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Someone forgot to tell Time Magazine that the Churchill witch-hunt is still on, so it covered some Cherokee issues without regard to the Rupert Murdoch cronies and FBI agents tracking down Churchill.
The first myth to bite the dust is that Cherokees actually put blood first:
"Both sides, oddly enough, agree that tribal membership is a political designation, rather than a racial one. No one wants to use a strict blood quantum — say, a requirement of 1/16th Cherokee blood — to determine who belongs. 'I refuse to create a sieve through which our grandchildren will fall out,' says David Cornsilk, a Cherokee-by-blood who sides with the Freedmen. But each side sees very different implications. 'What is identity?' posits Smith. 'What is an Indian? What is a Cherokee? I would say it's someone part of a recognized community.' Recognized, though, meaning on the proper Dawes List — not meaning active members of the tribe, as Vann asserts it should."The part about blood quantum is what Churchill has been saying all along. Where are the Fox News pinheads now. They should ask for Time Magazine editors to be fired and all Cherokees expelled as ethnic "frauds."
Point number two is on the Dawes Act:
"It is ironic that the tribe wants to use the Dawes Rolls, which discriminated against Native Americans collectively, as a tool of discrimination against a group of blacks. But the Cherokee case is not without precedent. Several years ago, the Seminoles tried to kick their Freedmen out of their tribe. So, the federal government declared the Seminoles in violation of their treaty and refused to recognize the tribe's sovereignty. As a result the Freedmen were reincorporated in the Seminole nation in 2003."Again this is perceptive. The Freedmen have "Black blood," but Time Magazine figured out that there is a relationship between the white man's federal government and how the tribes define themselves--even membership-wise. Churchill explained that. Unedified FBI agents can't: it's too hard for them to digest or some cases they are on record for white slaughter of First Nations. The white man's federal power complicates indigenous identity right down into the definition of tribe.
MIM is not happy with the decision of many Cherokees to have a beef with those Cherokees of Black descent. We are also unhappy that the white man's federal government is involved; although we understand that the relevant treaty counted Cherokee as including those of Black blood.
The blood issue is difficult because the whites committed genocide and now there is no straightforward answer to how to tell First Nation people apart from whites by looking at them. A cultural upbringing answer makes more sense.
The economic question is also difficult, because the First Nations are not in a position of self-sufficiency. So the Cherokees go to the white man's federal government. That gives the white man a say in the very definition of Cherokee--with or without Ward Churchill who came much later in the process.
It's a short article, but Time Magazine figured out more about Cherokees in a page than the University of Colorado figured out in two years.
Another professor in the news is also in trouble over the Mideast. Norman Finkelstein has been purged from DePaul University for his views of I$rael. Finkelstein lost out in early June and on June 17th, students protested on his behalf.(1)
Finkelstein has argued that some Jews exploit the Holocaust to carry out oppression. Finkelstein himself is Jewish, but he did not have tenure at DePaul before losing his career promotion for his views on I$rael.
Oddly enough, the criterion that DePaul University used to omit Finkelstein from tenure will fall disproportionately on Jews. The criterion of "Vicentian personalism"(2) used against him is a religious one. DePaul is a Catholic university.
Because DePaul is Catholic and because Finkelstein did not have tenure, his case stings somewhat less than the Ward Churchill case, which involves a professor with a lifetime contract at a public university. Nonetheless, the two cases are quite similar.
The witch-hunts against Finkelstein, Kevin Barrett and Ward Churchill all involve the Mideast.
By a vote of 158 to 99, England's University and Colleges Union voted to boycott I$raeli academics. This caused a backlash led by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.(3) Dershowitz promised that a team of 100 lawyers in the united $tates and England would bankrupt anyone trying to arrange a boycott of I$rael. We've also agreed with James Petras that Harvard University, Columbia and other major universities are giving Arab scholars a hard time.(4)
In a sense we agree with Dershowitz's underlying desperation. To come up with a strategy like his 100-lawyers-against-the- world, he had to realize that I$rael's future is not secure. Where we disagree is that we do not believe he is going to be able to overcome the larger forces at work. All that Dershowitz and his kind can do is contribute to the rise of corporatism in academia. He will not alter I$rael's future, but he will create more crazy repressive situations. So we see in Colorado a convergence of Halliburton interests and I$rael's interests.
I$rael and late-stage apartheid South Africa have many similarities. The two most important similarities is that white South Africa faced a demographic problem including a shortage of business managers. Outmigration was a threat. Likewise, I$rael has a demographic problem and international isolation in boycotts always looms as a possibility. In both cases, the oppressor nations had the technologically superior military. Today South Africa is Black-ruled and in the future, MIM sees hope for the joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations over I$rael.
Notes:
1. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=13125
2. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_abraham/2007/06/a_battle_for_academic_freedom.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2099043,00.html
4. www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/countries/palestine/israellobby052906.html