Ward Churchill

Ward LeRoy Churchill (October 2, 1947 – August 11, 2026) was an American activist, author and academic. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 until 2007. Much of Churchill's work focused on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government, and he expressed controversial views in a directoften confrontational and abrasivestyle.

While Churchill claimed Native American ancestry, genealogical research has failed to unearth such ancestry, and he was not a recognized member of any tribe. In January 2005, Churchill's 2001 essay "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" gained attention. In the work, he argued the September 11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. foreign policy over the latter half of the 20th century; the essay is known for Churchill's use of the phrase "little Eichmanns" to describe the "technocratic corps" working in the World Trade Center.

In March 2005, the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct. Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the university for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009, a Denver jury found that Churchill was unjustly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. In July 2009, however, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, holding that the university had "quasi-judicial immunity". Churchill's appeals of this decision were unsuccessful.

Early life and education Churchill was born in Urbana, Illinois, on October 2, 1947, to Jack LeRoy Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen. His parents divorced before he turned two. He grew up in Elmwood, Illinois, where he attended local schools.

In 1966, Churchill was drafted into the United States Army. On his 1980 resume, he claimed to have served as a public-information specialist who "wrote and edited the battalion newsletter and wrote news releases". In 2005, the Denver Post reported on fabrications in Churchill's service record. Department of Defense personnel files showed that Churchill was trained as a film projectionist and light truck driver, but they do not reflect paratrooper school or LRRP training.

Churchill received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Alfred University in 1992.

In 1994, then CU-Boulder Chancellor James Corbridge refused to take action on allegations that Churchill was fraudulently claiming to be an Indian, saying "it has always been university policy that a person's race or ethnicity is self-proving."

In 1996, Churchill moved to the new Ethnic Studies Department of the University of Colorado. In 1997, he was promoted to full professor. He was selected as chairman of the department in June 2002. Documents in Churchill's university personnel file show that Churchill was granted tenure in a "special opportunity position".

In 2005, the University of Colorado's Research Misconduct Committee conducted a preliminary investigation into whether Churchill misrepresented his ethnicity to "add credibility and public acceptance to his scholarship". The university has said that it does not hire on the basis of ethnicity. Additional critics were sociologist Thomas Brown, who had been preparing an article on Churchill's work; and historians R. G. Robertson and Russell Thornton, who said that Churchill had misrepresented their work.

In 2005, University of Colorado Boulder administrators ordered an investigation into seven allegations of research misconduct against Churchill. The allegations included three allegations of plagiarism, allegations of fabrication or falsification regarding the history of the Dawes Act and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, and alleged claims that smallpox was intentionally spread to Native Americans by John Smith in 1614 and by the United States Army at Fort Clark in 1837.

On May 16, 2006, the university released its findings; the Investigative Committee unanimously concluded that Churchill had engaged in "serious research misconduct", including falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism. on July 24, 2007, the university regents voted seven to two to uphold all seven of the findings of research misconduct. The regents voted eight to one to fire Churchill. The jury in Churchill's suit for reinstatement weighed the university's claims of academic misconduct per jury instructions it received in the case. On April 1, 2009, the jury found that Churchill had been wrongly fired, and awarded $1 in damages. Churchill appealed, but Judge Naves's decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals and by the Colorado Supreme Court. On April 1, 2013, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Churchill's case.

A 2011 report by the Colorado Committee to Protect Faculty Rights of the Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors investigating academic freedom at the University of Colorado - Boulder determined that Churchill's termination was unjustified.

Writing According to the University of Colorado investigation, Churchill's academic publications "are nearly all works of synthesis and reinterpretation, drawing upon studies by other scholars, not monographs describing new research based on primary sources." The investigation also noted that "he has decided to publish largely in alternative presses or journals, not in the university presses or mainstream peer-reviewed journals often favored by more conventional academics."

In 1986, Churchill wrote the essay "Pacifism as Pathology: Notes on an American Pseudopraxis" criticizing pacifist politics within the U.S. left as being hypocritical, de facto racist and ineffectual. In 1998, Arbeiter Ring Publishing published the essay in a book entitled Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America, listing Ward Churchill as the author. The book included a preface by Ed Mead (of the George Jackson Brigade), a new introduction to the essay by Churchill and a commentary by Michael Ryan. The book sparked much debate in leftist circles and inspired more aggressive tactics within the anti-globalization movement in the following few years. George Lakey, a co-founder of the pacifist Movement for a New Society, published a detailed response in 2001 titled "Nonviolent Action as the Sword that Heals: Challenging Ward Churchill's 'Pacifism As Pathology. The 2007 edition published by AK Press includes a preface by Derrick Jensen. A third edition was published in 2017 by PM Press with updates by Churchill and Ryan, and a foreword by Dylan Rodríguez.

Churchill's Indians Are Us? (1994), a sequel to Fantasies of the Master Race, further explores Native American issues in popular culture and politics. He examines the movie Black Robe, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation killings, the prosecution of Leonard Peltier, sports mascots, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, and blood quantum laws, calling them tools of genocide. Churchill is particularly outspoken about New Age exploitations of shamanism and American Indian sacred traditions, and the "do-it-yourself Indianism" of certain contemporary authors. John P. LaVelle of the University of New Mexico School of Law published a review of Indians Are Us? in The American Indian Quarterly. Professor LaVelle, an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Nation, states that Indians Are Us? twists historical facts and is hostile toward Indian tribes.

