Last night, the Schine Underground was filled with perversion – the perversion of justice.

Ward Churchill, a Creek and Keetoowah-band Cherokee Indian, spoke about the United States and its illegal practices within its own system of government against American Indians. Churchill, an acclaimed author, orator and American Indian-rights activist, was presented on behalf of the Student Environmental Action Coalition and had one main question for the audience: ‘Where are the Onondagans?’

When only one audience member raised her had to identify herself as a native of the region, Churchill decried the U.S. legal system.

‘For those of you who are not indigenous,’ he said, ‘what is your legal right to be on this land? Wouldn’t it be an illegal occupation that is going on here? The Irish weren’t here before the Indians – I know that’s not how they teach it in these politically correct New York schools.’

Churchill said that he approved of George H.W. Bush’s actions in the early 1990s against Iraq, because the United States was doing for the Kuwaitis what Churchill believes should be done for American Indians. Bush found it necessary to remove Iraqis from territory that wasn’t legally theirs; but, Churchill said, ‘He wasn’t applying the standard in a way that was self-reflecting.’

When the United States began creating treaties with the Indians, each party became contractually obligated to the other. The United States is in violation of its treaties, Churchill said. However, what is done in the United States today was originally done by Spain when they first came to this country and stuck their flag in the sand, he said.

The movement against the Indians during the French and Indian wars was also unjust, Churchill said. By his definition, a just war can only occur if the natives do violence without provocation against the powers at hand, they decline to comply with the law arbitrarily or they refuse to admit missionaries among them. Since 1492, when Christopher Columbus first arrived in the ‘new world,’ Churchill is unable to find a situation in which any of these criteria existed.

‘Indians are sovereign enough to have our property alienated from us,’ he said, ‘but we’re not sovereign enough to say no about it.’

There are 2 million American Indians in the United States today, who own 50 million acres of land among them, making them the largest land-holding group in the country. This land contains two-thirds of the country’s domestic uranium reserves, one-fourth of coal reserves and one-fifth of oil and natural gas reserves, he said. If these assets were divided fairly amongst all Indians, it would make them the richest group in the United States, Churchill said.

‘That’s not to say that it would make each person as rich as Bill Gates,’ he said. ‘Bill Gates shouldn’t be on the cover of Fortune magazine, he should be on ‘America’s Most Wanted,” he said. ‘The amount of money he has is a crime against humanity.’

Churchill feels that the United States is still exercising its power against American Indians and against other nations in unfair ways.

‘If you want to stop globalization, you have to be about enforcing laws in the United States,’ he said. ‘If we can’t see what it is that we’re trying to do clearly, we can’t get it done. We owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our children and to our children’s children seven generations into the future.’

Published on November 19, 2003 at 12:00 pm