Ward Churchill, wannabe Indian? Posted by: McQ
on Thursday, February 03, 2005
According to the tribal records of the band of Cherokees of which he claims to be a member, he's not one of theirs:
The United Keetoowah Band Cherokee says University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is not a member of their tribe.
"He's not in the database at all and is not a member of the Keetoowah," said Georgia Mauldin, the tribal clerk in Tahlequah, Okla.
In his books and articles, Churchill has described himself as a member of the Keetoowah Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. In past interviews, he's claimed to be one-sixteenth Cherokee.
But the Keetoowah say that's not true.
Churchill has been unavailable for comment.
UPDATE: The Grand Governing Council of the American Indian Movment (AIM) has issued a statement on both Churchill's 9/11 screed and his status as an indian:
The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council representing the National and International leadership of the American Indian Movement once again is vehemently and emphatically repudiating and condemning the outrageous statements made by academic literary and Indian fraud, Ward Churchill in relationship to the 9-11 tragedy in New York City that claimed thousands of innocent people’s lives.
Churchill’s statement that these people deserved what happened to them, and calling them little Eichmanns, comparing them to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who implemented Adolf Hitler’s plan to exterminate European Jews and others, should be condemned by all.
The sorry part of this is Ward Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement, a situation that has lifted him into the position of a lecturer on Indian activism. He has used the American Indian Movement’s chapter in Denver to attack the leadership of the official American Indian Movement with his misinformation and propaganda campaigns.
Ward Churchill has been masquerading as an Indian for years behind his dark glasses and beaded headband. He waves around an honorary membership card that at one time was issued to anyone by the Keetoowah Tribe of Oklahoma. Former President Bill Clinton and many others received these cards, but these cards do not qualify the holder a member of any tribe. He has deceitfully and treacherously fooled innocent and naïve Indian community members in Denver, Colorado, as well as many other people worldwide. Churchill does not represent, nor does he speak on behalf of the American Indian Movement.
New York’s Hamilton College Kirklands Project should be aware that in their search for truth and justice, the idea that they have hired a fraud to speak on Indian activism is in itself a betrayal of their goals.
When did this "blood quantum" business begin? Is that an invention of the Bureau of Indian Affairs?
There are a number of references to it. I think the points of origin or inception vary throughout the hemisphere. The Spanish were involved in categorization of various genetic combinations almost from the onset. You could say that five hundred years ago was the basis of blood quantum in Ibero-America. But in Anglo-America, while there was some preoccupation with it, it was not formalized until the passage of the General Allotment Act, mid-1880s. At that point they began to define Indian as being someone who was demonstrably and documentably of at least one-quarter by quantum blood indigenous in a given group. You couldn't be an eighth Cheyenne and an eighth Arapaho and be an Indian. You had to be a quarter Cheyenne or a quarter Arapaho or hopefully a quarter and a quarter. The reason for this was quite clear. They were identifying Indians for purposes of allotting them individual parcels of land in the existing reservation base at that point. If they ran out of Indians identifiable as such, then the rest of the land would be declared surplus. So it was clearly in the interests of the government to create a definition of Indianness that would minimize the number of Indians that were available. It was an economic motivation for the application of this genetic criteria to Indianness in the first place. It's become increasingly so ever since. --Ward Churchill
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (CNO), in its 1975 constitution, took the unprecedented step, still unparalleled by other twentieth century indigenous governments, of completely dispensing with blood quantum requirements in its enrollment procedures and resuming its reliance upon a more traditional genealogical mode of determining citizenship. This had the effect of increasing the number of persons formally identified as Cherokees from fewer than 10,000 during the late 1950s to slightly over 232,000 by 1980 (and about 300,000 today). On this basis, the Cherokees, whose reservation was dissolved pursuant to the 1898 Curtis Act, have been able to assert what amounts to a split jurisdiction over their former territory. Moreover, while much has been made by assorted race mongers about how this course of action was "diluting" whatever was left of 'real" Cherokee culture and society, the precise opposite result has obtained in practice.
"The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council representing the National and International leadership of the American Indian Movement once again is vehemently and emphatically repudiating and condemning the outrageous statements made by academic literary and Indian fraud, Ward Churchill in relationship to the 9-11 tragedy in New York City that claimed thousands of innocent peoples lives.
Churchills statement that these people deserved what happened to them, and calling them little Eichmanns, comparing them to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who implemented Adolf Hitlers plan to exterminate European Jews and others, should be condemned by all.
The sorry part of this is Ward Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement, a situation that has lifted him into the position of a lecturer on Indian activism. He has used the American Indian Movements chapter in Denver to attack the leadership of the official American Indian Movement with his misinformation and propaganda campaigns.
Ward Churchill has been masquerading as an Indian for years behind his dark glasses and beaded headband. He waves around an honorary membership card that at one time was issued to anyone by the Keetoowah Tribe of Oklahoma. Former President Bill Clinton and many others received these cards, but these cards do not qualify the holder a member of any tribe. He has deceitfully and treacherously fooled innocent and nave Indian community members in Denver, Colorado, as well as many other people worldwide. Churchill does not represent, nor does he speak on behalf of the American Indian Movement.
New Yorks Hamilton College Kirklands Project should be aware that in their search for truth and justice, the idea that they have hired a fraud to speak on Indian activism is in itself a betrayal of their goals."
Dennis J. Banks, Ojibwa Nation Chairman of the Board American Indian Movement Phone: 218-654-5885
Nee Gon Nway Wee Dung, aka, Clyde H. Bellecourt, Ojibwa Nation National Executive Director American Indian Movement Cell: 612-251-5836 Office: 612-724-3129
Press Contact: WaBun-Inini, aka, Vernon Bellecourt, Ojibwa Nation Executive Committee Member Director Council on Foreign Relations American Indian Movement Office: 612-721-3914 Cell: 612-889-0796
The question of who's really an American Indian, what with the variation in blood quantum requirements from tribe to tribe, is confusing enough, and it's mostly because the Federal government has a long history of meddling, claiming the right to tell Indian people who they are and who they ought to be.
Blood Quantum is the total percentage of your blood that is tribal native due to bloodline. All of the Nations use Blood Quantum as a requirement for membership. Usually this is detailed on a CDIB (Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood) Card issued by the United States Government. Additionally, many of the Nations have other requirements for Membership.
As to how it affects you, that is a matter of some debate. Some Native Americans will never recognize you as "Indian" unless you are an enrolled member of a Federally Recognized Tribe, Band, or Nation. Others will recognize you as "Indian" if you are making an honest effort to reconnect with your own ancestral culture.
Today over three hundred American Indian tribes (excluding Alaskan villages) in the United States are by treaty or executive order recognized by the federal government and receive services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are additionally some 125 to 150 groups seeking federal recognition, and dozens of others that might do so in the future.
