"[Ward] Churchill's dubious Indian identity first got him into trouble in 1986. His political opponents in the American Indian Movement complained to CU - unsuccessfully - that Churchill was committing ethnic fraud, and couldn't prove his Indian ancestry.

In 1993, Churchill tried to persuade Jodi Rave, a student journalist at CU, that his Cherokee ancestor was a man named Joshua Tyner. Tyner is one of Churchill's ancestors, but he was not an Indian. Rave wasn't buying Churchill's story, and published a skeptical piece in the Colorado Daily.

That's when Churchill started playing three-card monte. He wrote the Daily, labeling his doubters 'identity Nazis,' and challenging them to 'Start with Reubin Tyner, on the 1817 Cherokee Emigration Roll, and work your way forward. Perhaps you'll end up, if you connect the dots correctly, not only with the Tyners, but with the Allens and Julia Churchill as well, on the 1898-1914 Dawes/ Guion Miller Rolls.'

But Ward Churchill is not descended from either Reubin Tyner or Julia Churchill. They're just random people he found on Cherokee rolls who happened to share a surname with his own white ancestors."

Get the Story:
Thomas Brown: A master of misdirection (The Denver Rocky Mountain News 5/25)

Churchill's 9/11 Essay:
"Some People Push Back" On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (Pockets of Resistance September 2001)

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