The Genocide of Dissenting 'Indians' Continues...
The recent character assassination of Native 'American' University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill elucidates just how much people in this country are in denial of their true history. Authored by: uwmap on Wednesday, February 02 2005 Guest Editorial - Infoshop
The Genocide of Dissenting 'Indians' Continues...
From the Declaration of Independence:
...governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new
government...
The recent character assassination of Native 'American' University of Colorado
professor Ward Churchill elucidates just how much people in this country are in denial
of their true history.
Churchill, who teaches ethnic studies, was invited to speak at Hamilton College in
Clinton, NY. The panel discussion was to be entitled "Limits of Dissent". The fact that
we should even have to be discussing limits on dissent in this country says a lot about
where we, in the land of free speech, are heading.
The talk has been scrubbed. Why? The school said it was because of "credible threats
of violence" (maybe war should be scrubbed for the same reason). Most likely it was
because people don't want hear the things that we as a people have to know, no
matter how much they may bump us out of our comfort zones. The things we don't
discuss gave rise to the day that that comfortable bubble burst, Sept. 11, 2001.
Shortly after that horrible day, Churchill wrote an essay entitled: "Some People Push
Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". At the time, not much was said about it,
and it didn't make the mainstream newswires. There were too many ugly truths about
US foreign policy in it for most American people to handle in one pop.
Being a native of Turtle Island (now disrespectfully renamed to North America,
assuredly not with the consent of the natives), Churchill has studied the genocide of
his ancestors, and he knows the horrors all too well. He also knows that this 'manifest
destiny' did not stop at the Pacific Ocean. The Hawaiian Islands come to mind first,
let's work to see that Iraq will be the last.
He made a case in his post 9-11 essay that what happened was 'blowback'. And that
some of the people killed were not so innocent. The target, the WTC, was
described as "America's global financial empire – the mighty engine of profit" (over
people, I might add). And in the rubble was the bodies of those who the day before
were "arranging power lunches and stock transactions," out of mind and out of sight of
the "rotting flesh of infants".
His reference to the infants was from the information freely available to all of us. In
1996, when Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes asked the then secretary of state Madeline
Albright if the price of 500,000 dead Iraqi children as a direct result of the sanctions
was worth it, she callously replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think the price is worth it." So who exactly is 'we'? 'We' are not so innocent if 'we' do
not put an end to atrocities our government commits. Like the words from the
declaration of independence, it is our right, and it should be our duty.
What's not very clear is why the establishment pundits on TV have waited until now to
attack Churchill's four year old essay. It was OK for him to speak at the Local To
Global Justice Conference at Arizona State University at Tempe in February, 2004. A
clue may be found in the words his trembling voice offered up as he fought back the
tsunami of supressed tears manifested by 513 years of oppression and genocide:
"Justice begins locally...a delivery of justice on a first priority basis to the first
'Americans'. The internal decolonization of native North America...will not however be
done by vote. It will not however be done by petition. It will not be done by rallies. It will
not be done by marches. It will not be done by anything that could lead to a liberal
reshaping of the system in order to maintain the sanctity of the status quo. It will have
to be done, every inch along the way, in the fashion of struggle, kicking and
screaming, knowing that the state will apply the means of power to maintain itself that
it has readily in hand, and that is not a non-violent process."
Frank Gubasta