Let us look at these issues from a traditional and political viewpoint. Non-federally recognized tribes have been around for a long time. In fact, ALL tribes were non-federally recognized until the Continental Congress began to negotiate treaties with some Native nations in the 1770s. But the new U.S. federal government chose to concentrate its attention upon nations found west of the Appalachians or in Florida, ignoring virtually every tribe located within the core boundaries of the original thirteen states. The eastern tribes were left to flounder in a sea of neglect, racism, and ambiguity, in spite of the new federal Constitution that established federal supremacy over "commerce" with the tribes. Historically this clearly documents that the original Native American traditional culture is to be Non-federally recognized. Ironic how political definitions get turned around to suit current generations?
The issue of sovereignty is at the heart of current disputes over the opening of casinos by Native communities. It is generally conceded that federally recognized tribes possess a residue of sovereignty (self-rulership/government), which enables them to use their land base in self-determined ways not subject to state laws (except in certain cases). However, it is not generally recognized that state-recognized tribes, which possess reserved lands (formerly known as "Indian towns" and later as reservations), also are likely to possess the same degree of sovereignty as federally recognized tribes.
Another factor involves our country's "love affair" with racism and stereotyping, a factor, which very much affects most eastern tribes (though not all). Tragically, non-tribal people have come to believe that Native Americans should physically resemble the Sioux or Navajos seen on television, or the Italians playing Indians in old Western movies. Our contemporary schoolbooks and films do not explain to the public that eastern Native communities were often places of refuge in the colonies and states, places where the laws of racial segregation did not apply.
From New England to Florida most Native tribes provided homes for persons of mixed white and Native, Black and Native, and other combinations of ancestry. As a result many eastern Indians began to partially resemble African-Americans (and, indeed, large numbers of African-Americans have American racial ancestry in any case, from the Caribbean as well as from the United States itself). This presents a challenge, then, for white people obsessed with stereotypes. They might be willing to accept a white-Indian mixed person as an Indian, but their racial sensitivity balks at recognizing a person of part-African appearance. Things have not changed all that much in two centuries!
The 1990 U.S. Census reported the largest number of Native Americans in the states of Oklahoma, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The census also indicated that slightly over half of Native Americans live in urban areas; cities with the largest Native American populations are New York, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Tulsa, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Anchorage, and Albuquerque. Around one-fourth of American Indians in the United States live on 278 reservations (or pueblos or rancherias) or associated "tribal trust lands," according to the census.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has used a "blood quantum" definitiongenerally, one-fourth degree of American Indian "blood"and/or tribal membership to recognize a person as an American Indian. However, each tribe has a particular set of requirements, typically including a blood quantum, for membership (enrollment) in the tribe. Requirements vary widely from tribe to tribe: a few tribes require at least a one-half Indian (or tribal) blood quantum; many others require a one-fourth blood quantum; still others, generally in California and Oklahoma, require a one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or one-thirty-second blood quantum; and some tribes have no minimum blood quantum requirement at all but require an explicitly documented tribal lineage.
Recently, December 16, 2003, a Southwest Tribe made headlines when it announced that 50 Percent Isleta Blood Needed To Stay In Tribe. Dozens of people who spent their whole lives thinking they were members of the Isleta Pueblo are finding out they are not. People on the Pueblo have been getting letters telling them they have to have 50 percent Isleta blood to be part of the tribe. The letters they received say that people can challenge them if they fill out a family tree proving their heritage.
Also in Southern California,2/03/ 2004, Tribal power is exercised to fulfill political goals.
"Tribes as sovereign nations are shielded from lawsuits filed against them. Velie, however, contends that individuals are not protected by sovereign immunity when they act outside the authority granted to them by the tribe.
The plaintiffs allege that the committee members violated Pechanga Band law and imposed standards above those required by the Pechanga Constitution by launching disenrollment proceedings against them. The lawsuit also accuses the committee members of trying to increase their own portions of casino profits by diminishing the number of tribal members eligible for profit-sharing payments.
The plaintiffs trace their family line back to Manuel Miranda, granddaughter of Pablo Apish, the Pechanga headman who received a 2,223-acre land grant from California Gov. Pio Pico in 1845.
The committee members maintain that Miranda, who was half Pechanga according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, moved off the reservation and cut her ties to the tribe 80 years ago. As a result, they are now demanding additional documentation of linear descent from the disputed members, most of whom have enjoyed full membership rights for 25 years."
History is being rewritten across the Americas in this new millennium. Native Americans (peoples marginalized by modernity) are perfectly capable of defending themselves; you don't have to do it for them. Written history is a seriously overrated Enlightenment construction. Most peoples have lived without for most times. Written history is used to justify political and social power. Western civilization thought seems to be arguing that mythic histories, epics, folk-knowledge and non-historicized versions of the past open up possibilities for thinking. Utopian thinking is the only response possible when you have destroyed all other possibilities for thinking the past when history has become the only legitimate resource for accessing the past. This situation has come to dominate Western societies experience of the past. The west has destroyed its past outside history.
The post-industrial, Pan-Indian Movement emerged in 1977 when the Haudenosaunee, and Indians from North and South America, presented their Great Law of Peace to the United Nations, with a warning that Western civilization, through the process of colonialism, was destroying the earth's ability to renew her. They recommended the development of liberation technologies, which would be anti-colonial, or self-sustaining, and the development of liberation theologies. A liberation theology will develop in people a consciousness that all life on the earth is sacred and that the sacredness of life is the key to human freedom and survival (Akwesasne Notes 1978: basic call to consciousness). The Peacemaker argued not for the establishment of law and order, but for the full establishment of peace, and universal justice.
In 1978, Indians walked from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., this trek was called The Longest Walk. The outcome of this walk was the Native American Freedom of Religion Act. During this walk participants were taught spiritual wisdom. The spiritual leaders got together and worked out ceremonies that did not conflict with any one Indian Nation's spiritual beliefs. Many Indian Nations are forbidden, by prophecy, to share their specific religious beliefs, even with other Indians, and with members of their own tribe who are less than full bloods. A Lakota spiritual leader had a vision that the colors black, red, yellow and white, our sacred colors, stood for the four races. The Lakota offered their Sweat Lodge ceremony and the Sweat Lodge has become the most widely spread ceremony in Pan- Indians. It was in the Lakota Sweat Lodge that we first learned to pray for all my relations.
After the Longest Walk the Lakota Sun Dance extended to California at D-Q University at Davis. Many of the Indians who had been on the Longest Walk, participated in that Sun Dance. Now, reportedly, there has been another vision of Buffalo Calf Woman turning into buffalo of the four sacred colors. This has served to bolster the idea that the Red Road is for everyone.