Churchill argued that in the American continent the Indigenous populations were subjected to a systematic campaign of extermination by settler colonialism: "For Churchill, the greatest series of genocides ever perpetrated in history - in terms of magnitude and duration - occurred in the Americas...". He discusses American policies such as the Indian Removal Act and the forced assimilation of Indigenous children in American Indian boarding schools operating in the mid-1800s to early 1900s. He has called manifest destiny an ideology used to justify dispossession and genocide against Native Americans, and compared it to Lebensraum ideology of Nazi Germany.

Blood quantum Churchill argued that the United States instituted blood quantum laws based upon rules of descendancy in order to further goals of personal enrichment and political expediency. For decades in his writings, Churchill has argued that blood quantum laws have an inherent genocidal purpose. He says: "Set the blood quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed as it [has] and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence".

Churchill's assertions about the blood quantum were raised when research-misconduct allegations were brought against him in 2005 . He has been accused of using his interpretation of the Dawes Act to attack tribal governments that would not recognize him as a member.

September 11 essay Churchill wrote an essay in September 2001 entitled On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. In it, he argued that the September 11 attacks were provoked by U.S. foreign policy. He described the role of financial workers at the World Trade Center as an "ongoing genocidal American imperialism" comparable to the role played by Adolf Eichmann in organizing the Holocaust. In 2005, this essay drew attention after Hamilton College invited Churchill to speak. In the early 1990s at Santa Fe Indian Market, Churchill protested the passage of the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act. It requires that, to identify and exhibit works as being by a Native American, artists and craftsmen must be enrolled in a Native American tribe or designated by a tribe as an artisan.

His 1981 serigraph Winter Attack was, according to Churchill and others, based on a 1972 drawing by the artist Thomas E. Mails. Churchill printed 150 copies of Winter Attack and sold at least one of them. Other copies are available online for purchase. Churchill said that, when he produced Winter Attack, he publicly acknowledged that it was based on Mails's work. In 1992, Churchill wrote elsewhere that he was one-eighth Creek and one-sixteenth Cherokee. In 1993, Churchill told the Colorado Daily that "he was one-sixteenth Creek and Cherokee." Churchill told the Denver Post in February 2005 that he was three-sixteenths Cherokee.

In a statement dated May 9, 2005, and posted on its website, the United Keetoowah Band said: "The United Keetoowah Band would like to make it clear that Mr. Churchill is not a member of the Keetoowah Band and was only given an honorary 'associate membership' in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry". The Band added that Churchill's claims of Keetoowah enrollment were deemed fraudulent by the United Keetoowah Band.

Two days later, the United Keetoowah Band replaced its earlier statement with the following: "Because Mr. Churchill had genealogical information regarding his alleged ancestry", and because he was willing "to assist the UKB in promoting the tribe and its causes, he was awarded an 'Associate Membership' as an honor". The Band clarified that Churchill "was not eligible for tribal membership due to the fact that he does not possess a 'Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB)", and added that associate membership did not entitle an individual to voting rights or enrollment in the tribe. The Band's spokesperson, Lisa Stopp, stated the tribe enrolls only members with certified one-quarter American Indian blood. the Band indicated in 2005 that Churchill still held an associate membership.

Churchill never asked for CDIB certification and said that he found the idea of being "vetted" by the US government offensive.

In June 2005, the Rocky Mountain News published an article about Churchill's genealogy and family history. The newspaper's research "turned up no evidence of a single Indian ancestor" among 142 direct ancestors [of Churchill's] identified from records.

Activism Churchill was a leader of Colorado AIM's annual protests in Denver against the Columbus Day holiday and its associated parade.

Death Churchill died from complications of a stroke on August 11, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 78.

Works Books, as editor

Re-released as

Books, as author and co-author

Re-released as Revised and expanded edition:

Articles

First published as "Crimes Against Humanity" in Also published under the titles "The Indian Chant and the Tomahawk Chop" and "Using Indian Names as Mascots Harms Native Americans".

Audio and video Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment, audio CD of a lecture, recorded at the Doing Time Conference at the University of Winnipeg, September 2000 (AK Press, 2001, ) Life in Occupied America (AK Press, 2003, ) In a Pig's Eye: Reflections on the Police State, Repression, and Native America (AK Press, 2002, ) US Off the Planet!: An Evening In Eugene With Ward Churchill And Chellis Glendinning, VHS video recorded July 17, 2001 (Cascadia Media Collective, 2002) Pacifism and Pathology in the American Left, 2003 audio CD recorded at an AK Press warehouse in Oakland (AK Press Audio) August 10, 2003 and earlier Churchill Speaks About Academic Freedom – Free Speech Radio News February 9, 2005 Ward Churchill Under Fire – Free Speech Radio News, February 3, 2005. The Justice of Roosting Chickens: Ward Churchill Speaks The Pacifica Network Show, Democracy Now! from February 18, 2005, features extended Audio/Video exclusive interview with Churchill. "A Little Matter of Genocide: Linking U.S. Aggression Abroad to the Domestic Repression of Indigenous Peoples", recorded in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, on March 19, 2005 Debate with David Horowitz and Ward Churchill at George Washington University April 6, 2006

Video and audio (excerpt)