Professor Can’t Prove Indian Ties, Tribe Says

An Oklahoma Indian tribe says a besieged University of Colorado professor whose claim of Indian heritage is under investigation “could not prove any Cherokee ancestry.”

In a statement, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians said it gave Ward Churchill an “honorary associate membership” because he promised to write a tribal history.

Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies who could lose his job over allegations that he lied about his ancestry and plagiarized others’ work, said Wednesday the tribe’s statements are false.

In an e-mail to the Associated Press, Churchill said the United Keetoowahs’ membership committee twice confirmed he had Cherokee ancestors before he was made an associate member. He said the tribe had a right to disenroll him or ask him to resign, but that it hadn’t done so.

Churchill touched off a firestorm when he wrote an essay comparing some of the World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazis who orchestrated the Holocaust. University leaders said he couldn’t be fired over the statements because of 1st Amendment protections, but they ordered a faculty panel to review allegations of plagiarism and that he falsely claimed to be an Indian.

Besides insisting on his Indian heritage, Churchill has denied plagiarism.

The Keetoowah statement, first reported by the Rocky Mountain News, said the tribe “has no association with Churchill in any capacity whatsoever” and called his comments about the Sept. 11 victims offensive.

Churchill’s essay called some trade center victims “little Eichmanns” in an apparent reference to their work on behalf of a U.S. government he contended was an oppressive economic empire.