The Pan-Indian movement is made up of all four races, but the largest contingency are non-federally recognized Indians, primarily urban, who are desperately clinging to their Indian identity. These people are not white, although some white people do also Sun Dance, they are very much in the minority, and are usually related to or have married into Indian families. Many Mixed Bloods (with less than 1/4 from a single tribe), because the federal government no longer recognizes them as Indians, even though they may have 100% Indian blood, do not come under the jurisdiction of the BIA or Tribal councils, so their rights to the Bill of Rights have not been abrogated. Nationhood implies conformity with international human rights ethics. Ethnic cleansing is a violation of human rights.
Indians ceded their land to the government by Treaty. A Treaty is an international contract. Contracts are the crux of Western civilization. It is unconscionable in today's world to deny a whole group of people the fulfillment of their contracts solely on the basis of race.
To understand the current USA mis-adventure in Iraq, look a little closer to home. Keetowah Cherokee Ward Churchill book Struggle for the Land excerpts lay bare a devastating account of land robbery and genocide against the Native American peoples in North America, from the earliest days of the Republic. Racism, disdain, and greed for Native American lands drove 13 small British colonies to break away from England. In Struggle for the Land, the earlier of these two books, Churchill clarifies that "independence" from England was little more than King George's giving up his "option" to buy native lands which he had by virtue of the "right of discovery." Likewise, the Louisiana Purchase was acquiring from Napoleon the right to purchase land from Indians. As a rogue rebellion looking for Nationhood, our earliest legal documents from the 1820s endeavored to legitimize the United States by treating Indians as sovereign nations with whom we (USA) would enter into treaties. "Legally speaking," quotes Churchill from one such document, "so long as a tribe exists and remains in possession of its lands, its title and possession are sovereign and exclusive."
But of course it was not to be. Chief Justice John Marshall, who had received 10,000 acres in grants west of the Appalachians in return for fighting in the Revolutionary War, declared, invoking an obscure Norman law, that the land was "vacant" and therefore Euro-American deeds were legitimate. By 1832, he was declaring that all natives were "subordinate" to the U.S., a simple statement of colonialism, before the genocide of Western tribes had even begun. Marshall went even further and declared that natives "committed aggression" when they attempted to regain control of their land.
In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was quietly adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, Johnson v. McIntosh (8 Wheat. 543). Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall observed that Christian European nations had assumed "ultimate dominion" over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery, and that - upon "discovery" - the Indians had lost "their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations," and only retained a right of "occupancy" in their lands. In other words, Indians nations were subject to the ultimate authority of the first nation of Christendom to claim possession of a given region of Indian lands. [Johnson:574; Wheaton:270-1]
According to Marshall, the United States - upon winning its independence in 1776 - became a successor nation to the right of "discovery" and acquired the power of "dominion" from Great Britain. [Johnson:587-9] Of course, when Marshall first defined the principle of "discovery," he used language phrased in such a way that it drew attention away from its religious bias, stating that "discovery gave title to the government, by whose subject, or by whose authority, the discovery was made, against all other European governments." [Johnson:573-4] However, when discussing legal precedent to support the court's findings, Marshall specifically cited the English charter issued to the explorer John Cabot, in order to document England's "complete recognition" of the Doctrine of Discovery. [Johnson:576] Then, paraphrasing the language of the charter, Marshall noted that Cabot was authorized to take possession of lands, "notwithstanding the occupancy of the natives, who were heathens, and, at the same time, admitting the prior title of any Christian people who may have made a previous discovery." [Johnson:577]
In other words, the Court affirmed that United States law was based on a fundamental rule of the "Law of Nations" - that it was permissible to virtually ignore the most basic rights of indigenous "heathens," and to claim that the "unoccupied lands" of America rightfully belonged to discovering Christian European nations. Of course, it's important to understand that, as Benjamin Munn Ziegler pointed out in The International Law of John Marshall, the term "unoccupied lands" referred to "the lands in America which, when discovered, were 'occupied by Indians' but 'unoccupied' by Christians." [Ziegler:46]
Ironically, the same year that the Johnson v. McIntosh decision was handed down, founding father James Madison wrote: "Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from civil government, and exempt from its cognizance; a connection between them is injurious to both."
This type of legal history is the foundation for Churchill's devastating critique of U.S. government policies toward indigenous peoples in the United States. Struggle for the Land is a series of precise, factual case studies of, for example, the Iroquois efforts to reclaim their land in upstate New York (the entire city of Syracuse is on native land), and the Lakota refusal to accept any amount of money for the Black Hills. One of the most important facts in the book, though, is that Hitler used the United States treatment of Indians as a model for his genocide. Consequently in 1946, as the United States was preparing to sit in judgment on the Nazis at Nuremberg, the Indian Claims Commission Act was passed in order to provide a new veneer of legal rights to Indians, ostensibly giving them the right to sue for lost land if claims were based on "fraud, duress, unconscionable consideration, mutual or unilateral mistake," which, of course, they were.
In another section, Churchill describes the "radioactive colonization" of native land (i.e., the pursuit of mining rights for uranium (60 percent lies on native reservations), and oil and gas (20 percent on native reservations). Ninety percent of mining takes place on native land. In one concise chart, Churchill outlines 33 different corporations who have leases in areas in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. There are more than 5,000 in the Black Hills alone. Locally, the Hanford plutonium plant leaks toxins from storage tanks into the fishing grounds of the Columbia River Yakima, leading to illness, sickened, malformed and dead fish, and a host of other problems.
The funds from leases are kept in "trust" by the government, and, of course, the tribes see little of them. This Northern Plains Lady, Elouise Cobell, is bringing the issue to the light of day in court. This is an excerpt from an article in 2004 Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc.
"When I went to Washington on a hot, sultry June day in 1996 to file a lawsuit over the billions of dollars of trust funds that the government had lost, misplaced and otherwise grossly mismanaged for hundreds of thousands of American Indians, I had no idea I would still be in court seven years later.
Yet today, after three Cabinet secretaries have been held in contempt by a federal judge and after four lengthy trials and a successful defense on appeal of our claims on the merits, the federal government has failed to clean up the trust records. It cannot certify the accuracy of a single one of the estimated 500,000 current individual Indian trust accounts.
That's the sad bottom line on how the federal government has continued to treat the nation's first citizens.
All I and three other Indians are asking the government to do is account for the tens of millions of acres of land the government forced into trust and to account for and distribute -- to the proper trust beneficiaries -- the correct amount of funds it received and invested from the leases it arranged for timber sales and for oil, gas, minerals and grazing rights on Indian trust lands in the West.
I may not be a lawyer, but I was a small-town banker in Montana. I know that the most basic of duties of any trustee is to account for all trust assets, including the funds they hold for the beneficiaries.
