[News] Ward Churchill - a refutation of Cointelpro attacks

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Footnotes & complete article are at this site:
http://www.americanindianmovement.org/papers/struggle.html#

[This may be lengthy, but is well documented and important to understand 
that publications like News From Indian Country & Indian Country Today, now 
being quoted by Fox news as authoritative sources, have been spewing this 
anti-Churchill stuff for over 10 years.
claude]
Why do you think we call it struggle?




by Faith Attaguile
Contributing Editor, Dark Night Field Notes
darknight at igc.apc.org

With special thanks and gratitude to
Lance Kramer and Michele Cheung
whose voices ring throughout this document
February 1998


The Problem

It's coming from the sorrow on the street;
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat

-Democracy, Leonard Cohen, 1992

Talking the talk doesn't mean we're walking the walk. Neither does it 
immunize us from aping the power structure we claim to oppose. When we 
embrace unsubstantiated information as "facts," when we rush to judgment, 
when we reflect greed, authoritarianism, competition, and racism in our 
internal politics -we undermine our struggle as much as any cop can. It is 
not enough to master politically correct rhetoric to express our worldview. 
What really counts is behaving and modeling the ways that yield that 
worldview. We are not doing this when we accept sound bites long enough to 
convey an impression of substance but too short to allow informed analysis. 
Neither are we when we slavishly honor the word in print or from the podium 
without investigation. Such unquestioning acceptance of half-truths or 
speciously documented assertions make us as fatally vulnerable to 
disruption from within as it does dissent from without. Whether 
systematically introduced by outside agitators or stemming from 
authoritarian or competitive tendencies from within, innuendo and rumor 
mindlessly repeated as "facts" have several devastating effects. They lend 
a progressive veneer to motives formed by the very values and aspirations 
they claim to scorn. Their easiness further absolves members of the 
movement from committing to the hard and deliberate work necessary to yield 
informed judgments. Only a routinely and rigorously developed historical 
and analytical consciousness can protect our work from manipulation by old 
tricksters in progressive clothes, and keep us from becoming "progressive" 
Talking Barbies playing up to the very forces we are aligned to confront. 
"Trust me" should weigh as much in our political analysis as it should in 
the back seat of a Chevy. You can object that this kind of self-examination 
is just one more thing that keeps a movement divided and unable to focus on 
its outer-directed aims, but no movement can survive, much less achieve its 
goals, without regularly assessing itself on this score.



Shattering a Movement

I've seen nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any furtherº
Get ready for the future;
it is murder.

-The Future, Leonard Cohen, 1992

The years since the 1970s height of the American Indian Movement's (AIM) 
activism provide a monitory example of how internally adopted 
disinformation tactics can destroy a grassroots movement's potential and 
impact. The extent to which externally implanted disinformation rocked the 
movement prior to the mid-70s has been amply documented,1 but many factors 
have contributed to an unhealthy reluctance to examine how much the 
movement's own behavior contributed to its hollowing out during and 
subsequent to that period. A quarter century after its birth, after splits, 
attempted reconciliations and spotty and coordinated resurgences, AIM sadly 
illustrates how vulnerability from within can open a movement to 
self-destruction, susceptibility to the enemy, and diversion from 
organizational goals. All progressive movements, each in its own way 
susceptible to the same failings, can learn from it.

Among several sharply disputed origin stories, there is consensus that what 
emerged in the 60s and 70s as AIM was a loose coalition of several groups 
of young Native Americans who saw the era's general unrest as an 
opportunity to move native concerns and aspirations into public 
consideration and debate. It arose as a movement rather than a political 
party. In Cleveland, in Minneapolis, in Omaha, in San Francisco and 
elsewhere in the late 60s, young Native Americans, mostly urban with no 
reservation associations or substantial ties to their tribal traditions, 
came together to consider the plight of native peoples and to advocate for 
redress of both current and historic grievances. These local organizations, 
tied by an agenda of native self-determination and liberation, produced the 
informal alignment now known as AIM. The accomplishments of those who 
struggled under its banner then, while open to interpretation and debate, 
were unarguably significant. Not only did they halt the continued 
disintegration of North American native cultures by asserting their 
fundamental vitality and strength; they also demonstrated willingness to 
act aggressively against continued abuse.

The bravery of the early AIM activists cannot be contested. Even those who 
disagreed then and now with AIM's policies or tactics respect their early 
audacity. But after COINTELPRO neutralized AIM in the 70s, the movement 
survived through the 80s more in individual attitude or commitment than as 
an organization, barely recognizable in form.2 Even its most ardent 
supporters had been stunned by the federal might thrown against it without 
protest from either the American public or the progressive community. But 
the 100th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre and the Columbus 
Quincentennary in 1992 awoke voices that had been silent since the federal 
repression of the 70s on a host of issues. The continued imprisonment of 
Leonard Peltier on fabricated charges since 1976; the continued desecration 
of native gravesites and remains; the continued federal attempts to destroy 
the integrity of native cultures; and the continued native efforts to 
recover lands and rights lost through treaty manipulations led to a 
resurgence of activism. Yet these efforts were stilled almost as quickly as 
they had risen, the early gains of the 90s wasted through internal 
controversy.

Today AIM consists of two fundamentally different movements. One wing, with 
all the trappings of an organized political party, describes itself as 
National AIM, Inc. (NAIMI) and is headed by Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, 
whose subordination of native liberation to their own personal advancement 
amplifies and documents talking native talk while walking the corporate 
walk. NAIMI is nicely organized under the statutory provisions defining 
corporate structures, evincing the characteristics of a privately-held 
business enterprise replete with corporate offices, regional subsidiaries, 
a self-appointed command structure, membership rolls, fees and dues, 
fundraising capabilities, and vanity license plates. NAIMI, by its own 
admission, is heavily funded by the US government and by neoliberal 
corporate structures dictating governmental policies towards indigenous 
peoples throughout the world.

The other wing of the movement consists of a loosely knit collection of 
local groups describing themselves as the Confederation of Autonomous 
Chapters of the American Indian Movement (autonomous AIM). The autonomous 
chapters each tend to operate with a more locally-focused agenda and 
scrupulously avoid anything approximating a central command or decision 
structure, a means of governance they associate with the dominant culture, 
and one inconsistent with native ways. Consciously eschewing the 
organizational trappings, the fascination with money, and financial ties 
with either the US government or corporate America, autonomous AIM's 
structure remains closer to the spirit of the AIM of the 60s and 70s than 
the corporate edifice that is NAIMI. While autonomous AIM's focus is 
primarily local, many local leaders also actively address national and 
international indigenous liberation issues.

The conflicts and disinformation campaigns leading to and following AIM's 
fracture are indeed unfortunate. If their roots lie in the behavior and 
methods that created and perpetuate the conflicts, their continuation rests 
in the extent to which the native liberation movement and associated 
progressive movements refuse to undertake the analysis needed to reach 
their own conclusions regarding such conflicts.



Smearing an individual

Give me back my broken night,
my secret room, my secret life.
Its lonely here -
there's no one left to torture.
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
and lie beside me, baby.
That's an order!

-The Future, Leonard Cohen, 1992

How the post-fracture divide has been fueled by unconscious imitation of 
the dominant culture's values, values at odds with the original movement's 
liberatory aims, can be seen in the history of a single man -Ward 
Churchill.3 There exist two diametrically opposed views of Churchill, a 
University of Colorado professor, Colorado AIM leader, international 
indigenous activist, and strong critic of the neoliberal world order. The 
first view is accessible in his numerous books and articles as well as his 
unrelenting support of indigenous liberation struggles in North America and 
globally.4

The other view is put forth by the NAIMI Bellecourt brothers, whose claims 
to leadership of the "American Indian Movement" seem to require silencing 
any voices not in harmony with their own. They use the same methods to 
create and perpetuate the conflict that COINTELPRO used to devastate AIM in 
the 70s. The result is that the conflict itself effectively reduces the 
American Indian Movement to fringes so focused on internal dynamics as to 
have no positive impact on the struggle for native liberation.

A Chicago Example

My attention was focused on these issues through my association with the 
April 1996 CAN-Free Mumia benefit in Chicago. A coalition of Chicago groups 
supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Philadelphia Black Panther and 
progressive radio commentator sentenced to die in Pennsylvania's electric 
chair on the bogus charge of killing a police officer,5 invited Churchill 
to participate in an event they were holding. The invitation was not his 
first from Chicago-based activist groups. Unlike some speakers, he 
frequently assumes travel expenses to make such appearances. As on other 
occasions, he accepted CAN-Free's invitation, traveling at his own expense. 
His name was duly put on the promotional material.

Shortly thereafter, CAN-Free Mumia coordinator Marguarette Powers received 
a phone call from a woman named Kim Feike who said she was a member of a 
Chicago-based antiauthoritarian group. She announced that it was time for 
"white activists to take a stand." She said she had been in contact with 
Vernon Bellecourt of the "American Indian Movement" (NAIMI) who had advised 
her that Churchill was "not Indian;" had been expelled from the "American 
Indian Movement, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the Leonard 
Peltier Defense Committee" as "a provocateur, disruptive and dishonest;" 
and that he was under investigation by the University of Colorado for "his 
false claims of being an Indian." She further explained that she felt 
obligated to demand that Churchill be prevented from "misrepresenting 
Indians" by speaking on behalf of a condemned black activist, and 
threatened to picket the event if Churchill spoke there. Powers, mightily 
puzzled, told Feike that the coalition had invited Churchill because of his 
well-established expertise on political repression in the United States.6 
When it was clear that the invitation would not be withdrawn, Feike simply 
hung up.

Soon after, Powers received three calls on her answering machine. The first 
came from Vernon Bellecourt of NAIMI, who repeated Feike's allegations, 
suggesting that Powers call him back so they could "talk further" and 
offering to send "documentation" if Powers wished. Another came from one 
Tom Pierce who called Churchill a "fraud" and an "FBI agent." The third 
came from "Charlotte from the American Indian Movement," who made the same 
unsubstantiated claims. Only Bellecourt left a phone number. When Powers 
identified herself on returning his call, Vernon claimed to be on another 
line and said he would call Powers back. The call never came.

