Well first of all, when it comes to Ward Churchill, we seem to be talking about a rather extreme example of a Person of Distant Ancestry ( maybe ) with what is in my opinion , a truely grandious sense of entitlement .
Below is a website with some information on his family background
http://home.comcast.net/~jackott2/ahnentafel2.htm EDITOR'S NOTE:The author of the following apparently shares the opinion of Ward CHURCHILL that the source of his Indian heritage was the TYNER family. The author here cites Richard TYNER as the possible source, while Churchill cites Richard's son Joshua TYNER. In all censuses in which either could be found, both were listed as "white". If Joshua TYNER was 1/2 Indian by birth, and barring any other unknown interventions in subsequent generations, Ward Churchill would be 1/128 Indian.
I guess Churchill's attitude is interesting though...It seems some people seem to think if they get angry about "their" mistreatment as Native peoples, playing that role will entitle them to an Ndn identity even if their actual genealogy barely justifies calling themselves a person of distant descent.
I don't mean to suggest that everybody's situation is the same or this can rightly be defined by BQ - in itself -So in between Churchill and people who are enrolled , there seems to be a wide spectrum of varying circumstances.
I think most would agree a persons personal life experience also counts for a lot. If a person is only 1/16 but they grew up around greatgrandparents, a bunch of aunts , uncles great aunts and uncles and cousins who all married back into a Native community, I can see that such people may have a substantially stronger right to claim an indigenous identity than someone who is 1/4 who hasn't had any family connection with Native people in 3 generations.
However, it also seems to me that it is more than a little dishonest to suddenly decide you only inherited 1/8 or 1/128 of your actual heritage and only to acknowledge that part of your heritage that comes from your ancestors who were wronged. I don't understand how these people manage to just forget any debts incured and inherited by the other 7/8 or 127/ 128 of their ancestors who perpetrated these wrongs.
Nighthawk
If my ancestors were robbed, cheated, and driven out at the point of a bayonetted rifle, it does not mean that they consented to the theft
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Night hawk, i don't know your families personal circumstance, but it seems to me that once families have been living outside of a Native community for a couple generations, it is usually the case that most of these peoples ancestors were involved in doing the robbing cheating and driving out , and not the other way around as you are telling it.
Within all of our family backgrounds no matter what our nation there is wrong doers and people who were the victim of wrong doing.
How can it be right or honest to just forget what is in fact usually the largest part of most PODIAs real heritage?
It seems to me that if PODIAs really care about begining to shift the pressure away from assimilation and colonization, the way to go about this would be to first try to protect the people most directly affected , who have the most to loose, by making sure no outside interests ever pressured or coherce a tribe into disenfranchizing it's own children . Once those outside presures are reduced as much as possible, it might make sense to begin to reassimilate distant relations - with the first priority being the people disconnected most recently ,and possibly gradually expanding this to in some way include those disconnected for many generations.
I don't like to sound cynical, but I notice most PODIA's focus is geared towards insisting that whatever Native people managed to hang on to in the way of their identity , should now also belong to people who are almost entirely European. Which doesn't seem honest to me.
Nighthawk
And yet Euro-Americans and their descendants were all right with this when not so long ago the "one drop rule of hypodescent" applied, if a person had a single African American or Native American ancestor (with the exception of being a direct descendant of Matoaka, Rebecca Rolfe) no matter how distant that ancestor was, one was considered to be coloured and could be enslaved.
I don't know your own family situation and for some people of susbstantial Native heritage who have been wrongly forced into assimilating i would agree with what you are saying. But if we are talking about people like Ward Churchill, or anyone less than 1/8 who's families have lived in what is a mainly non native community for more than a couple generations , you sound like you are saying that one drop of indigenous blood can still confer the right of Euorpean dominence . But this time it is the right of people who are mainly European to own and use Native identity.
Nighthawk
And it is the colonial "divide and conquer" system that has resulted in what we sometimes see on message boards, the "I'm more NDN than you" game, which seems to me to basically be between those who have a card to carry around saying they are "all that" and those who don't.