Unfortunately, the commissioner of the Bureau of Public Debt, a senior Treasury Department official, testified in our case that the United States has used our trust funds to reduce the national debt.
But no one knows how much of our money was used to reduce the debt load of this country or how many years the U.S. government used our trust money for these and other important government purposes, such as building dams and major power projects in the West.
We hope an accounting will finally tell the true story of how the government has used Individual Indian Trust funds for more than 100 years. And, we also hope that we will learn what really happened to 40 million acres of Individual Indian Trust land that simply vanished, according to the testimony of the head of Interior's Office of Historical Accounting.
Seven years later, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the government's trustee-delegate for the nation's first citizens, has done nothing to provide us answers to this and other important trust accounting issues.
Why the delay? Why the deception? Why the disdain for the obligations Norton owes to hundreds of thousands of Individual Indian Trust beneficiaries, many of whom live in Washington state?
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others have said it's because Indians lack political clout in the nation's capital. Any other interest group would have had this problem resolved immediately, McCain has said. There is no dispute about the evidence. Study after study has warned Congress that our trust funds were being horribly managed by the Department of Interior. Billions of dollars are missing.
In 1989, the Senate Special Committee on Investigations found that "fraud and corruption pervade" the Interior Department. The General Accounting Office warned both Republican and Democratic administrations for years that this is a very serious problem.
In 1994, Congress ordered Interior to account for the missing funds. Nothing happened.
So we Indians did what others similarly situated would have done. We turned to the courts for help to straighten out an obdurate and dishonest executive and an uninterested Congress.
Since we filed our suit, we have won several significant victories. In 1999, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth declared the government breached its trust responsibilities to us and ordered the interior secretary and the treasury secretary to provide us a complete accounting of all trust assets, including the revenues generated from our trust lands since the creation of the Individual Indian Trust in 1887. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously agreed with Lamberth and found that the interior secretary had engaged in "malfeasance" and has unduly delayed the accounting, causing irreparable harm to all of us.
The government's record as trustee for Indians is "a long and sorry story," Lamberth declared. "... It is fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form."
Tough words, to be sure -- but they are utterly meaningless unless Norton is compelled to do what she is required to do by law.
Continuing to rely on the good faith of the interior secretary is an exercise in futility. We can settle this case, but the government first must participate in settlement talks with integrity, something they have refused to do for the seven years this case has been litigated.
It must stop hiding behind disingenuous excuses, defending the indefensible and protecting incompetent and dishonest officials.
Any settlement must be fair and just to make Indians whole for monies that have been collected by the United States for 116 years.
It is, after all, our money. It is our property right." Elouise Cobell is making history.
Churchill explains step by step the attempted genocide of indigenous cultures. Just a few of the techniques were preemptive and deceptive leases: the General Allotment Act, which replaced collective ownership with individual ownership; the forced change in indigenous government to the Tribal Council (modeled like a corporate board); the 1956 Relocation Act, intended to force indigenous peoples to move to slums in cities, etc. In 1953, the United States attempted to unilaterally dissolve 109 indigenous nations in its borders. By 1990, more than half of all Indians were no longer on their land bases. But rather than completely obliterate native entities, the U.S. government decided to keep them alive and restructure their government into an entity which could be a signer to negotiations for mineral leases. "Native nations were cast as always being sovereign enough to legitimate Euro American mineral exploitation on their reservations," writes Churchill, "never sovereign enough to prevent it."
For the purpose of enriching the few, hypocrisy, lies, and lawbreaking have been the basis of United States' policies toward indigenous peoples from its founding years. So of course we are still doing it today. We are simply operating on a different continent.
Native Americans today are distributed unevenly throughout North America, a reflection more of events following European arrival than of aboriginal patterns. The 1990 U.S. Census reported the largest number of Native Americans in the states of Oklahoma, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The census also indicated that slightly over half of Native Americans live in urban areas; cities with the largest Native American populations are New York, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Tulsa, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Anchorage, and Albuquerque. Around one-fourth of American Indians in the United States live on 278 reservations (or pueblos or rancherias) or associated "tribal trust lands," according to the census. The largest of these is the Navajo Reservation, with 143,405 Native Americans and 5,046 non-Indians living there in 1990. Around 60 percent of the Native American population of Alaska lives in "Alaska Native Villages."
The twentieth-century population increase for Native Americans reflected in successive U.S. Census figures was also due to changes in the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of Native American. Since 1960 the Census Bureau has relied on self-identification to ascertain a person's race. Much of the increase in the American Indian populationfrom 523,591 in 1960 to 792,730 in 1970 to 1.37 million in 1980 to 1.9 million (including Eskimos and Aleuts) in 1990resulted from persons not identifying themselves as American Indian in an earlier census but identifying themselves as such in a later census. It has been estimated, for example, that as much as 60 percent of the apparent population growth of American Indians from 1970 to 1980 may be accounted for by such changing identifications! The political mobilization of American Indians in the 1960s and 1970s, along with other ethnic-pride movements, may have lifted some of the stigma attached to an American Indian racial identity. This would be especially true for persons of mixed ancestry who formerly had declined to disclose their American Indian background. Conversely, persons with minimal American Indian background may have identified as American Indian out of a desire to affirm a "romanticized" notion of being American Indian.
Today over three hundred American Indian tribes (excluding Alaskan villages) in the United States are legally recognized by the federal government and receive services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are additionally some 125 to 150 groups seeking federal recognition, and dozens of others that might do so in the future. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has used a "blood quantum" definitiongenerally, one-fourth degree of American Indian "blood"and/or tribal membership to recognize a person as an American Indian. However, each tribe has a particular set of requirements, typically including a blood quantum, for membership (enrollment) in the tribe. Requirements vary widely from tribe to tribe: a few tribes require at least a one-half Indian (or tribal) blood quantum; many others require a one-fourth blood quantum; still others, generally in California and Oklahoma, require a one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or one-thirty-second blood quantum; and some tribes have no minimum blood quantum requirement at all but require an explicitly documented tribal lineage.
Tribes located on reservations have generally required higher degrees of blood quantum for membership than those not located on reservations. This pattern of requiring low percentages of Indian "blood" for tribal membership and relying on federal authorities to certify membership may be seen as a reflection of demographic decline. As the number of American Indians was reduced and American Indians came into increased contact with whites, blacks, and others, American Indian peoples increasingly married non-Indians. As a result, American Indians have had to rely on formal certification from the federal government as proof of their "Indianness."