None of these callers who claimed to be representatives of the "American 
Indian Movement" expressed interest in the event itself or even token 
solidarity with Abu-Jamal. Instead, just before the event, the coalition 
received a letter from Feike with classic disinformation "documentation" 
presenting unsupported allegations as "facts." Nothing passed on by Feike 
could have been considered substantiation for the serious charges she made 
against Churchill, and despite her efforts Churchill remained on the roster 
of speakers.7

He ultimately delivered an eloquent and stirring speech, but overall 
attendance was much sparser than expected. Whether this was a result of 
Vernon Bellecourt's maneuverings is not certain. What is certain is that 
his attempted impairment of Churchill's credibility was a move to mute one 
of the more stimulating voices for liberation on today's scene. To the 
extent Bellecourt might have succeeded, the major loser was certainly Mumia 
Abu-Jamal, a man in desperate need of all the help he can get. The already 
weakened organizing capacity of the Chicago left was further disorganized, 
and the only tangible winner was the state, Bellecourt's and NAIMI's 
professed oppressor. Bellecourt's efforts to deny Churchill a platform were 
taken without regard for their impact on either Abu-Jamal or his advocates. 
Feike's blind obedience of Bellecourt's commands tucked her into the same 
bed of lies.

If this attack on Churchill were an isolated incident, no matter how 
unsavory, it wouldn't be worth extensive remark. All public figures are 
subject to occasional irrational attacks. However, over the past five 
years, similar occurrences have followed Churchill in such far-flung 
locales as Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawai'i, Kentucky, 
Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North and South 
Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, reaching as far as Canada and Europe. 
Concurrently, at least two well-circulated periodicals, Tim Giago's Indian 
Country Today and Paul DeMain's News From Indian Country, have devoted 
themselves to a pseudo-investigation against Churchill and a seemingly 
coordinated campaign of comparable defamation has been conducted on the 
internet.8

The details alleged differ slightly from place to place and time to time, 
many of them contradictory. In the San Francisco Bay area, a woman named 
Carol Standing Elk attributed to him the protean ability of being 
simultaneously a CIA agent, an FBI agent, a New Ager, a Moonie, a hoax and 
a Klansman.9 Similarly, in a single 1994 editorial, News From Indian 
Country editor Paul DeMain first claimed that Churchill had only "very 
recently" joined AIM, then (citing FBI counterintelligence specialist David 
Price, no less) completely reversed his thesis, suggesting instead that 
Churchill was already well enough placed within the movement by 1975 to 
have brought about the Jumping Bull firefight resulting in Leonard 
Peltier's imprisonment.10 The supposedly factual basis for these 
allegations is no less logically muscled. In Colorado, David Seals' "proof" 
of Churchill's supposed intelligence connections is Churchill's brief 
employment by Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1977.11

All these accusers, from Indian Country Today publisher Tim Giago to Carole 
Standing Elk, have a more than cordial relationship with NAIMI and the 
Bellecourt brothers. By 1993, they had systemized their campaign against 
Churchill using the time-worn tactics known as "badjacketing," or 
"snitchjacketing." 12 They contacted his employer, publishers and speakers 
bureaus. They also reached his real and potential political associates and 
students, the local press, and the sponsors of virtually every speaking 
engagement he accepted that was publicized in advance.



The Tactics

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

-Anthem, Leonard Cohen

COINTELPRO enabled the FBI and police to exacerbate the movements' internal 
stresses until beleaguered activists turned on one another... Otherwise 
manageable disagreements were inflamed by COINTELPRO until they erupted 
into hostile splits that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and drove 
dedicated activists out of the movement. Government documents implicate the 
FBI and police in the bitter breakups of such pivotal groups as the Black 
Panther Party, SDS, and Liberation News Service, and the collapse of 
repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions across racial, class, and 
regional lines. While genuine political issues were often involved in these 
disputes, the outcome could have been different if government agencies had 
not covertly intervened to subvert compromise and fuel hostility and 
competition.

-War at Home, Brian Glick



Modus operandi

The CAN-Free Mumia benefit incidents display NAIMI's modus operandi. 
Someone purporting to be an official of "National AIM Inc." contacts those 
hosting an event in which Churchill is an announced participant. The 
standard set of accusations and allegations are spewed out as facts. In 
most cases, documentation is promised, but when and if it arrives, it 
contains a pair of "expulsion letters" crafted by the callers, repeating 
the allegations in some detail but offering no substantiation. To create an 
illusion of corroboration, the letters are usually accompanied by several 
"news" articles and editorials by Giago and DeMain, again merely repeating 
the accusations. Where possible, local allies - mostly ignorant of the 
issues involved but eager to please and "take a stand"- are solicited to 
support "AIM's National Office."

Especially if they meet resistance, the local press is alerted to the 
"controversy" generated, and the callers wind up their contact with hints 
of violence - or at least disruptive pickets - unless Churchill's 
engagement is cancelled.13 Sometimes, a NAIMI speaker is offered as a 
replacement for a hefty fee (Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt have indicated 
they'd "need" a minimum of $1,500 plus expenses to do what Churchill does 
better out of political commitment).14 The threats have mostly turned out 
to be bluffs. No protesters have ever actually materialized in Chicago, for 
instance.15 With few exceptions, the Bellecourts and their agents do not 
use the time, place and audience the event affords to confront Churchill in 
an open forum or expose their allegations to public inquiry. A look at the 
exceptions indicates why any tactician would recommend their confining 
their operations to the background.

At a Northern California AIM/Radio KPFA fundraiser in Berkeley, NAIMI's 
Carole Standing Elk, surrounded by what appeared to be a contingent of 
about fifty people, rose to inform an audience of 2,000 that while she 
agreed with "just about everything this man [Churchill] says, he's not 
Indian enough to say it." It turned out, however that her own group 
consisted of no more than six people.16 The closer attention her action 
provoked revealed only six out of her contingent who were known to work 
with her regularly. The rest were substance abusers assigned to Standing 
Elk's husband Darryl, a Bay Area drug and alcohol counselor who had used 
his influence to instruct them to show up at the auditorium that night. (In 
the midst of Carole's racist pronouncement, one of these confused 
"protesters" approached one of the many AIM people supporting Churchill to 
ask, "What's going on here, George?").17 The next day, someone identifying 
himself as an "AIM representative" - but not of the Northern California 
chapter for whom Churchill had done the fundraiser - talked $795 of the 
benefit's proceeds from one if its ticket vendors, Black Oak Books.18

In 1995 at Portland State University, five intoxicated Native Americans 
appeared at a public lecture Churchill was giving on behalf of the campus 
native student organization. After a five-minute disruption, they left at 
the request of Rose Hill, the university's Indian program coordinator. 
Immediately afterwards, they were overheard at a pay phone in the hallway 
outside, "reporting" on their adventure to Vernon Bellecourt. One student 
then followed them several blocks to a bar, where he observed them 
celebrating their accomplishment. "The whole thing was extremely 
embarrassing," says Hill, an Oneida. "Mr. Churchill was a guest of the 
students. He'd been invited to speak here, and he'd gone considerably out 
of his way to accommodate both our needs and our limited resources. His 
talk was powerful and well-received. Then these people attempt to destroy 
the dignity of the moment by displaying every negative stereotype of 
Indians held by the dominant society. One can only wonder what they thought 
they were achieving."19

NAIMI's tactic of demonstrations against Churchill are precisely those used 
by the right wing when it comes up with "citizen" initiatives completely 
funded and created by themselves. They have not been notably successful 
because such efforts require more money than they have to buy the kind of 
publicity that manufactures factitious community support. They are forced 
to rely on disinformation topped off with verbal bluster and vague threats 
which have the advantage of being cheap. If you put the Federal witness 
relocation program at one end of the scale and the anonymous letter at the 
other to measure degrees of sophistication and expense in disinformation 
technique, NAIMI's working up of community support is at the low end. While 
it is easy to scorn such pathetic performance, nonetheless it does 
collateral damage.

Sometimes the strategy works, sometimes it doesn't. There is no way to 
ascertain the number of speaking invitations never extended to Churchill 
because of NAIMI's activities, but there are two instances in which 
invitations already extended were withdrawn at NAIMI's prompting. In 1993 
and 1995 respectively, both SUNY Albany and University of New Hampshire 
administrators responded to what they perceived as "community pressure." At 
SUNY, the result was that no event pertaining to Indians was held at all.20 
At New Hampshire, Clyde Bellecourt was accepted as Ward's replacement.21

The crudeness of NAIMI's strategy has sometimes backfired, however, 
especially when they are dealing with people who have more information or 
integrity than the Albany and New Hampshire organizers. In 1993, Churchill 
was asked to sit on a tribunal on Native Hawaiian rights. Organizer Kekuni 
Blaisdell received four increasingly vociferous phone calls from Vernon 
Bellecourt registering objections.22 The Tribunal not only retained 
Churchill but chose him for its rapporteur.23 Another result was that, 
based largely upon his performance in Hawai'i, Churchill was asked by the 
Chiefs of Ontario to serve as an advocate in a tribunal they will be 
convening to consider the rights of native peoples of Canada.24

At the University of Toledo, the run-up to a fall 1995 presentation drew 
"the most idiotic and concerted attempt at defamation I've ever 
encountered," according to organizer Dr. Tom Barton. Churchill not only was 
not disinvited, but was immediately invited back to participate in a spring 
American Studies symposium on the effects of the Cold War. "He seemed an 
ideal choice," says Barton, "Not only because he is an excellent speaker 
and scholar, but because much of our conference focused on McCarthyism, and 
he is so obviously being subjected to a contemporary manifestation of that 
very phenomenon."25

The integrity displayed by Blaisdell, Barton and others does not 
necessarily come without consequences. After Dr. Linda Pertusati (Oglala), 
head of the American Indian Studies Program at Bowling Green State 
University in Ohio rebuffed Vernon Bellecourt's phone calls concerning 
their invitation to Churchill to speak in 1994, she was visited by the FBI. 
"I don't know whether there was a direct connection," says Pertusati, "but 
it did seem a little strange that the agents were saying many of the same 
things as Bellecourt."26 Pertusati, too, asked Churchill back as a keynote 
speaker, an offer later countermanded by the university's higher 
administration.27 Pertusati, an established scholar with solid publications 
and teaching evaluations, perhaps the only American Indian in the United 
States to hold two doctoral degrees, did not have her faculty contract 
renewed the next year.28

That such contradictions and inconsistencies pass unchallenged in the 
movement is less a function of their authors' masterful fabrication than 
testimony to how uncritically such fanciful distortions are accepted as 
truth by native and non-native activists alike.

The Disinformation Documents

Most of these claims have by now been interwoven into a standard 
disinformation packet such as that used by Feike in Chicago and distributed 
around the country and abroad from the NAIMI home office in the Twin 
Cities. They largely revolve around hysterical accusations that Churchill's 
an agent and that he lacks "credentials" as an Indian and activist. As 
reporter Shelly Davis put it, "Vernon Bellecourt told me on at least four 
occasions that he would send me documentation to support what he wanted me 
to print as 'fact'about Ward Churchill. When the material finally arrived, 
all it amounted to was a couple of letters Vernon himself had written, and 
a handful of newspaper clippings in which he's quoted saying the same 
things. There was just no substance to it at all."29

The disinformation package's overkill approach, attacking Churchill on many 
points at once, makes it difficult to answer succinctly. After taking on 
the task I found that the more I investigated, the more lies I uncovered. 
Some stem from ignorance of research procedures, some from racist 
assumptions, and some it would seem from conflicting political alignments, 
sheer jealousy and greed for power. I found that the authors of the 
disinformation package were learned students of the dominant culture, 
wrapping their campaign against Churchill in soundbites built on conscious 
lies, cynical innuendoes, and determined efforts to silence someone 
identified as a serious threat to their continued "mastery" over identified 
"turf" -a far cry from the early liberatory goals if AIM.