I believe a lot of this problem comes from European people who may have some small amount of native descent making outrageously grandious claims of entitlement. These people create a situation where an obvious line has to be drawn somewhere . Surely you don't actually believe that people like Churchill should have the same right to claim an indigenous identity as a person who's direct acestors have always live in a recognizable Native community ? So if you don't draw the line at enrollment , where do you draw it ? ( and BTW I don't see enrollment as " just a piece of paper" as some like to dismiss it , it's usually someting which shows what the tribe has decided about who it is , and who it is not willing to include )
Nighthawk
To me a tribe is a group that is related by blood, like a large extended family. A Nation is something else again. Some families retained parts of their culture that the people who experienced the diaspora have completely lost. One of these things would be familiarity with the wild foods and medicines of the region. People who left the land for other regions would have forgotten what these were after a very few generations. My personal belief is that to fully experience the culture, one must return to the traditional diet as far as possible. It's about what goes into a person, not what is put onto a person that counts, that's just the way I feel about it, others are free to disagree.
I agree that in order to be a tribe one of the requirements is a common relationship through blood, but that doesn't make every group of cousins who's grandparents lived off the land to some degree a tribe. That description would fit almost any European descended family 100 years ago.
I also agree that food and how we get it is one of the most fundamentle aspects of culture . Finding ways to get food which respects the integrity of our enviroment and the other plants and animals that rely on this is an indigenous value which we urgently need to find ways to integrate into our curent societies. But i think it's also important to remember that socieites that depend on agriculture for their food tend to have much larger populations and a very different social structure. I think it is unrealistic to think all these people who have a drop of Native blood can suddenly be sustained by hunting and gathering , or that these people should have a right to sustain their so called culture, through the same rights to hunting and fishing as the enrolled or status Ndns in the area.
Quoting myself
It seems there is an identity somewhere in between being European colonist and being fully indigenous to this continent, and the rights , responsibilities and perimeters of this identity are not well defined.
Quoting Nighthawks response
Most definitely. A sovereign people of a sovereign Nation define themselves. There seems to be, but shouldn't be in my opinion, a divide between the people who want things to continue as they are, and others who believe it is time for Indigenous peoples, the Original people, of North America to stand up and be who they are.
I was not meaning that I was thinking that within the perimeters of this definition there is room for a sperate soverign Nation of PODIAs, and as you will probably gathered from some of my earlier comments, I don't support these ambitions at all, but there is something slightly different that I do support.
As I see it, a truely soveriegn Nation consitiutes the true underlying social fabric where upon we live out our lives. A soveriegn Nation or Tribe is much more enduring than our individual selves, and if it is something that is functional and if it is something we are proud of , it has the capacity to lift us out of ourselves into something greater than our tiny limited frame of individuality and immediate personal concern.
If you want to be a sovergien nation of PODIAs , why turn you back on your more European descended neighbors if the majority of your own descent and culture is in fact European? If you are really looking at the big picture , and you are willing to wait a few generations for this to mature, most of your European neighbors great grandkids will be PODIAs or they will be married to one .
So if you are willing to look at the big picture, and be pateint there already is a soveriegn Nation of up and coming PODIAs. It is called America and Canada. If you have no Nation which claims you, why not work from within the real soveriegn Nation most PODIAs already live in, to make it better able to accomadate sustainable indigenous values into what will be our shared collective future?
In my opinion one of the very imporant parts of doing this is to safe guard the right to protect and control , land , resources , identity and culture that are still left to the recognizable indigenous communities that managed to survive as a People . I see these indigenous communities which many Americans and Canadians descend from somewhere back there , as being like the North Star which provides a stable point of reference, and I believe it is really important to insure existing indigenous nations have what they need to keep this strong. Allowing them to be overwhelmed with distant relatives with a list of demands , entitlements and changing delusions of self importance is not what I think will help maintain this refferece point for future generations.
Obviously I do have opinions which are different than the many people advocting for recognition of PODIAs as ndns...But i do think it's a good discussion to have and i really appreciate that Nighthawk is willing to explain a different point of view insuch an articulate way....
Sorry to be straying from the topic of this thread which is Ward Churchill