In the early 1980s the total membership of the three hundred recognized U.S. tribes was about 900,000. Therefore, many of the 1.37 million persons identifying themselves as American Indian in the 1980 census were not actually enrolled members of federally recognized tribes. In fact, only about two-thirds were. In the late 1980s the total tribal membership was around 1 million; hence, only about 53 percent of the 1.9 million people identifying themselves as American Indian in the 1990 census were actually enrolled. Such discrepancies have varied considerably from tribe to tribe. Most of the 158,633 Navajos enumerated in the 1980 census and the 219,198 enumerated in the 1990 census were enrolled in the Navajo Nation; however, only about one-third of the 232,000 Cherokees enumerated in the 1980 census and of the 308,132 enumerated in the 1990 census were actually enrolled in one of the three Cherokee tribes (the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians [of North Carolina], and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma). Thus the Navajo Nation is the American Indian tribe with the largest number of enrolled members, but more persons identifying themselves as Native American identified themselves as Cherokee in the 1980 and 1990 censuses than did persons of any other tribe. The two other largest groups in the 1990 census were the Chippewas, or Ojibwas, (103,826) and the Sioux (103,255).
Similarities and differences exist in Canada. Officially, to be an Indian in Canada, one must be registered under the Indian Act of Canada; a person with Indian ancestry may or may not be registered. Categories of Canadian Indians include "status" or registered Indians, persons registered under the act; and "non-status" or non-registered Indians, persons who either never registered or gave up their registration and became enfranchised. Status Indians may be further divided into treaty or non-treaty Indians, depending on whether their group ever entered into a treaty relationship with the Canadian government. Of the 575,000 American Indians in Canada in the mid-1980s, some 75,000 were non-registered and some 500,000 were registered.
In conclusion a recent article on Native American colonization by John C. Mohawk in Indian Country Today summarizes these issues best.
Most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (and all in Canada and the U.S.) faced a very serious reality. In their country, the invaders outnumbered the indigenous, sometimes by hundreds to one. They were not going to go back home. In addition, their stated goal was the eradication of the indigenous nations as nations by eroding all of the elements that make a distinct people a people: their history, their languages, their laws and customs. It took quite a while and a lot of boarding schools, missionaries, and corrupt public officials but the process - being colonized - has had an impact. When an individual loses his or her memory, they cannot recognize other people, they become seriously disoriented, and they dont know right from wrong. Sometimes they hurt themselves. Something similar happens when a people become colonized. They cant remember who they are because they are a people without a common history. Its not that they dont have a history, its just that they dont know what it is and its not shared among them. Colonization is a kind of spiritual collapse of the nation. This is one result of a colonial education based on canonical "great books" texts. Indigenous peoples histories and cultures are not in those texts, and the life of the nation is not there, either. Identity is important. The colonists were very successful "radicalizing" indigenous identities such that people talk about being 25 percent of this or 40 percent of that, but one does not belong to a nation based on ones blood quantum. Belonging to an indigenous nation is a way of being in the world. Holding a membership card is not a way of being and money cant buy it.
Colonization is the greatest health risk to indigenous peoples as individuals and communities. It produces the anomie - the absence of values and sense of group purpose and identity - that underlies the deadly automobile accidents triggered by alcohol abuse. It creates the conditions of inappropriate diet, which lead to an epidemic of degenerative diseases, and the moral anarchy that leads to child abuse and spousal abuse. Becoming colonized was the worst thing that could happen five centuries ago, and being colonized is the worst thing that can happen now.
De-colonization, on the other hand, means many different things to many different peoples. In principle, however, it means undoing the damage of colonization and involves elements such as living traditions and customs, language retention, and an insistence on the right to BE Lakota or Ganienkehaka or Ootam or Tipai or whatever nation it is that people have a right to be.
Sources: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1, 8 L.Ed. 25 (1831).
Davenport, Frances Gardiner, 19l7, European Treaties bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648, Vol. 1, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Johnson and Graham's Lessee V McIntosh 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 5 L.Ed. 681(1823).
Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987);
Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990);
Douglas H. Ubelaker, American Journal of Physical Anthropology "North American Indian Population Size, a.d. 1500 to 1985," 77 (1988): 289-94.
Rivera-Pagan, Luis N., 1991, "Cross Preceded Sword in 'Discovery' of the Americas," in Yakima Nation Review, 1991, Oct. 4.
Newcomb, Steve. "Five Hundred Years of Injustice." Shaman's Drum. 1992, p. 18-20.
John C. Mohawk, Ph.D., columnist for, Indian Country Today.
Story, Joseph, 1833, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States Vol. 1 Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc. Cobell vs Norton, 2004.
Senor Tezozomoc Por favor a volver a su pais. Si va hacer nada mas que quejarse, seria mejor ir a un pais indigena del tercer mundo donde puede imaginar que Ud. es un rey y puede ofrecer sacrificios humanos.
Hey, I can say I have aboriginal heritage but this is a blog, people make up stuff all the time. Why should you believe me or I you (Especially with such a made up name as Tezozomoc).
All "native" peoples originally descended from those who crossed the Bering strait land bridge 10's of thousands of years ago.
So I guess that would be Asia.
So none of us are living in our "native country" by that logic.
As a PETA activist, I must say that this land once belonged to all the animal life in it. The original human invaders (colonizers) created a swath of hunting destruction wherever they went. A number of species became extinct because of this.
Oh those lying white men and their books. So you got proof rodeo qween (hey, that's your email address Homahota), that they arose naturally here?
And yes, native peoples got a raw deal. Every technologically superior group annihilates lesser ones.
The same is true for lesser tribes conquered and destroyed by superior ones. You certainly can't pretend that all was piece and love in the Americas prior to the arrival of the big bad white man.
The indigenous peoples of Australia ruined the flora and fauna of that subcontinent and truned the interior into a desert.
I wish someone would give me a tissue,- to wept my tears, the poor little indians, what those big mean white people did is terrible. Maybe we should give back all the land, and move to europe?
Native peoples did not cross the bearing straight just because some white written text book says so...
You're right ... they did so because that's where they came from and there's an archeological record to prove it.
And they weren't anymore native to here than you are, or I. We're all "immigrants" on this continent whether you like it or not. And simple denial of the obvious isn't a very good argument.
you know I teach native american studies at a university and I cant give you my entire semester's lectures here. I am not looking for reparations...I just a sad comment on the state of the US educational system that kids dont learn about the REAL history of the US. There is history besides that of the dead white male conquorer.
I am always shocked at the ignorance regarding history of Indians...
you know I teach native american studies at a university and I cant give you my entire semester's lectures here. I am not looking for reparations...I just a sad comment on the state of the US educational system that kids dont learn about the REAL history of the US. There is history besides that of the dead white male conquorer.
Of course there is ... but denying what actually happened doesn't particularly build any credibility for those who contend they represent REAL history.