"He's an Agent!"

Only people unfamiliar with scholarly research processes and the 
implications of the Freedom of Information Act can deduce that "only a 
federal agent" could have had access to the FBI and CIA documents Churchill 
used to substantiate his groundbreaking studies of domestic 
counterintelligence operations, Agents of Repression and The COINTELPRO 
Papers.30 That Jim Vander Wall, their co-author, is never similarly charged 
for accessing documents in the public domain points up the emptiness of the 
charge. Yet this has given rise to the charge that Churchill "must be a 
fed," a "government infiltrator" and "provocateur," calling to mind the 70s 
adage that the "first to point out another as a government plant is usually 
the government plant."31

"We mainly relied on the archives of attorneys who have handled key 
political cases," notes Jim Vander Wall. "Jonathan Lubell, who handled part 
of Geronimo ji Jaga's appeal, provided access to something like 170,000 
pages of FBI material obtained through a Freedom of Information Act suit. 
Flint Taylor at the People's Law Office in Chicago, who was co-counsel on 
the Hampton/Clark civil suit, provided access to another 110,000 pages on 
the Panthers. Bruce Ellison, one of Peltier's appeals team, provided about 
12,000 pages on AIM. And, of course, there's a couple of million pages on 
everything from the Rosenberg spy case to Janis Joplin's love life 
available at the FBI reading room in Washington, DC."32Even if the 
Bellecourts do not understand the information gathering process in 
research, someone around them must. Certainly, antiChurchill polemicists 
Paul DeMain and Tim Giago know how to read and check source documentation. 
They illustrate a general and self-defeating reluctance in the native 
liberation and progressive movements to evaluate evidence or confine 
themselves to assertions for which they can assume personal responsibility. 
As a reflection of unconscious assumption of dominant cultural values, it 
evinces an antiintellectualism that gave rise to such shining lights of 
American history as the Know-Nothing Party.

Another assertion related to the accusers' distance from firsthand 
familiarity with the material in question is that Churchill's and Vander 
Wall's Agents of Repression and COINTELPRO Papers are "filled with lies and 
inaccuracies."33 The lies and inaccuracies are never identified. They must 
be so hard to find that they passed the notice of people with acknowledged 
expertise on the subjects of the books, such as Noam Chomsky and the late 
William Kunstler who glowingly endorsed both works, and the Gustavus Myers 
Center for Human Rights at the University of Arkansas which bestowed a 1989 
award upon Agents as one of the preceding year's best books on intolerance 
in the United States.34

Churchill's role at Soldier of Fortune was hardly that of a true believer. 
Says Churchill, "I was there for a couple of months in late '76 -early-77, 
just long enough to get a handle on who was who, and what they were up to. 
I've never made any secret of it because it was part of the research for 
articles I wanted to write about the facts and fictions of U.S. 
mercenaries. In fact, I've included the information that I managed to get 
inside Soldier of Fortune in every piece I've written on the matter."35 The 
articles in question include a seminal exposé of the activities of American 
mercenaries in South Africa. Published in Africa Today in 1980, 
antimercenary organizer Rob Shware called it "the best work available on 
the subject."36 Others include pieces in the Colorado Daily and Daily 
World, and a profile of the magazine's publisher, self-styled "king of the 
mercenaries" Robert K. Brown, published in the decidedly anti-CIA Covert 
Action/Information Bulletin in 1986, and in the Best of CAIB collection 
released in 1989.37 As columnist Alexander Cockburn put it in 1992, "It 
seems to me that Churchill should be commended for this sort of 
investigative journalism, not condemned for it.38

"He's not Indian!"

The substantial effort to discredit Churchill' Native American identity 
buys into several of the dominant culture's racist assumptions and 
policies, ironically on the part of those who least stand to be served well 
by them. As in the attempts to link him to mainstream, right-wing or 
governmental agencies or organizations, the effort to destroy his 
credibility by playing the red race card is not only in itself racist but 
based on lies. The leader of the pack in this connection has always been 
Tim Giago, a notoriously anti-AIM South Dakota publisher who made his mark 
as chief propagandist and apologist for the lethally repressive 
COINTELPRO-supported Dickie Wilson régime on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 
the 70s.39 As early as 1988, trying to counter Churchill's exposés of what 
transpired on Pine Ridge during the 70s, Giago used his Republican-backed 
newspaper Lakota Times (now Indian Country Today), to announce that 
Churchill was an "ethnic fraud" and "impostor" who "changes his tribal 
identity like some people change socks."40

In point of fact, there are five criteria by which native people are 
normally identified in the US-self-identification, genealogy, tribal 
enrollment, blood quantum and community recognition.41 Churchill qualifies 
by all five standards. Let's start with self-identification and genealogy. 
Contrary to Tim Giago's claim that Churchill has identified himself as 
being of different peoples at different times, the record is absolutely 
clear that he has always identified as Cherokee (his mother's lineage). The 
first conclusive evidence of this dates from a 1970 article on the Alcatraz 
occupation.42 By 1975, having met his father for the first and only time in 
the interim, he added Creek, as in the identification he gave for an art 
show he mounted at the Sioux Indian Museum that year.43 Thereafter, he 
added Métis -meaning one of mixed ancestry and culture - to accomplish what 
he called "truth in advertising."44 From 1979 onward, his self-descriptor 
was always "Creek/Cherokee Métis," nothing else. Churchill has publicly 
challenged Giago to produce evidence of any other self-identification.45 
Giago has not responded.

Meanwhile, Paul DeMain has repeatedly printed that his "investigations" 
(what these are is never made clear) into Churchill's genealogy reveal that 
because Churchill is not of American Indian descent, he "hides" his family 
history. Churchill responds that his family is as entitled to privacy as 
anyone else's: "I don't accept that these guys have any prerogative to 
hassle my 90-year-old grandmother, or my mother for that matter, and I 
don't recognize their right to inspect these personal records any more than 
I would if they demanded my credit history or medical file." Moreover, he 
has already published the relevant general information.46 According to AIM 
leader Russell Means, a long-term friend with whom Churchill once shared 
his family documents, "Not only does Ward have Indian ancestry, he has more 
proof of it than I do."47

As to community recognition, Churchill has been active in several. In 
Boulder, where he has lived the last twenty years, Churchill's record 
speaks for itself. He was hired as an Indian by the 'committee of the 
Boulder Valley School District's Title-IV Indian Education Project in 1977. 
He was hired as an Indian by the all-native staff of the American Indian 
Educational Opportunity Program at the University of Colorado Boulder 
campus in 1978.48 "He has always been accepted as an Indian by the Indians 
in this town," says Norbert S. Hill, Jr., an Oneida and former director of 
the Educational Opportunity Program, now head of the Boulder-based American 
Indian Science and Engineering Society. Hill cites that Churchill has been 
repeatedly honored by the Oyate Indian Student Organization at University 
of Colorado over the years. "I don't agree with him on a lot of things," 
Hill concludes, "but I've never known anybody who worked harder for Indian 
rights."49

In the Denver area, the story is the same. Bellecourtian accusations in the 
local press in 1993 provoked an outpouring of letters to the editor from 
Indians and others supporting Churchill, including one signed by the 
entirety of the Elders and leadership Councils of Colorado AIM.50 Both 
Churchill and Glenn Morris, another Bellecourt target, offered to resign 
their positions as codirectors of the chapter if the membership felt the 
publicity blitz was detrimental to Indian interests or were in any way 
uncomfortable about either of their identities. They unanimously reaffirmed 
both men's leadership.51

Enrollment in a federally-recognized tribe is the point the Bellecourts, 
Standing Elk and others most fuss about. Their animus against Churchill 
outweighs any consideration of whether they should support a criterion 
consisting of certification from a non-Indian government -the United States 
-involving bureaucratic extinction of indigenous peoples, like the Abenaki 
of Vermont. Instead, NAIMI insists that maintaining "tribal rolls" based 
upon criteria set by a non-Indian government is an important aspect of 
native self-determination. To be a "real" Indian, you must be enrolled. The 
procedure essentially deeds to the US government the privilege of 
determining who is or is not an Indian. There is a certain perverse logic 
to this argument in the baleful light of the assimilationist nature of US 
Indian policy since as early as 1880.52 But the Bellecourts' application of 
the rule is anything but consistent. For instance, they never suggest that 
imprisoned Chippewa/Sioux activist Leonard Peltier is not an Indian because 
he remains unenrolled, or denounce former AIM national spokesperson John 
Trudell, an unenrolled Santee, as an "impostor." Their behavior exempts 
IITC's Antonio Gonzales, a self-identified Seri, and Andrea Carmen, who 
claims to be a Yaqui.53 Hogwash washes both sides of the hog.

