1st Edition

Acts of Rebellion The Ward Churchill Reader

By Ward Churchill Copyright 2003
    504 Pages
    by Routledge

    504 Pages
    by Routledge

    What could be more American than Columbus Day? Or the Washington Redskins? For Native Americans, they are bitter reminders that they live in a world where their identity is still fodder for white society.

    "The law has always been used as toilet paper by the status quo where American Indians are concerned," writes Ward Churchill in Acts of Rebellion, a collection of his most important writings from the past twenty years. Vocal and incisive, Churchill stands at the forefront of American Indian concerns, from land issues to the American Indian Movement, from government repression to the history of genocide.

    Churchill, one of the most respected writers on Native American issues, lends a strong and radical voice to the American Indian cause. Acts of Rebellion shows how the most basic civil rights' laws put into place to aid all Americans failed miserably, and continue to fail, when put into practice for our indigenous brothers and sisters. Seeking to convey what has been done to Native North America, Churchill skillfully dissects Native Americans' struggles for property and freedom, their resistance and repression, cultural issues, and radical Indian ideologies.

    Acknowledgements
    Introduction. Acts of Rebellion: Reflections on the Role of a Writer
    Part I. In Matters of Law1. The Tragedy and the Travesty: The Subversion of Indigenous Sovereignty in North America
    2. The Nullification of Native American? An Analysis of the 1990 American Indian Arts and Crafts Act
    3. Confronting Columbus Day: An Argument Based in International Law

    Part II. Struggles for Lands and Lives
    4. The Earth is Our Mother: Struggles for American Indian Land and Liberation in the Contemporary United States
    5. A Breach of Trust: The Radioactive Colonization of Native North America
    6. Like Sand in the Wind: The Making of an American Indian Diaspora in the United States
    7. The Bloody Wake of Alcatraz: Repression of the American Indian Movement During the 1970s
    Part III. Culture Wars
    8. Fantasies of the Master Race: Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians
    9. Let's Spread the "Fun" Around: The Issue of American Indian Sports Team Mascots
    10. Indians 'R' Us: Reflections on the Men's Movements
    Part IV. The Indigenist Alternative
    11. False Promises: An Indigenist Analysis of Marxist Theory and Practice
    12. The New face of Liberation: Indigenous Rebellion, State Repression, and the Reality of the Fourth World
    13. I am Indigenist: Notes on the Ideology of the Fourth World
    Notes
    Permissions Acknowledgements
    Index

    Biography

    Ward Churchill is Professor and Associate Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has written scores of articles, along with eight books, including Agents of Repression and A Little Matter of Genocide. Three of his books have won the Gustavus Meyer Award for Human Rights.

    "This valuable collection of forceful writings by an influential Native American leader is highly recommended for all academic libraries." -- Library Journal, March 15, 2003
    "Ward Churchill has carved out a special place for himself in defending the rights of oppressed people, and exposing the dark side of past and current history, often forgotten, marginalized, or suppressed. These are achievements of inestimable value." -- Noam Chomsky
    "Ward Churchill is one of our most powerful chroniclers of Indian history-both of the sorry record of the United States government and the extraordinary resistance of the Indian people to policies of removal and annihilation. Each one of his books is an education in itself." -- Howard Zinn