For instance, archeology, to this point, records no indigeneous human life on this continent, and dated finds of human remains start near the Bearing Strait (the oldest) and head south. Tools and remains found there are almost identical with tools and cultures found in western Russia.
Not exactly rocket science, is it? But that record certainly speaks eloquently of a people who came from the west of Asia, across an ice bridge, and moved south.
So whites were simply a second wave of invaders and conquerors. The first wave just found their conquest to be easier than did the second wave.
And in the clash of cultures, which is precisely what it was, not to mention one of many going on in the world at that time, the original invaders of this continent lost.
Such was life at that time and such is history.
I am always shocked at the ignorance regarding history of Indians...
Well I'd have to say I'm pretty shocked at your apparent ignorance concerning the archeological evidence of the migration of Asians into North America where they eventually became indians.
This is an indigenous continent and the holocaust that happened to native peoples here is real.
No, its not an indigenous continent, and just because some red man claims it doesn't mean its true, does it?
I have argued bering straight theory with vine deloria and Scott Momaday. I have studied the theories and not as an armchair academic, but as a scholar. In my classes I present both archeaological interpretations and Indian interpretations of emergence stories and allow the students to decide. Archealogical evidence does prove there were migrations, but it doesnt prove which way the migrations went (they could have gone both ways) and there is no way to prove sea migrations...there are scholars who contend that the dates the southern continents were occupied do not sync up with migration theories and that emergence of peoples on those continents is the only way to explain the archaeological dates of peopling of those continents.
No, this is not a white continent, and just because some white man claims it doesnt mean its true, does it?
there are scholars who contend that the dates the southern continents were occupied do not sync up with migration theories and that emergence of peoples on those continents is the only way to explain the archaeological dates of peopling of those continents.
Yet they’ve been unable to produce earlier remains than those found successively heading south from the Bering Strait (this is off the top of my head, but as I recall the earliest remains found date somewhere around 11,000 years ago and they were found near the Bering Strait). No older remains have been found south of there.
Just as compelling as that is the fact that no living fossil apes are known in the Western Hemisphere, as they are in the Eastern Hemisphere, nor are more primitive examples of man in the Americas. None. That basic finding means that man did not evolve from lower anthropoid forms in the New World as we’ve found he did elsewhere. It also means that man did not enter North America until Homo sapiens had developed and was wide spread through the Eastern Hemisphere. And we’ve dated that emegence and spread quite successfully. No, this is not a white continent, and just because some white man claims it doesnt mean its true, does it?
Uh yes, it is a white continent because the whites conquered it. And no white has to claim its true or prove it, just looking around will do that.
Lets see, if whites were successful conquerers then why are Indian nations soveriegn nations? Why do indians, unlike other minorities, have a legally defined relationshp with the federal government?
you can spout your opinion all you want on your blog and that's still all it is, the opinion of an armchair academic. Critical thinking means going beyond opinion. But, then again, you are not a scholar, are you.
when you have worked and published in academia, at a university, then maybe you wont need a blog to spout your opinion, because then you can back up your words with facts and have a real publication that has respect and posterity beyond cyberspace.
as for you captain joe, just because you have a phd doesn mean you know how to spell!!
You are right though, anyone could pretend to be a scholar, in the same way that McQ is...this is me... I'll be brave... http://www.u.arizona.edu/~tlmorris/
I thought calling Native Americans "Indians" was considered offensive now.
I found this comment interesting, "In my classes I present both archeaological interpretations and Indian interpretations of emergence stories and allow the students to decide. "
So you present archeaology (science) and Indian emergence stories (stories), and allow students to decide. I'll assume you give equal credence to them both, when it would seem a PhD candidate such as yourself should probably err on the side of science. No?
tom, well if I was in a traditional discapline such as anthro, I would be erring on the side of science. However, my phd is in an interdiscaplinary program, American Indian Studies.
My goal in classes is for people to use critical thinking. So I present both sides. I tend to value the stories higher than the science myself. science is mental masturbation, stories are what makes us (any of us) who we are, stories define us.
Lets see, if whites were successful conquerers then why are Indian nations soveriegn nations? Why do indians, unlike other minorities, have a legally defined relationshp with the federal government?
Because the whites allow it?
I mean, come on, you have to ask?
Do you seriously believe such a relationship would exist without such forebearance?
you can spout your opinion all you want on your blog and that's still all it is, the opinion of an armchair academic. Critical thinking means going beyond opinion. But, then again, you are not a scholar, are you.
I'm not the one denying clear archeological evidence, am I, Mr. Scholar?
Evidence, I might point out, you simply have ignored.
What about the fact that there are no ape fossils in this hemisphere? What about the fact that there is no evidence of anthropoid development here beside Homo sapien? What about the fact that there is no evidence of man being here prior to about 11,000 years ago?
The silence is deafening.
when you have worked and published in academia, at a university, then maybe you wont need a blog to spout your opinion, because then you can back up your words with facts and have a real publication that has respect and posterity beyond cyberspace.
A lot of blow and no go, there Mr. Scholar. If I have nothing to offer, then simply refute the facts I've put out there.
If you're unable to do that, then other readers will have to decide who's "spouting opinion" and who isn't here, won't they?
My goal in classes is for people to use critical thinking. So I present both sides. I tend to value the stories higher than the science myself. science is mental masturbation, stories are what makes us (any of us) who we are, stories define us.
Science is certainly "mental masturbation" when fact doesn't fit your story, right "Homahota"?
What you're telling us is you teach the indian version of creationism.
I am published for my academic work...your blog, well it's just your opinion and they dont publish blogs, do they? So who cares about your readers, if they really wanted to learn, they would read something academic, not an opinion.
"Stupid Fucking Whiteman" from the movie Dead Man 1995
In the real world, Homahota, they call this "cuttin’ and runnin’". An ad hominum and vamoose ...
Some scholar.
And to review: still unanswered by our self-declared scholar?
What about the fact that there are no ape fossils in this hemisphere? What about the fact that there is no evidence of anthropoid development here beside Homo sapien? What about the fact that there is no evidence of man being here prior to about 11,000 years ago?
.I just a sad comment on the state of the US educational system that kids dont learn about the REAL history of the US. There is history besides that of the dead white male conquorer.
Yeah, well--and I hate to be crass about something near and dear to you--but what exactly is important about the history of the Indians? I mean, where was their Renaissance? What was their contribution to the shape of the modern world?
Understand, as individuals, they have every bit as much value as the Europeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, etc. But, in terms of shaping history in a still-relevant way?
There's a reason history books don't contain a whole hell of a lot about the pre-~1500 Indian contribution to medicine, culture, government, etc.
Oh, and one more thing, Homahota, since it appears you’re both into lecturing about American Indian women and indians in film, you might want to talk to my neice. She played "Talks-a-lot" in Hallmark’s "Dreamkeepers."