Yet in Churchill's case, federal certification isn't enough. Instead, the 
Bellecourts first trotted out David Cornsilk, a supposed "genealogist for 
the Cherokee Nation" to question Churchill's ancestry before the council of 
the Tahlequah, Oklahoma-based United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees (in which 
his roll number is R7627). The Keetoowah Band's refusal to impugn 
Churchill's status laid them open to bitter sniping.54 Cherokee Nation 
officials emphatically deny ever having employed Cornsilk as a 
genealogist.55 "David never had access to the material he'd need to form a 
legitimate opinion on Churchill's genealogy," says Cherokee artist Murv 
Jacobs. "He's just a guy who doesn't like Ward Churchill. As to the 
Bellecourt brothers, I wasn't aware that Chippewas had standing to decide 
who is and isn't Cherokee. Cherokee rolls are Cherokee business and nobody 
else's."56

The Keetoowah Band have their own genealogists. According to Band Chief 
John Ross, "When Ward applied for enrollment, and it should be pointed out 
that we invited him to do so, he had to provide documentation just like 
anybody else. We checked it out. He's who he says he is. End of story."57 
The punchline is that the Keetoowahs formally verified that Churchill is 
"at least 3/16 Cherokee Indian by blood." This quantum accrues strictly 
from his lineage through his mother. "I was asked if I wanted to try to 
document my father's [Creek] side of things," Churchill recalls, "because 
he was at least as much Indian as Mom. But he's dead now. I never knew him, 
and I don't know my relatives on that side. So I just let it go. I make the 
reference in my self-identification out of respect, but I've never claimed 
the quantum because I don't believe in [quantum]. To me, it's no different 
whether I'm 3/16 or 3/8. You don't measure identity by either pounds or 
percentage points unless you're some kind of Nazi."58

The Bellecourts support blood quantum when it comes to Churchill, but not 
apparently when it comes to themselves. According to Joe Geshick writing 
for the Ojibwe News (published in the heart of Bellecourt "territory"), 
tribal records reveal that the brothers themselves are "essentially 
Frenchmen, possessing only 1/32 degree of Indian blood," information that 
never finds its way into News From Indian Country.59 Despite Chief Ross and 
others' repeated corrections of his intentional error, Paul DeMain 
continues to refer to Churchill as an "honorary Keetoowah, like Bill 
Clinton," editorially overriding the band's own determination as to his 
status.60 The blood quantum criterion, as historically tainted as tribal 
enrollment, is the pseudoscientific negative of the kind of racist thinking 
that created the one drop rule whereby one drop of negro blood makes you a 
negro. Blood quantum erases indigenous people by making Indians technically 
not Indian. Bellecourt-style identity policing, ignoring logic, history, 
and his movement's supposed ends, does anything but reinforce native 
sovereignty.61

It was such historical and political considerations that led Churchill to 
oppose the Act for the Protection of Indian Arts and Crafts in 1990. This 
act made it a federal crime for an artist to identify as an Indian without 
the official sanction of the government, that is, tribal enrollment.62 At 
this point, Federal lobbyist Suzan Shown Harjo, who actively promoted the 
bill by arguing that it should cover not just visual artists but writers, 
scholars, educators and many others, joined the anti-Churchill bandwagon.63 
Another voice in the chorus was that of David Bradley, an artist from Santa 
Fe and leader of the law's cheering section. Churchill had openly accused 
him of selling out the unenrolled, by trying to boost his own sales at the 
expense of other native painters with a "blatantly racist restraint of 
trade measure" involving a "direct usurpation of indigenous rights by 
federal authorities."64 Eventually, Paul DeMain, who claims to have 
conducted a "two-year investigation" into Churchill's family tree without 
being able "to confirm a single Indian relative, let alone one real 
relative who can vouch for his tribal descent," added his voice to the 
babble.65

The Bellecourts frequently cite an "investigation" of Churchill by the 
University of Colorado. Operating on the racist assumption that Churchill's 
"Indianness" specially qualified him to teach subjects related to Indians 
and that such an assumption influenced his university's hiring him, Vernon 
Bellecourt made an appointment with University President Judith Albino in 
October 1993 to accuse Ward of ethnic fraud and misuse of public 
resources."66 President Albino then received an information packet from 
Carole Standing Elk and a letter from Suzan Shown Harjo expressing concern 
for the "safety of students" in Churchill's classes.67

The fraud charge was dismissed on its face, as Bellecourt was informed in 
writing a month later.68 As required by state law, the University responded 
to the allegation of misappropriation with an audit. Ward was fully 
exonerated: "It became painfully obvious that Mr. Bellecourt's accusations 
were completely gratuitous and intended as harassment," says Dr. Evelyn 
Hu-DeHart, director of the Department of Ethnic Studies where Churchill is 
a professor.69 Harjo's claims that Churchill's students were victims of 
"physical intimidation" could be dismissed even more readily. Anonymous 
student evaluations of Churchill's classroom performance rate him at the A 
level not only for the semester of Harjo's complaint, but for every 
semester, his cumulative teaching evaluations ranking in the top five 
percent of all Boulder faculty. Ironically, while under attack from these 
quarters, Churchill received the 1994 Teaching Excellence Award from the 
faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, one in a long string of 
teaching recognitions.70 "We concluded that Ward Churchill is one of our 
more productive and distinguished faculty members," says Dean of Arts and 
Sciences Charles Middleton.71 Standing Elk, Harjo and Bellecourt were all 
duly informed of this outcome more than two years ago, yet NAIMI continues 
to present this "investigation" as ongoing, never mentioning that it 
occurred solely through their own instigation.

"He's not AIM!"

Other charges reflect on Churchill's status as an activist for Native 
American interests. High honor is due those first AIM warriors who risked 
their lives to create the movement's great initial impact on native 
peoples' liberatory struggles. The talkers, however, treat presence in 
AIM's earliest days as a kind of Teflon coating protecting their 
reputations from any subsequent dishonorable actions. By the same token, 
they use accusations against those they claim to have falsely implied 
presence in the glory days as a shaming and powerful blow at the target's 
credibility. These tactics are not surprising coming from those who take 
the talk but steer clear of the issues. Thus, News from Indian Country 
editor Paul DeMain's fable that Churchill is only a recent arrival on the 
AIM scene who has "invented a history for himself" is supposed to be a 
powerful blow at Churchill's credibility. DeMain's musings do not survive 
minimal scrutiny, however. Friends from Churchill's 1973-1974 college days 
recall his being actively involved in AIM even then.72 Atlanta AIM leader 
Aaron Two Elk, formerly of Denver, confirms Churchill was part of the 
Colorado chapter "at least as early as 1978 or 79."73 Russell Means 
recounts Churchill's participation in AIM's Yellow Thunder Camp occupation, 
beginning in 1981.74 Winona LaDuke remembers that he was a "fully engaged 
AIMster, part of the Means crew" when she first met him in 1982.75 As Bob 
Robideau sums up: "I've worked with Ward Churchill for years. He's always 
been AIM. If he's a cop, then I'm the tooth fairy and we're all about to 
have an encounter with the Wizard of Oz."76

Interesting in light of his "recent arrival" hypotheses, DeMain has 
elsewhere insinuated that Churchill was the "orchestrator" of the Oglala 
firefight 1975. Thus, by implication DeMain implies that Churchill is 
responsible for the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier. To that, Peltier's 
cousin and codefendant Bob Robideau gives a humorless chuckle. "Gimme a 
break," he says. "No offense to Ward, but that's the stupidest thing I've 
heard all year. It's insulting and degrading to those of us who were 
involved, including Leonard. What we did was an act of self-determination, 
but Paul DeMain tries to make it sound like we were just manipulated by 
some white FBI infiltrator."77 Peltier's answer to Churchill playing any 
sort of behind-the-scenes role at Oglala was a succinct and immediate 
"Bullshit."78

Mining the same vein are the charges of Churchill's reputed "expulsions" 
from other native activist organizations, such as the Leonard Peltier 
Defense Committee (LPDC), the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), 
and AIM. Leonard Peltier Defense Committee "expulsion." In 1994, Churchill 
received a letter from Leonard Peltier asking Churchill to either 
"disassociate" himself from Dark Night field notes or resign as Peltier's 
four-year national spokesperson. Dark Night field notes, although based in 
Chicago, originated as a project of those involved in Leonard Peltier 
Support Groups throughout the midwest region. Those on its board viewed it 
as a critical tool for publicizing Peltier's plight within the larger 
context of the struggle for human liberation. Peltier and his Lawrence, 
Kansas Defense Committee had a problem with an article in the first issue 
of Dark Night field notes that addressed specific tactics used by Dennis 
Banks' Walk for Justice for Leonard Peltier. Apparently, the journal's 
identification of someone whom Peltier had deeply respected cashing in on 
his name, usurping the authority of his own defense committee and diverting 
funds ("Free Leonard! Make your checks payable to the Dennis Banks Fund") 
was too painful for Peltier to credit.

A primary objection raised was the old bugbear that such attempts to clean 
house in public are themselves divisive. Left unaddressed were the 
questions of whether or not such "divisiveness" is less destructive than 
letting such issues fester, or how Peltier would be served by this.79 
International Indian Treaty Council "expulsion." Churchill's accusers fall 
over their own assertion that Churchill is not a longstanding AIM member in 
their own September 23, 1986 IITC "expulsion" letter, a Bellecourt 
disinformation packet document. Since Churchill's original membership in 
"AIM's international diplomatic arm" would have entailed his being regarded 
as an AIM member, their own document implies that at least some of the 
current NAIMI race-baiters considered him an Indian over ten years ago, and 
that they had for some time.80 Denver, Colorado AIM leader Glenn Morris, 
fellow recipient of the letter, says "Both Ward and I had already separated 
ourselves from IITC because we disagreed with the organization's position 
on Nicaragua. That was in 1985. A year later, we get letters 'expelling' us 
from something we weren't even part of."81

"Expulsion" from AIM

The logic chasm widens when seven years later, on November 24, 1993, 
Churchill and Morris received what might be called preemptive expulsions 
from NAIMI, an organization to which they had never belonged in the first 
place and in fact had openly opposed.82 The expulsion took the form of 
letters whose length indicated that the intended audience was not so much 
Churchill and Morris as those to whom copies would be sent for their 
disinformation.83 "It would be just as valid for the Republican National 
Committee to write a letter expelling Bill Clinton and Al Gore," commented 
Churchill, "or for my Peruvian citizenship to be revoked. I think it's kind 
of fundamental that you first have to be part of something before you can 
be thrown out of it."84 This goes well beyond the revisionist impulse that 
drives people to fire someone after they quit because reality was not so 
psychologically accommodating. But NAIMI's false implication that Churchill 
had once belonged to NAIMI, if believed, would allow them to dismiss 
anything he might say against it as so much sour grapes. As Aaron Two Elk 
observes, "This is the kind of thing Vernon Bellecourt has been doing for 
the last twenty years. He's always lied and manipulated things for his own 
purposes. Some of us old-timers should have dealt with him long ago, but we 
didn't. Now, maybe it's too late."85

Portrait of a Movement Fractured

By now it is clear that the Bellecourts' and others' persecution of 
Churchill is driven by a powerful animus. Few people inside the movement(s) 
or outside have enough pieces of the picture to immediately perceive much 
more than that there are two sides here, and there is a strong natural 
tendency to let already existing personal sympathies and connections 
determine which side people will sympathize with. It is the nature of the 
kind of disinformation tactics that the Bellecourts are using, that few 
will make the admittedly difficult effort to pull together the scattered 
information that supplies the answer to what drives them. However, the 
Bellecourts own behavior did drive a segment of the native community to 
make that effort in a formal tribunal. The understandable desire to avoid 
the appearance of a house divided against itself led those investigators to 
confine their findings within the native community. Unfortunately, this 
internal housecleaning has hardly put a dent in the Bellecourt's activities 
or the public's susceptibility to their tactics. Only a more open viewing 
of NAIMI and the Bellecourts can reveal the utterly disingenuous motives of 
the primary instigators of the campaign against Churchill, and the 
disservice it does to all who are engaged in the struggle for human 
liberation.

