Throughout this book, I have gone out of my way to provide what Noam Chomksy has called “rich footnotes.” . . . I also believe it is not just a matter of courtesy, but of ethics, to make proper attribution to those upon whose research one relies.Scholars and researchers already know why footnotes are provided. This odd claim makes one wonder if Churchill ever spent any time graduate school. Actually, this matter of “courtesy” and “ethics” is taught in freshman composition, when professors warn their students about the dire consequences of plagiarism.
Churchill continues, regarding his research:
Most importantly, I want those who read this book to be able to interrogate what I have said, to challenge it, and to build upon it.Now Churchill has gotten his wish. At least two professors have challenged his claims. And the results do not bode well for the professor.
Professor John P. LaVelle, Associate Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico, who is also a member of the South Dakota bar, and an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, has offered a useful and thoroughly convincing rebuttal to Churchill in two essays: The first essay is titled "Review Essay: Indians Are Us?" 20 American Indian Quarterly 109 (Winter 1996) in which Professor LaVelle says,
. . . notwithstanding all the sound and fury rumbling through his essays, Churchill’s analysis overall is sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrety.In his other essay, "The General Allotment Act 'Eligibility' Hoax: Distortions of Law, Policy, and History in Derogation of Indian Tribes" 14 Wicazo Sa Review 251 (Spring 1999), the professor reveals further distortions in Churchill’s scholarship.
Ironically, Churchill’s assertions about “The General Attotment Act” and the reaction of Indian tribes to that act denigrate the tribes, for whom Churchill claims to be advocating.
This situation will surely prove embarrassing to the committees at the University of Colorado at Boulder who have obviously remained oblivious to Churchill’s incompetence as a researcher and scholar as they have promoted him to professor and then chair of the Ethnic Studies department.
Another professor Thomas Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lamar University, offers further evidence of Churchill’s revisionist history with his essay, "Assessing Ward Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic." In this essay Brown shows how Churchill abuses his source, Russell Thornton: Churchill refers to Thornton as his source for claiming that the U. S. Army deliberately spred smallpox to the Mandan through infected blankets. But a look into Russell Thornton’s work reveals no such claim.
It is unfortunate that the issue in many American minds regarding Churchill centers on freedom of speech. It is also unfortunate that his chances for speaking are dwindling. We need to hear him. We need to read what he has written. The board of regents at University of Colorado at Boulder especially need to read and hear him.
As other commentators have observed, the Churchill problem is just the tip of the iceberg. How many other professors have made their way up through the ranks of academia to become the highest rank of Professor and then Chair of an entire department with inferior scholarship and incompetent research skills?
Yet regarding his remaining a professor at his instituion, does it not seem that retaining him on the CU faculty will diminish that university’s reputation?
On the other hand, one has to have compassion for this man. What will he do if he is fired? He has probably become accustomed to a life-style that a six-figure salary affords. His books, no doubt, have increased in sales, but once they are read, and people discover their utter lack of real scholarship, what then? Maybe he could write a tell-all, a confessional biography. Tell us exactly what led to his life of academic fraud, and especially how he got the idea of claiming to be a American Indian. Yes, that kind of confession would sell lots of books.
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