How about taking a step back and taking the heat off being a certain race. How about considering that just because someone is accepted or part of a culture does not mean they are honoring the beliefs of that culture. Making this a forum for a long history of discord instead of his comment and using his connection to a certain culture as a reason for his comments might be more the focus of the comment. He said what he said as an individual. If he is truly accepted as part of the group he says he is, then they get to determine if the comment is represenative of their beliefs and thus worth defending. If his comments do not represent their beliefs then they can choose to as his family group to follow their actions for dealing with someone. Some may choose to reprimand publicly to embarrass, some may do so in private and some may choose to do such things in private. Instead of defending him just because he is Native American and you still have a beef against 'The White Man' and want to use this as a forum or you want to hate him because you want to hate 'The Native American' how about accepting that a member of any group can say something that does not represent the views of that group. A comment such as his is his individual comment. It does not mean everyone has to stand behind him or hate him due to their own historical emotions and feelings over comepletely unrelated events. Make up your own mind on your opinion ABOUT the statement. Not approving it as a Native American does not mean you are denying the struggle of your group. Not approving of it as a Caucasion does not mean you are racist.
Tezozomoc is fool for believing all of that Phony Wannabee Churchill's lies.
Just like his white master Ward Churchill Tezozomoc tries to use BS to win his point. Quoting the biggest liar in Indian Country.
Of course Tezozomoc is going to quote that phony Wared Churchill about "What is and what is not an American Indian".
Ward Churchill twisted things so he could hide behind his fraud as a whiteman pretending to be Indian and stealing a qualified Native persons job to boot.
He just stole jobs meant for us Native Americans because he was a greedy, self-serving, egotistical piece of crap.
Tezozomoc should read the Indian message boards, Indian Country Today(The Leading Indian newspaper) and AIM website.
WARD CHURCHILL IS A FRAUD AND SHOULD BE FIRED FOR LYING ON HIS RESUME TO GET A JOB AT THE UNIVERSITY, PERIOD. If he said he was Native to get the job.
Give the job to a qualified Native person, NOT A WHITE MAN PLAYING INDIAN.
Some revolutionary? I don't know any who makes $100,000 a year. Which should have gone to an American Indian professor NOT A LYING WHITEMAN PHONY FRAUD.
Who among us can trace their ancestry back to the early 1600's? That's what the Rocky Mtn. News claims to have done. Based on the very records uncovered by the Rocky Mtn News Churchill has Indian ancestry on both sides of his family. They went back to the time of the Revolutionary War. It's simply neo-nazism to be so fixated on one's ethnicity. What's the difference between this type of "research" and what the Nazi's did to Jews, Rom, Africans, Mexicans, Jehova's Witnesses, Gays, Slavs during the Third Reich? It's repulsive to me to say someone is half, quarter, eigth, 16th, 32nd, 64th ad infinitum. Maybe eight "Indians" denounce him and thousands claim him. Scientifically you cannot even use 'blood' to define ethnicity. What's next? Will the new riders of the KKK demand that the good professor take a dna test? They won't ask that, because they are afraid they may find that he does have Native American ancestry. Stop persecuting him. Because, if they get him, then who's next for the Bushies? Guillermo
Can they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not Native? No. The issue is not his ancestry. The issue is academic freedom and the freedom of speech. The whole flap about Churchill's ethnicity is a red herring. What he's saying is that the US foreign policy is the catalyst for these actions. Why are we in Iraq? The average SUV driving American is so ignorant of the rest of the world that he/she cannot understand what it's like to have to drink coconut to stay alive. Americans have become fat, gluttonous pigs, using a disproportionate share of the earth's resources of fresh water, petroleum, trees, minerals. The US is the reason children work in sweat shops to produce Nike's, Reeboks, designer jeans with tiny pockets for their children. When someone holds a mirror up so they may see their reflection what do they do? Crucify him! Here's an idea: was the Tsunami caused by 50 years of atomic bomb testing in the So. Pacific? That's why the US is being attacked, because it exploits the rest of the world for its own purposes. Capt Joe and McQ you are very evil, hateful rascists. But I'm not worried, because your arteries are most likely clogged by all the Big Macs you gobble down. You both have 40+ inch waists and that just indicates what pigs you are.
The US is the reason children work in sweat shops to produce Nike's, Reeboks, designer jeans with tiny pockets for their children.
So, you're saying that, without the United States, there would be children starving in the streets, without even the ability to work for a bit of food?
Why, thank you. We do try to give everybody a chance, you know.
Capt Joe and McQ you are very evil, hateful rascists. But I'm not worried, because your arteries are most likely clogged by all the Big Macs you gobble down. You both have 40+ inch waists and that just indicates what pigs you are.
What a, er, telling way of illustrating just who is hateful.
If you'd done due dilligence, you might have noticed the post in which McQ weighed in against the threats against Churchill. Capt Joe left the first comment, writing "Exactly, 100% agreement here".
Or, you may have noticed the more recent post in which McQ wrote that he was "not happy" about the prospect of CU firing Churchill for his statement, and that "I don't like a damn thing Ward Churchill said, not one word. But I will defend to the death his right to say them.". You might also have noticed that Capt Joe left the first comment saying "out him, but don't fire him".
But, you didn't do all of that. You just went straight for the name-calling. Which, it seems to me, says very little about McQ and Capt Joe, and a great deal about you.
The indigenous people of the Americas did not necessarily trek across Beringia during the last ice age. So. America and Australia were joined eons ago; also people from Polynesia traveled thousands of miles in the So. Pacific on catamarands and it is quite possible they made their way to Mesoamerica.
What proof do you have that the original inhabitants of Australia destroyed the interior of that continent? You have as much proof, no less, than I have putting forth the idea that nuclear bomb testing in the So. Pacific is responsible for the Tsunami.
Then you ask, "What is a racist?" Was Eichmann a racist? A racist believes one race is superior to another, that one is inferior to another.
No, I'm not an America-hater. I served in the US Infantry for 5 years. All good years, all verifiable. I have TWO DD-214's and the re-enlistment code on both is a picket fence. I just hate smug, arrogant white men like capt joe and mc q who for espouse a euro-centric perspective of world history.
Ok? Let's talk about My Lai. Did you know that the African American and Latino soldiers, fired their weapons in the air, while the white soldiers massacred women and children in that ditch? How do you explain that?
On this blog you tell people to go back where they came from. Go back to their country. How about 5 current states once being part of Mexico? The US is not an imperial power? No, it's not hating America, it's trying to get control back from the robber-barons who want to crack open the social security nest-egg and spread the loot around to all their cronies.