National AIM Inc. (NAIMI)

First, NAIMI is neither national nor a movement. It is a corporation 
chartered in 1993 under the laws of the State of Minnesota. The signatory 
on the application's cover page is Vernon Bellecourt and the registered 
office his house.86 The text is a photocopy of a long-rescinded 70s generic 
incorporation document. The home addresses listed for the incorporators are 
all fifteen or more years out of date.87 The same is true of the supposed 
Board of Directors, which includes people like John Trudell who insists 
that he was never consulted on the matter, was unaware that his name was 
used in any capacity, and that he wants nothing at all to do with the 
organization.88 The Board's main function is to name a three-to-seven 
person "Central Committee" which, in turn, sets policy and designates 
NAIMI's "state directors."89

The various chapters NAIMI claims around the country are hardly more than 
shells. So far as can be determined, Michael Haney is its sole Oklahoma 
representative.90 In Kansas City, Bellecourt cousin Michael Pierce is 
another chapter, as Pierce's brother Tom is in Kentucky.91 In the Bay Area, 
Carole Standing Elk can boast perhaps a half-dozen adherents, as can Fern 
Matthias in Los Angeles.92 In Portland, Oregon the number stands at about 
five.93 There are supposedly two chapters in Ohio, one in Toledo which 
seems to be a woman named Joyce Mulhaney and two others, the other headed 
by Kenny Irwin in Columbus.94 Mulhaney is principally known as a Northern 
Ohio powwow circuit trader who occasionally writes letters seeking to 
establish herself as an authority on Ohio native burial rights issues. The 
Columbus group, quite active in burial rights and sacred sites issues prior 
to its adherence to the Minnesota "home office," now confines its 
leadership to convoking powwows and seeking paid speaking engagements for 
its leadership. Even in Minneapolis, the National Office can show only 
about fifteen adults in its "AIM patrol," all of them paid.95

Each of the "chapters" reportedly receives a monthly subsidy to maintain a 
telephone, letterhead stationery and an "office" (often a postal drop),96 
but some have suggested that the remote chapters actually pay monthly 
tribute to support the Minneapolis "leadership." Based on these figures, by 
1997 the organization had about fifty regular members/employees nationwide. 
At most, there are a hundred.

According to its 1993 corporate report and several puff pieces in the 
Minneapolis press, NAIMI handled approximately $4 million in federal 
funding and received about $3.3 million from Fortune 500 contributors like 
Honeywell. An additional half-million came in from individual donations, 
contributions from church groups and merchandise sales.97 With such a 
cashflow, it is not surprising to find Vernon driving Cadillacs and 
sporting $2,500 fringed and beaded leather jackets.98 Clyde drives a 
similar car adorned with a custom license plate reading "AIM-ONE." He has 
been seen flashing a roll of bills and dropping hundreds of dollars at a 
time at blackjack tables in several Minneapolis-range casinos.99 Although 
both promote themselves as followers of the Midewiwin spiritual way and 
Clyde is a Sundancer, they also both have reputations as substance abusers 
in contradiction of the principles and lifestyle of both these traditions.100

Aside from the Bellecourts' personal consumption, NAIMI's ample funds 
appear to be devoted to maintaining three Minneapolis-based main projects: 
the Heart of the Earth Survival School, The Red Earth Housing Project, and 
the American Indian Opportunity Industrialization Center, a job training 
program.101 Although Churchill acknowledges there's nothing wrong with 
alternative schools, housing for urban Indians and job training for the 
unemployed, he finds them wide of AIM's mission. "That's all well and 
good," he says, "but AIM is supposed to be a national liberation movement, 
not a social service agency. Suffice it to say that neither the government 
nor the Honeywell Corporation is in the business of underwriting national 
liberation movements. Beyond that, I'm not even sure that channeling 17,000 
Indians onto the assembly lines of major defense contractors qualifies as a 
good thing in the end."102 Russell Means concurs:
It's been a firm principle of the American Indian Movement since day one 
that we never accept federal funds to run our programs. The feds never give 
something for nothing. There's always a trade-off, a quid pro quo. "We'll 
continue your funding next year, but only if you do this and that for us." 
The same with the corporations. You end up coopted, working for the 
government and big business instead of trying to break their power over 
your people, right? Well, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt are obviously in that 
bag, working for the feds. That's where their money comes from. The only 
question is, since neither of them actually holds down a job in these 
projects they've got, what is it they've agreed to do in order to keep the 
money rolling in? 103

The answer, Means thinks, may be fairly straightforward: their job is to 
ensure that AIM as a viable national liberation movement disappears once 
and for all.

The Confederation of Autonomous AIM Chapters (autonomous AIM)

Object of intense sustained federal repression during the 1970s, AIM was 
largely dormant during the 1980s, apart from a few sparks of life like 
Yellow Thunder Camp and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Around 1990 
in anticipation of the 1992 Quincentennary, however, there were signs of 
revitalization. This was perhaps most true in Denver, a chapter cofounded 
by Vernon Bellecourt and Joe Locust (Cherokee) in 1970 but abandoned by 
Bellecourt in 1972.104 There, Churchill and Morris, who had been drafted by 
Locust and others to direct a rebuilding of the almost extinct chapter in 
1983, had attained an active membership of over a hundred by the end of the 
decade. Moreover, they were busy crafting a "rainbow coalition" of area 
groups -53 participating organizations by 1992 -which was beginning to 
demonstrate real power within the Rocky Mountain region.105

In the Bay Area, Bobby Castillo and AIM veteran George Martin successfully 
pursued the same strategy, filling a vacuum as old as 1980 or earlier. New 
or Òreborn" chapters surfaced steadily in the Crow Reservation in Montana, 
Atlanta, Los Angeles, Corpus Christi (Texas), the Pacific Northwest, 
Illinois, the Southern Ute Reservation, Albuquerque, northern Florida, 
eastern Oklahoma and Virginia.106 Added to the existing chapters in 
Colorado and the Dakotas and potential chapters like Minnesota, these 
groups offered the prospect of a resurgent AIM -again a force in U.S. 
opposition politics for the 1990s. This likelihood was further enhanced by 
overtures for a linkup from the Mohawk Warriors Society in upstate New York 
and southern Quebec, and Canadian native rights organizations.107 Colorado 
AIM first truly flexed its muscles in 1992, putting several thousand people 
into the streets of Denver, making it the only city in the country where a 
major celebration of the Columbian Quincentennary was prevented.108 
However, soon thereafter things began to move quickly in another direction. 
Within weeks, Vernon Bellecourt, who spent the Quincentennary accumulating 
a sizable speaker's fee in Ohio, openly launched his intensive campaign to 
discredit Churchill and Morris. The same phenomenon materialized in the Bay 
Area, where Castillo and Martin's chapter had also organized large 
counterdemonstrations on Columbus Day. Carole Standing Elk, who by her own 
admission had not been politically active in a dozen years, was suddenly 
anointed in the press as "legitimate head of AIM in northern California," 
using this new position to publicly and repeatedly denounce Castillo as a 
"fraud" and a "Mexican taco."109

Soon thereafter, the Bellecourt-run NAIMI was incorporated and, to quote 
Churchill, unilaterally "began expelling the movement from itself." This is 
no overstatement. One of the first acts of NAIMI was a September 1993 press 
circular asserting that
...only those chapters which have been duly authorized and chartered by the 
National Office should be recognized in the future as legitimate 
representatives of the American Indian Movement. Questions in this regard 
can be resolved by calling the National Office at 1-612-721-3914. [Vernon 
Bellecourt's home phone number] 110

Further attempts to undermine the autonomous chapters sprang up, especially 
in Colorado. On October 1993, one year after Colorado AIM's spectacular 
Columbus Day victory, Vernon Bellecourt flew into Denver, and conducted a 
surprise press conference on the steps of the state capitol building. He 
told startled and undoubtedly delighted mainstream reporters that the 
highly visible Glenn Morris and Ward Churchill had been expelled from AIM, 
and introduced three unknown individuals--Al Bear Ribs, Al "Fast Thunder" 
Schumacher and "Cahuilla Red Elk" (Margaret Martinez) -as the "new 
leadership of Colorado AIM."111 With Red Elk/Martinez tagging along, Vernon 
then met with University President Albino to try having Churchill and 
Morris fired from their jobs (no investigation of Morris was ever 
initiated). His mission of disruption thus accomplished, Vernon jetted off, 
and continues to market the local media "controversy" he manufactured about 
Morris and Churchill to this day.112

The "legitimate AIM leadership" Bellecourt's appointees gave Denver could 
have been created by the Marx Brothers. Bear Ribs, having just completed a 
prison sentence for beating another man to death in a bar, left Colorado 
less than three months later, fleeing an arrest warrant for domestic 
violence.113 Schumacher sank from view at about the same time, after a 
public speech in which he informed his audience that "The main threat we 
must prepare to meet is an invasion from outer space."114 Martinez/Red Elk 
was last heard from in mid-1995, working for an upscale Colorado Springs 
developer who wished to build condominiums in the Garden of the Gods State 
Park, a site sacred to native people.115 As Glenn Morris put it:
Vernon didn't manage to destroy Colorado AIM. Far from it. We're very much 
alive. But what he did manage to do, and is still trying to do, is create a 
considerable amount of confusion. He gave a lot of ammunition to anti-AIM 
and anti-Indian sentiment in this already anti-Indian state, and his 
"appointees" made the movement a laughingstock in some circles. We came out 
of Columbus Day '92 with a lot of momentum. It's fair to say that he slowed 
that momentum a lot, and that damaged morale among our members. After all 
the work we put in building this chapter, he put us in the position of 
having to rebuild again. Now, you tell me. Who was the primary beneficiary 
of his "contribution" here? It's not Indians, and it's not the American 
Indian Movement.116

Responding to NAIMI's establishment and its disruptive disinformation 
offensive, sixty representatives of nineteen functioning AIM chapters 
assembled at Edgewood, New Mexico in December 1993. Together, they issued 
the Edgewood Declaration, defining themselves as a Confederation of 
Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement and repudiating any 
authority claimed by the Bellecourts' national office outside the 
Minneapolis area.117 "We didn't start anything new at Edgewood," says 
Russell Means. "All we did was reaffirm the principles which governed AIM 
all along, especially the 1975 decision by the whole membership to dissolve 
the national office and dispense with national officers. Each chapter 
functions in a mutually-supportive, but locally directed and entirely 
autonomous manner. There's only one valid way the 1975 decision can ever be 
reversed, and that's through the convening of a national meeting of all 
active AIM members in which they consent to setting up a national office 
again. Such a meeting has never happened."118

The AIM Tribunal

Contrary to what the Bellecourts would like people to believe, it was they 
who were "banished for life from AIM," not Churchill and Morris.119 This 
came about when a group of noted senior native activists, desperate to put 
an end to the swirling charges and countercharges which they saw impairing 
the struggle for indigenous rights, opted to establish a Òmovement 
tribunal" to assess the merits of what was being said.

