On Tuesday, July 25, following a lengthy investigation by a special panel, the University of Colorado Board of Regents on a vote of 8-1 fired tenured professor of Ethnic and Indian Studies, Ward Churchill. The charges were research misconduct and plagiarizing the writings and research of other academics. While we, the leadership of the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council applaud the thoughtful and reasoned decision, we want to point out to all that for more than 25 years the legitimate leadership of AIM’s Grand Governing Council attempted to expose Ward Churchill as an academic, literary, and ethnic fraud.
Churchill perpetuated his fraudulent Indian identity in order to get himself streamlined into tenure and Director of the Ethnic and Indian Studies Department as well to market his plagiarized and revisionist books. He has also plagiarized the American Indian Movement’s intellectual property rights and tainted the goodwill for Indian people that exists nationally and worldwide.

He has made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lecture circuit, promoted, yet today, by Speak Out Speakers Bureau promoting him as Indian, all after we notified them of his ethnic fraud. The result of this was to ignore the voices of authentic Indian academics, intellectuals, leaders and activists.

Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as a member of the Keetoowah Nation of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, which he is not. When challenged to show proof of any Indian ancestry he waves an associate membership card that at one time the Keetoowah Nation would give to anyone who would promise to help them. Even former President Bill Clinton received one of these cards of associate membership. Ernestine Berry who presided on the Keetoowah Enrollment Committee and served on the tribal council for years stated to Denver Post writer, Howard Pankratz on February 3, 2005 that Churchill was trying to get recognized as an Indian. He could not prove he is an Indian. Berry said that he was given this associate membership in the 10,000 member tribe based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the early 1990’s. “Churchill started coming around in 1992 or 1993 saying he wrote some books and was a big time author, and convinced us he could help our people,” Berry said, “and it was on that basis he was given the associate membership card.”

Barry also said, “Churchill never fulfilled his promise to help the tribe, and after he received his associate card, we never heard from him again.”

Due to this abuse and misrepresentation of the associate card by Churchill, the Keetoowah Nation has discontinued the practice of issuing these cards.

Not only is Ward Churchill a literary and academic fraud, just as egregiously he continues to fraudulently represent himself as being Keetoowah Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement’s chapter in Denver, Colorado. With deceit and treachery, he has been able to manipulate the Denver Indian community into giving him and his co-conspirator, Glen Morris, credibility and cover. Glenn Morris is a professor at the University of Colorado who is another Caucasian American masquerading as an Indian, This is designed to confuse Indians and non-Indian alike. Following the decision of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, he, along with former personality in the American Indian Movement, Russell Means, created the illusion that AIM supports Ward Churchill.

Because of disruptive behavior and ethnic fraud, both Churchill and Morris were expelled from the International Indian Treaty Council by its International Board of Directors on September 23, 1986. The International Indian Treaty Council, or IITC is the international, political, and diplomatic Corp of the American Indian Movement. Seven years later on November 23, 1993, following a lengthy investigation, the American Indian Movement’s National Board of Directors expelled Churchill and Morris from AIM.