has a tendency to obliterate difference, particularly political difference. The investigative report of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder, released in May 2006, shows that Churchill extensively plagiarized the work of others, wrote articles under a false name in order to support his self-serving claims with "third party" sources, and engaged in a "pattern and consistent research stratagem to cloak extreme, unsupportable, propaganda-like claims of fact." The possibility of the dismissal of a tenured faculty member who is widely known to publicly profess unpopular ideas looms large because he has been unmasked as a plagiarist. From the point of view of Indian studies, there is another reason for dismissal, and that is Churchill's long-standing claim to American Indian citizenship. The "elephant in the room" ignored by the committee is that his claim to be an American Indian is also a fraud; it is "identity theft" plain and simple and therefore a crime. That he can provide no credible evidence for his claim to be an American Indian has been overlooked by the committee, yet that claim was used to win his professorship in the first place. He has been unmasked as a man who has desperately wanted to be an American Indian for most of his professional life, but is not. In some lexicons this can be called a deception, but in more academic instances...