"It was a really difficult situation," says former Bellecourt colleague Joe 
Locust, who chaired the panel. "I felt that Clyde and Vernon were way out 
of line, but I frankly didn't believe some of the things the people on the 
other side were saying about them. As an elder in the movement who's known 
and worked with most all of the parties involved, I decided it was my 
responsibility to try and clear the air." Locust's council, convened in 
March 1994 at San Raphael, California, consisted of a Wounded Knee veteran, 
Regina Brave; a former IITC delegate and attorney for the Treaty 6 Chiefs 
in Canada, Sharon Venne; a former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee staffer 
and Northwest AIM elder, Dian Million; and noted native scholar, Donald A. 
Grinde, Jr.

"I told people it was time to put up or shut up," Locust recalls. "If they 
had a case, then make it before the tribunal, not in the media. If there 
was a basis to their charges, we'd uphold them and take appropriate action. 
If, on the other hand, they couldn't prove what they were saying, they were 
to stop saying it. That was the deal." Locust found the autonomous AIM 
chapters "very receptive" to the idea. "They were cooperative," he says. 
"Russ Means agreed to present their case, and they made a group pledge to 
stand down on any point they couldn't prove."120

The Bellecourts were another story, however. "Vernon flatly refused to 
participate under any circumstances," Locust says, "and Clyde showed up 
only long enough to provoke a big confrontation by insisting that we use 
his pipe in the opening ceremony. The fact that what he was doing was a 
desecration of the pipe we'd already loaded for that purpose didn't phase 
him in the least. It was obvious he'd come just to disrupt, not to engage 
in anything constructive. It was a real eye-opener for me."121 So was the 
testimony and other evidence submitted over the next two days, material so 
extensive and compelling that the panel unanimously entered an "interim 
finding" banishing the Bellecourts' and scheduling a second set of hearings 
in Minneapolis the following October (the hearings were ultimately moved to 
Rapid City, South Dakota).122

Although all this happened over three years ago, the results seemed to have 
evaporated because of the tribunal's decision at the proceedings' outset to 
bar non-Indian press.123 "Our idea, based on a lot of experience, was that 
Indian against Indian disputes invariably get distorted to the advantage of 
nonIndians by the media," says Joe Locust. "So we decided that reportage 
should come through Indian papers only."124 This seemed a viable approach 
when News From Indian Country assigned reporter Shelly Davis, a Cherokee, 
to cover the tribunal firsthand, from start to finish. (Joe Geshick, an 
Ojibwe News reporter, also attended throughout, but since he was also a 
witness, his reportage was discounted.)

Davis undertook to write a series of articles on what she learned, but was 
shortly made aware that her editor, Paul DeMain, considered them "biased." 
She recalls,
It was really weird. I'd quote Vernon Bellecourt, and that was okay. But 
every time I'd quote somebody from the other side, or cite some of the 
evidence presented, I'd start getting questions about my "personal 
relationships." Finally, I said, "Paul, I don't know what's going on here, 
but I'm going to cover both sides of this thing or I'm not going to cover 
it at all." He said, "Fine. I'll cover it myself," and he hadn't even been 
there. About a week later, he fired me for lacking "objectivity and 
professionalism." What a joke.125

Shortly after her termination, Davis received a Native American Press 
Association award for the quality of the very articles DeMain found so 
objectionable.

Apart from letters to the editor, neatly flanked by DeMain commentary, from 
then on only the NAIMI version of reality appeared in News From Indian 
Country. The content and conclusions of the tribunal were frozen out, while 
an unending stream of editorials and "news reports" pilloried Churchill and 
others, none of whom were ever so much as contacted for a comment.126 "It 
was a rather astonishing turn of events," says Don Grinde. "We didn't 
expect a rubber stamp of our findings, but we did expect a thorough and 
fair reporting of them. In the end, we'd have done better to have turned 
things over to the mainstream media."127

Exactly what prompted DeMain to pursue this course is unclear since he has 
no known history of connection with the Bellecourts. Churchill suspects a 
payoff. "I don't know Paul DeMain at all," he says, but I do know he's been 
running pretty much on a shoestring operation. At the same time, there's a 
lot of loose cash kicking around in Vernon's coffers. He'd pay a nice price 
to turn a publication which was in the process of exposing him into what 
amounts to a personal propaganda vehicle. You put two and two together and 
what you end up with is some money changing hands. Likely, it was just 
chump change, but enough to account for DeMain's sleazy behavior since mid 
'94. It's too bad, really. News From Indian Country used to be a pretty 
good paper. Now, I'd have to rate its editorial integrity as being lower 
than that of Spotlight or the National Inquirer."128

The Bellecourts

So, what was it that so stunned Joe Locust and his colleagues during the 
tribunal, and put Paul DeMain in such a frenzy of denial? The tribunal 
turned up many things sufficiently repellent to create such a strong 
response, but the sheer cumulative weight of the autonomous AIM chapters' 
evidence sketching the careers of both Bellecourts over the past 
quarter-century was itself condemning. Some forty witnesses, hundreds of 
pages of documentation and videotaped depositions from as far afield as 
Nicaragua were entered into the record. Although Means withdrew several 
charges for insufficient evidence and the panel dismissed two for lack of 
support, what follows is a summary of what was proven to the tribunal's 
collective satisfaction.

While it is true that Clyde Bellecourt was a member of the founding AIM 
group in Minneapolis in 1968, the same cannot be said of his older brother, 
Vernon. A Denver wig stylist moonlighting as an insurance salesman, Vernon 
sat out the opening years of the movement. It was only after AIM had taken 
root that he traded in his leisure suits for ribbon shirts and started 
growing braids. "Vernon saw a parade," as one witness aptly put it," and 
decided to jump in front."129 The sharp divisiveness preventing the 
movement from ever consolidating its impressive early gains can be 
reasonably dated from the moment of his entry into its ranks.

In 1972, little more than a year after the Denver chapter was formed, 
Vernon presented himself for election as an AIM officer. After losing the 
election to Russell Means at the annual membership meeting, Vernon swiftly 
organized a "protest bloc." He then persuaded intermediaries to propose to 
Means that he abdicate in favor of Vernon in the interests of unity. Means 
refused and tension increased until Clyde and AIM-founder Dennis Banks 
engineered the creation of a new appointed position for Vernon to fill. He 
was duly appointed to this job, the only national title he would ever hold. 
Vernon then walked away from the Denver chapter, stationing himself at the 
movement's national office in Minneapolis.130

This pattern enlarged itself in 1974 when Vernon decided it was time for 
him to become AIM's national chairperson. Once again, the membership had 
other ideas, electing Carter Camp, a Ponca from Oklahoma, to the top job. 
Vernon started a whispering campaign to the effect that Camp was, among 
other things, "a government infiltrator," a charge familiar to us only from 
hindsight. He incidentally added to an antagonism so incendiary it resulted 
in bloodshed.131

At its 1975 meeting, partly to stem the rising factionalism, the membership 
voted to abolish all titles of national office (except "national 
spokesperson," a title held by John Trudell until it, too, was discarded in 
1979.) The decision not to have a national office or officers was 
reaffirmed at an "AIM Summit" conducted in San Francisco in September 1982.132

Unfortunately, this did not end Vernon's badjacketing of rivals. During the 
same 1975 meeting at which the national office was dissolved, he seized the 
opportunity to start a rumor that Micmac activist Anna Mae Aquash, one of 
his severest critics, was an FBI informer. He instructed an AIM security 
team consisting of Leonard Peltier, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau to take 
her out to interrogate her. According to Robideau, the order was to "bury 
her where she stands" if they were unsatisfied with her responses.133 While 
Robideau does not contend that Vernon himself pulled the trigger on the gun 
that killed Aquash a few months later, he points out that the resulting 
suspicion and isolation within the movement Vernon's snitch rumor created 
made Aquash especially vulnerable to her fate. Perhaps to prevent others 
from coming to the same conclusion, Vernon volunteered to head up AIM's 
internal investigation of the murder. Interestingly, the "investigation was 
terminated" soon after.134

What had increasingly upset Aquash and many others was Vernon's growing and 
pronounced disruption, profiteering and misrepresentation. For instance, 
although holding no elected office even at chapter level, Vernon 
consistently portrayed himself as a "foremost AIM leader," insinuating that 
he was a "veteran" of the spectacular federal siege of AIM members at 
Wounded Knee in 1973, a misrepresentation he still cultivates.135 Vernon 
was not at Wounded Knee. During much of that confrontation he was touring 
Italy "raising funds." On his return, he claimed to have been arrested by 
federal agents at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and forced to post 
the $17,000 in proceeds as bond.136 It is on record that Jesse Jackson's 
Operation PUSH posted the bond at Vernon's request, and that the funds were 
returned to them when Vernon wasn't prosecuted. The Italian donations, 
however, were never turned over to the movement.137

Similar monetary wrongdoing rears its ugly head before and after Wounded 
Knee. For instance, at the end the November 1972 AIM occupation of the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, DC, the Nixon 
administration provided $66,650 in cash to underwrite the dissidents' 
travel home. The money was supposed to be divided up in proportion to the 
actual transport costs involved.138 However, according to Robert Free, the 
AIM member assigned to oversee disbursements, Vernon demanded $30,000 and 
actually received more than $7,000 "for the National Office."139 
Consequently, many grassroots participants received nothing at all. 
Similarly, during the so-called "Wounded Knee Leadership Trials" of 
1974-1975, more than $100,000 in defense funds disappeared from accounts to 
which only Vernon and his cohort, Mike Haney, had access.140

The IITC

Hammered to pieces as a direct result of federal repression, AIM was in a 
state of virtual collapse by the early 80s, fraught with incessant internal 
discord.141 The Bellecourts were the only AIM "notables" never tried and 
imprisoned during the period. It was at this point that Vernon announced 
the reestablishment of the formerly-dissolved National Office and 
proclaimed Clyde executive director. Whatever his younger brother was doing 
at the time, Vernon used his new station to assert control over the 
movement's single untarnished operation, the International Indian Treaty 
Council (IITC). Labeling Cherokee activist Jimmie Durham, IITC's highly 
effective founding director, a "white man masquerading as an Indian," 
Vernon soon accomplished his objective.142

IITC was established in 1974 at the behest of the Lakota elders to 
represent indigenous interests vis-à-vis nation-states before the United 
Nations. Under Durham's direction it had succeeded in solid fashion. By 
1981, however, the Bellecourts turned IITC completely around as they 
visited native communities on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, an area where 
indigenous resistance to state domination was rapidly building.143 As 
"cousins and allies from the north," the Bellecourts were introduced to 
local Indian military leaders at the village of Tasbapauni, shown defensive 
emplacements, weapons caches and so forth. They left, promising they would 
soon return. What came instead were detachments of Nicaraguan troops who 
systematically rounded up or killed key leaders, impounded weapons and 
destroyed exactly those positions the brothers had been shown. Convinced 
they had been betrayed to the government, the Atlantic Coast Indians issued 
death warrants against both Bellecourts should they ever come back. IITC 
was permanently banned from their territory.144

While IITC's relationship to indigenous peoples was steadily deteriorating, 
its new cast of "leaders" found plenty of time to hang out with Sandinista 
officials in Managua and Geneva, as well as leftist or simply antiAmerican 
governments from the USSR and Cuba to Libya and Iran.145 By 1984, Vernon 
was taking his slide show on the lucrative college lecture circuit touting 
the "indigenous rights" posture of Nicaragua's Sandinista government and 
glamorizing the relocation centers into which the government had forced 
much of Nicaragua's indigenous population. Rapt audiences listened to him 
explain how the Sandinista revolution's success was more important to 
Indian rights than the Indians themselves.146 In his talks and interviews, 
Vernon habitually described the native resistance, especially MISURASATA, 
Nicaragua's equivalent of AIM, as a "CIA-funded contra organization."147

While the Sandinistas tried to rebut these reports in the pages of 
Barricada and other journals, Vernon's deliberately simplistic and 
decidedly anti-Indian "good guys, bad guys" presentations were especially 
well-received and well-compensated by numerous left organizations and 
"progressives" eager to romanticize someone else's revolution rather than 
make their own.148 Almost overnight Vernon became a countercultural 
celebrity. He had no demonstrable constituent base of his own, yet his 
picture was emblazoned on the front page of the Socialist Workers Party 
publication, The Militant, captioned as the "representative Native American 
radical" of the 80s.149 For several years, the Bellecourts' perspective on 
Nicaragua was the only "indigenous" view that saw print in The Guardian, 
the American left's premier "independent radical news weekly," coverage 
that translated into more lecture invitations and larger honoraria.150

The only problem was that most radical Indians, in or out of AIM, strongly 
disagreed with the Bellecourts' message. When Russell Means announced that 
"the business of the American Indian Movement is supporting Indian 
self-determination, not the governments that seek to prevent it," Vernon 
quickly drafted a press release in the name of the "Central Governing 
Council of the American Indian Movement" claiming that Means "does not 
represent" AIM.151 A few months later, an expulsion was issued on AIM 
letterhead and both brothers announced at a press conference that they had 
"totally expelled [Russell Means] from the American Indian 
Movement."(emphasis added)152

Vernon smeared Means and dozens of others - from Akwesasne Notes editors 
John Mohawk and Mike Meyers to Clem Chartier, a leader of the World Council 
of Indigenous Peoples; from Jim Anaya of the National Indian Youth Council 
to Tim Coulter, director of the Indian Law Resource Center; from Morris and 
Churchill to Hank Adams, head of American Indian Survival, Inc. - as 
"either a CIA puppet or an outright operative."153 He used phone calls, 
faxes and "information packets" in a concerted nationwide campaign similar 
to that now being run against Churchill to prevent Means from being invited 
to speak at college campuses and political events.154 Similarly, San 
Francisco-based "indigenous diplomat" and former IITC director Antonio 
Gonzales has nearly made a career of insinuating that Churchill - and 
dozens of others - are "CIA operatives" because of their support of 
Nicaragua's native peoples against Sandinista assimilation policies in the 
1980s.155

AIM's internal fragmentation and external isolation increasing radically in 
1986, Colorado AIM agreed to host a meeting in Denver to allow Dennis Banks 
to bring the principles together in a verbal "cease fire." The Bellecourts 
boycotted the event.156 A few months later, Dennis Banks tried again, this 
time asking those concerned to meet at Oglala on Pine Ridge. While Clyde 
and an IITC representative showed, Vernon again refused. Instead, he used 
the absence of Morris, Churchill and Locust from Denver as an opportunity 
to deliver a speech sponsored by the local CISPES, Socialist Workers Party 
and New Alliance Party chapters. There, and in other radio interviews, he 
denounced Colorado AIM's support of Means and MISURASATA as being 
"counterrevolutionary," "CIA-inspired" and "possibly controlled by the U.S. 
government."157

The elders who had created IITC had had enough. Not only was the 
organization functioning politically very differently than originally 
intended, but rumors abounded that it was used for cocaine importation.158 
When Vernon tried to stage a symbolic coup at the organization's annual 
meeting, removing Russell Means from the position of permanent trustee the 
traditionals had appointed him to in 1974, the old people refused.159 Just 
like the "expulsions" of Churchill and Morris, this move by Vernon was a 
moot point since all three had long since left the IITC. Within months, the 
IITC had dispensed with grassroots oversight by incorporating itself in 
California, replacing the elders with a handpicked "advisory board."160 
Since then, it has lost whatever standing it once possessed to represent 
indigenous peoples, and has become a funding conduit and employment haven 
for those aligned with the Bellecourts.

While rumors of IITC involvement in narcotic trafficking were never 
investigated, a possible source for the fire behind the smoke came with 
Clyde Bellecourt's 1987 arrest for nine counts of peddling drugs to the 
children living in Minneapolis AIM's Red Earth Housing Project. Outside the 
courtroom, Clyde cried entrapment, while behind closed doors his attorneys 
quietly negotiated a plea bargain situating him in a federal prison from 
which he was released less than two years later, amazingly short time for a 
dealer sentenced during Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.161 Several tribunal 
witnesses and the Ojibwe News attested that after his release, he not only 
resumed the activities which caused his arrest, but branched out into other 
criminal enterprises, all while billing himself as "Executive Director of 
the American Indian Movement."162

Other Fronts

While Clyde was in prison, and the Sandinistas were collapsing, Vernon was 
pursuing other income possibilities. The first was to trade on his "famous 
AIM leader" image by endorsing the 1987-88 presidential campaign of the 
purported "left alternative" candidate Dr. Lenora Fulani, an 
African-American.163 However, disturbing information soon surfaced in a 
series of articles by investigative journalist Ken Lawrence in the Jackson 
Advocate, Mississippi's oldest black-owned newspaper and a mainstay of 
progressive organizing in the state. Not only was Fulani's "Rainbow 
Alliance," a subsidiary of her "New Alliance Party" (NAP), purposely named 
to make voters confuse it with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition (a 
deception designed to enhance fundraising prospects), but it was controlled 
by a white man, Dr. Fred Newman, an outspoken admirer of neofascist Lyndon 
LaRouche.164

To stem the flow of such information, the NAP filed a libel suit claiming 
punitive damages steep enough to personally bankrupt Lawrence and publisher 
Charles Tisdale, as well as put the Advocate out of business165 At trial, 
Vernon appeared as the star witness for the NAP, not only swearing that 
Lawrence's allegations were false, but suggesting that the reporter himself 
was a "federal provocateur" trying to derail a "legitimate African-American 
candidate who happens to hold left-of-center views."166 Vernon was making 
headway with the jury until he admitted under cross examination that he was 
paid $24,000 a year for various "service" to Fulani's organization, 
including his court appearance, thereby lending AIM's endorsement to her 
right-wing fraud as a left-wing alternative, without authorization from AIM 
membership.167

Vernon's exposure as a paid witness had no effect on the trial's outcome 
because after only one day of defense presentations, the case was dismissed 
with prejudice. Proceeding on the basis that "the truth is the best 
defense" against a defamation action, Lawrence quickly established the 
Fulani/Newman/LaRouche relationship.168 NAP's credibility slipped away. But 
damage was done: Vernon's maneuverings left strong memories of an "AIM 
linkage" to the cryptofacist NAP within the African-American community. By 
this time, however, Vernon found a far greener pasture in Colonel Muammar 
al Qadaffi's Libya.169

In 1988, after having already enjoyed a number of trips to Tripoli as a 
"guest of the state," Vernon announced that Qadaffi was preparing to award 
him a grant of $1 million with which to "pursue the struggle for indigenous 
liberation in the United States."170 None of these trips had anything to do 
with AIM, but all of them lent credence to government claims that the 
movement was "associated with international terrorism." A federal grand 
jury was convened to determine whether Vernon's defiance of a U.S. travel 
prohibition to Libya was a legal violation or a breach of the Foreign 
Agents Registration Act, among other things. Vernon was jailed briefly for 
refusing to testify, but suddenly released just as eight members of an Arab 
students association who had helped arrange his trips went to prison, and 
the Palestinian manager of the travel agency booking Vernon's tickets fled 
American jurisdiction.171

Even more striking is that Bellecourt was able to accept Qadaffi's million 
dollars. Awarded in 1991, Vernon only admits that $250,000 of it was 
actually handed over.172 Vernon had stated on several occasions that the 
cash would be dispersed by a board over which he would preside. Native 
organizations could submit proposals and, if approved, their projects would 
be funded.173 His grip on the moneybag temporarily accorded Bellecourt his 
long-sought status as principle arbiter of political correctness in Indian 
Country. However, so far as is known, nobody else ever actually received 
any of this money. This includes the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 
whom Qadaffi was supposed to have personally designated to receive at least 
$50,000.174

Amidst the murk of the Bellecourt finances, either Vernon got the money and 
kept it, or he never had the money at all.175 In either scenario, he 
deliberately misrepresented a situation to command the kind of subservience 
and political fealty he's always craved, a cynical manipulation and 
subterfuge typical of his conduct from start to finish, and typical of the 
dominant culture. It is almost a cliché that the most respected members of 
Native American communities are the poorest because they give anything that 
comes to them to those in need, but it has a basis in truth. Vernon's game 
with the Libyan money graphically exemplifies the deformation of the 
indigenous liberation movement's and opposition politics's values he has 
induced for years.

Are the Bellecourts agents provocateurs? The fact that the Bellecourts have 
long practiced the same disruptive activities for which they've so often 
branded others as government agents and provocateurs does not mean that 
they themselves are agents provocateurs. It seems simpler and perhaps more 
frightening than that. They talk the talk sporadically, but they 
consistently walk the dominant culture walk. Unless and until we have hard 
evidence to the contrary, we must, as Churchill comments, place a premium 
"on establishing the sort of knowledge base and analytical skills among 
activists that would allow the wheat to be sifted from the chaff..."176

Neither are the Bellecourt brothers interchangeable. Churchill says, 
comparing Clyde with the late Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party founder 
and early influence on AIM:
Clyde, like Huey, is a guy who started out really strong. He was sincere, 
he believed, he galvanized people. As a result, both organizations made a 
lot of headway in their initial stages. It follows that a whole lot of new 
talent comes flooding in. It also follows that there was incredibly heavy 
repression in both cases: disinformation in the media, infiltration and 
internal disruption, bogus charges against everybody in sight, people 
railroaded into prison, assassinations, the whole bit. So, initially as a 
legitimate self-defense measure, both men started trying to weed out 
infiltrators. But that pretty quickly became a cover for getting rid of 
political competitors as well. One wonders who ultimately bad-jacketed the 
greater number of people, the feds or Huey. Clyde wasn't as heavyhanded, 
but then he was always covering for Vernon, who certainly made up for 
Clyde's restraint.

Between the repression and the purges, both the Black Panther Party and AIM 
began to disintegrate. Before long they were no longer politically viable, 
had become shells of their former selves as demoralization, depression and 
paranoia set in. Says Churchill, "they retreated into substance abuse and, 
to subsidize that, they started converting whatever remained of their 
original creations into a combination social service program and criminal 
enterprise. By then, totally cynical, they were using their organizational 
titles, both the Black Panther Party in the case of Huey, and AIM in the 
case of Clyde, as a cover for what they were really into. To do that, it 
was necessary to keep right on bad-jacketing competitors, people who were 
truly pursuing liberation politics. It had become an endless cycle, the 
exact opposite of what they'd wanted to accomplish."177

The Huey/Clyde scenario comes off as something of a tragedy, underscoring 
the maiming effects of both counterintelligence methods and the politics of 
hierarchy. The scenario concerning Vernon Bellecourt is something else 
again. "I'd compare Vernon to Lyndon LaRouche," Churchill says. "Not 
LaRouche today in his out-front fascist incarnation, but the way he was 
back in the early 1970s when he was still pretending to be a leading 
left-wing radical. Actually, as we now know, that was always a masquerade, 
a mask he wore in order to conduct a more effective program of disrupting 
leftist organizations. Very few people seem to remember any more how he 
dispatched the cadres of his 'National Council of Labor Caucuses' to 
conduct what he called 'Operation Mop-Up,' beating up organizers in other 
groups, breaking up their meetings, publishing all sorts of rubbish about 
them. This was the outfit Vernon's sometime patron Fred Newman was still 
describing as 'the hegemonic party of the left,' after LaRouche had dropped 
all pretenses and announced himself as a fascist."178

While the analogy isn't perfect and Vernon isn't anywhere near as 
organizationally adept as LaRouche, Vernon's methods and motives are 
similar. "Not that I think ol' Vern's a closet fascist," says Churchill. 
"As near as I can tell, he's got insufficient political principle even for 
that. But LaRouche set out to become a millionaire while he was still 
playing leftie. So did Vernon. LaRouche succeeded in pumping enough out of 
his assorted misrepresentations of himself to make it, and I suspect Vernon 
has, too." The moral here? Talking the talk doesn't necessarily mean 
walking the walk, and failure to look beyond the surface of things often 
leads to collaboration with those whose actions directly undermine 
legitimate activists and sometimes entire movements.

Ultimately, the government's counterintelligence operatives and political 
scavengers like LaRouche, Newmann and the Bellecourts function in much the 
same way to similar regrettable effect. Learning to distinguish them must 
be our first line of defense against both. Continuing to insist on lumping 
them together as "provocateurs" keeps us from dealing with either 
appropriately, and enhances their effectiveness. As Churchill puts it, "If 
there is one thing I want to get across at this point, it's that you don't 
have to be a cop to do a cop's work. The Bellecourts are a classic example 
of that being true."



A Call to Consciousness

We've got to pick up on the lessons of our past
if we're ever going to be able to act in the present
in a way which will allow us to alter our future for the better.

-Ward Churchill



Some questions

Why didn't someone in AIM step in to put a stop to the destructive 
maneuverings of the Bellecourts at some point over the past 
quarter-century? Why don't more of us take the steps necessary to insure 
that the same tactics are not reflected in the work we do today?

Some Answers

For AIM, hindsight argues rather unsatisfactorily that perhaps nobody, 
until the AIM Tribunal in 1995, was in a position to put all the 
information together in a big picture and appreciate the true extent of 
what was happening. Perhaps a more appropriate explanation is that the 
desire to be "non-divisive" blinded people to the importance of confronting 
issues as they arose in a manner that allowed intelligent understanding of 
the situation by the activists involved. According to Aaron Two Elk, there 
seemed to be a consensus in AIM that by ignoring the problems and 
maintaining an artificial appearance of unity, the problems would go away:

A lot of us knew things all along. Not everything, but enough to know a lot 
of wrong stuff was being done. But we always took the approach of trying to 
ignore it or make excuses, to "keep the peace within the movement."We 
didn't want to make things worse by acting the same way Vernon did, you 
know? Looking back, I can see it was a big mistake, that a lot of us 
defaulted on our responsibilities to fix this before it got completely out 
of hand. Now, the question is what can be done.179

This is an important lesson for all of us. Today, the "let's not be 
divisive" argument too often excuses refusing the call to consciousness. It 
facilitates smear campaigns and cop-like tactics targeting those who take 
clear and perhaps controversial stands but are willing to argue them, like 
Churchill. Some say, "I'm not part of AIM; I only work in grassroots 
organizations," as though AIM weren't grassroots and as if such issues 
don't arise in grassroots organizations. They do and when they do we must 
address and discuss them as thinking individuals concerned with the overall 
goal of human liberation. Avoiding this process does not avoid division, 
but creates and perpetuates it. By default, our silence places us squarely 
beside those who are the problem, not the solution. No matter where we are 
and what work we are doing, silence is implied and effectual consent.

Nothing can replace political consciousness and analytical abilities as we 
proceed down the path of human liberation. As activists we must assume the 
responsibility of addressing situations from a principled foundation, a 
foundation that can't be developed without going through the hard work of 
reading, studying and analyzing other movements and organizations, enabling 
us to draw our own conclusions.

Authoritarian structures such as NAIMI trade upon a high degree of mindless 
clustering around a few self-designated "leaders." This was sharply evident 
in Feike's actions in Chicago prior to the Mumia benefit. Feike apparently 
saw no contradiction between her self-identification as 
"anti-authoritarian" and her obedient alignment with someone as 
fundamentally authoritarian as Vernon Bellecourt. She refused to look 
behind Vernon's carefully contrived "real Indian" persona and as a result 
willingly placed herself in his hands. Her actions, like those of others 
equally thoughtless, whether out of ignorance or lack of reflection, 
directly undermine legitimate activists and movements by attacking 
genuinely independent thinkers. Such an environment hardly needs payrolled 
counterintelligence operatives, when our own actions do their work for 
them. In the name of "ideological purity" and "unity"- however defined 
within a particular context - denunciations, purges and smear campaigns 
flourish, and we obviate the need for government disrupters. What may have 
begun as a principled disagreement deteriorates into "leaders" issuing 
commands and the rest parroting them, mindlessly acting upon them, or 
ignoring them. No matter how you look at it the result is the same: you may 
be talking our talk but you're walking The Man's walk.

NAIMI is just one of many movements so fractured. The infiltration and 
destruction of the Black Panther Party, the Chicano movement and other 
progressive left organizations make up a palette of depressing colors. The 
decimation of the Old Left in the 50's could have offered an example to the 
later groups and the Old Left could no doubt have benefited from the 
experience of groups before them. Studying them provides lessons in how the 
process works and how we can prevent it from happening again.

But as we make our historical analysis, we must try to see how the internal 
relations within these organizations created fertile breeding grounds for 
counterintelligence operations in the past and undermine our present work. 
We cannot realize human liberation on a large scale if we duplicate the 
dominant corporate culture's relationships on the small scale. The work of 
human liberation is hard on both levels, and involves a call to political 
consciousness many have not yet demonstrated a willingness to make. That 
makes it all the more imperative that the rest of us do so.

In practical terms, this means not rushing to judgment, going to sources, 
checking rumors out, asking questions. It means doing your best to defuse 
this kind of behavior in groups you belong to if you are lucky and smart 
enough to see it starting. Raise unspoken suspicions and rumors and get 
them cleared or confirmed. Most situations allow time for investigation, 
primary sources are better than fourth-hand information. Straight up people 
can answer questions and don't mind doing it, since they are in the 
business of educating more people like themselves. The odds are that if you 
are reading this article at all you are one who is easy with books and 
argument. Not everyone is. Serve those who aren't by explaining how you do 
this kind of work so they can look for themselves and aren't being asked to 
blindly trust you.

We must ensure that political differences within movements are aired with 
mutual respect rather than sensational smear campaigns and avoidance of 
straightforward discussion. We must take responsibility for our own 
investigation of controversies before passing judgment. We are the ones who 
must appropriately address those within our ranks who embrace tactics and 
attributes that weaken our work. Failing this responsibility means directly 
undermining the multilevel struggles now calling us to action.

Some object that "time constraints" prevent them from engaging in such 
investigations, or that they aren't interested in history but what we can 
do now. We can't know what to do now without knowing history. I can't help 
thinking of an indigenous Mexican man who joined the Zapatista Army of 
National Liberation. For him, the constraints of war, poverty and disease 
would be excellent alibis for drawing a sum line under his mind. He not 
only learned Spanish, but how to read so that he could painstakingly work 
his way over the course of a year and a half through a biography of Zapata. 
Why? He could not happily call himself a Zapatista without himself knowing 
what he was naming himself after, what he was fighting for and whether he 
could stand behind it. He was hungry for knowledge, not soundbites, and 
acted out of integrity, not attitude. The telling contrast between his 
situation and ours reveals that our very aversion to knowledge itself is a 
reflection of the dominant culture's influence on us.

He knew he needed to study and find answers to his questions to be of use 
in the struggle. The tools we need are much more accessible, but study of 
the past and analysis of the present require discipline and commitment not 
unlike that of the young Zapatista insurgente.180 As Churchill has noted,

There are no exceptions. This kind of self-education is a fundamental 
obligation for anyone who claims to be a committed activist. There are no 
real options, and there are no shortcuts. It's the only way to lay the 
informational/analytical groundwork for your average radical to recognize 
the sort of thing that's been happening with National AIM Inc. and 
neutralize it before they end up getting neutralized by it.

I don't want to hear that tired old evasion about how there's "more 
important" stuff to focus on right now. Nothing else you may be into counts 
at all, once you're neutralized. Get it? Still less do I want to hear that 
lame shit like "reading is boring," or "it takes too long," or "it's too 
much work" and "aren't there any movies I could watch on this?"

Why do you think we call it struggle?

If you're not willing to invest what it takes to develop your own 
historical and analytical consciousness beyond the level of a parrot, what 
are you willing to invest to get something done? The answer, I think is 
self-evident. You're not serious. You're treating your politics like a 
fashion statement, and it's really irresponsible of you to prattle on as if 
it were otherwise.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20050215/dc0cf307/attachment.htm>