I suppose you think the Chicago Police Dept. took the correct action in assassinating the leadership of the Black Panther Party in that pre-dawn raid? They killed them while they slept. Including Mark Clark, a former room-mate of Ward Churchill. And you wonder why he has a case of the ass?
The Cold War may be over, but in the Marshall Islands its legacy lives on. In the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, the United States conducted 67 above-ground nuclear and thermonuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands in the 1940s and 1950s. For decades, the atomic test victims have fought to secure full compensation for the loss of their homes, health and loved ones. And most important, for the funds to make their home islands inhabitable again.
Sometime next year, the U.S. Congress is likely to be asked to do just that. A series of separate legal motions now working their way through a special Marshallese court is expected to lead to a final appeal to legislators in Washington for hundreds of millions of dollars the affected islanders say is required to clean up their atolls to Environmental Protection Agency standards.
"The American public should think of this as part of the cost and legacy of the Cold War," says Jonathan Weisgall, the Washington attorney who represents the people of Bikini. "The tests helped the United States win the Cold War with the Russians, but now it needs to clean up after itself so that these people can go back home."
Michael Light, author of 100 Suns, the photographic record of the US atmospheric tests, writes: The human cost of the tests was, and continues to be, steep.
Indigenous islanders were uprooted without recourse from the test site areas initially, and several tests greatly exceeded expected yields, creating intense and unexpected radiological disasters. Of these, the 15-megaton 1954 Bravo test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was the worst, badly sickening test personnel, relocated islanders nearby, and the crew of a Japaneses fishing vessel 85 miles away from the blast. Repeated large-scale testing has also resulted in enduring radiological contamination of all the test islands, including Enewetak Atoll and Johnston and Christmas Islands. Bikini remains uninhabitable to this day. [...] In 1988 the United States established a Marshallese Nuclear Tribunal to compensate the radiation victims, and more than 1,000 islanders have received damages.
Jan. 6, 2005 19:25 | Updated Jan. 6, 2005 20:01 Egyptian paper: Israel-India nuke test caused tsunami By JOSEPH NASR
The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, "was possibly" caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which "Israeli and American nuclear experts participated," an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday.
According to Al-Osboa', India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear know-how from the United States and Israel, both of which "showed readiness to cooperate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind."
Since 1992, the magazine argued, leading geological centers in Britain, Turkey and other countries, warned of the need "not to hold nuclear experiments in the region of the Indian Ocean known as 'the Fire Belt,' in which the epicenter of the earthquake lies.
Geologists labeled that region 'The Fire Belt' for being "a dangerous terrain that can move at anytime, without human intervention," Al-Osboa' wrote.
Despite warnings not to carry out nuclear experiments in and around the 'Fire Belt', "Israel and India continue to conduct nuclear tests in the Indian Ocean, and the United States has recently decided to carry out similar tests in the Australian deserts, which is included in the 'Fire Belt', the Egyptian weekly magazine wrote.
"Last year only, Arab and Islamic states have asked the United States to stop its nuclear activities in that region, and to urge Israel and India to follow suite," Al-Osboa' reported.
Although Al-Osboa' does not rule out the possibility that the tsunami could have been caused by a natural earthquake it speculates however that, "while it has not been proved yet, there has been a joint Israeli-Indian secret nuclear experiment [conducted on December 26] that caused the earthquake."
The Egyptian weekly magazine concludes in its report that "the exchange of nuclear experts between Israel and India, and US pressure on Pakistan which is exerted by supplying India with state-of-the-art nuclear technology and preventing Islamabad from cooperating with Asian and Islamic states in the nuclear field, pose a big question mark on the causes behind the violent Asian earthquake."
Forgive me, Guillermo, but what does the fallout from decades old nuclear testing have to do with either Ward Churchill, or the Tsunami?
Surely, you could not be suggesting that nuclear tests could shift tectonic plates? That would be akin to blaming an automobile accident on a butterfly flapping its wings 2 miles distant.
"The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, "was possibly" caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which "Israeli and American nuclear experts participated," an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday."
I didn't say this, scientists are examining this. That's exactly what they are suggesting. They were testing along the fault known as the "fire belt" known for the shifting of plates under the ocean.
To examine your illustration: A butterfly causing an automobile accident two miles away? What's up with that? Do you KNOW how many miles Sumatra is from the site of the fault that caused the Tsunami? It was quite a bit more than 2 miles. Do you KNOW where Sumatra is? Can you give me the longitude and the latitude?
You see, Dear John, the United States is really a 'super-country' comprised of 50 states. But the US is also a member of the community of nations in the world. What we do in our foreign policy affects people througout the world. Ordinary people like you and me just trying to live our lives. But should innocent islanders lose their entire state of existence because of our national paranoia and need for "protection and safety?" I'm glad your friends have given up big macs and are watching their diets, but you can you even for one moment think of what it must be like to have to forage for coconuts to get enough potable water that your body needs on a daily basis?
The indigenous people of the Americas did not necessarily trek across Beringia during the last ice age. So. America and Australia were joined eons ago; also people from Polynesia traveled thousands of miles in the So. Pacific on catamarands and it is quite possible they made their way to Mesoamerica.
Well then it should be no problem producing evidence of anthropoid habitation predating Homo sapien here in the Western Hemisphere. It should also be no problem producing remains older than 11,000 years old (which were found near the Bering Strait, on this side and are considered the oldest human remains yet found). It should equally be no problem to find evidence of tools and other reminants from Australia and Micronesia which match those found here as they have with tools and reminants found in western Russia.
Unless you can ... and you’d be the first ... you don’t have a case.
Then you ask, "What is a racist?"
Actually I asked you what a "rascist" was. It had to do with your spelling of the word and was a joke.
I know what a racist is. You, for instance, exhibit a number of signs of being one. For example:
I just hate smug, arrogant white men like capt joe and mc q who for espouse a euro-centric perspective of world history.
How do you know I’m a white man? For instance, if you’d read the comments I made above, you’d know my neice is Delanna Studi. Studi. Name ring a bell? Ever heard of Wes Studi? Last of the Mohicans? "Geronimo?"
No, because I have differing ideas than you, you decided to apply racist stereotypes, didn’t you? You decided to assume that whoever didn’t agree with your preconceivied worldview had to be an ignorant, Euro-centric white racist, huh?
Ok? Let’s talk about My Lai. Did you know that the African American and Latino soldiers, fired their weapons in the air, while the white soldiers massacred women and children in that ditch? How do you explain that?
Yup ... I talked about that in an article about a week ago. If you had read the blog, you’d know that.
I’d also point out that not all the white soldiers killed that day. And, as an interesting aside, it was a white pilot who stopped it, not to mention it was an Hispanic company commander who ordered it (you remember CPT Medina, don’t you?).
But, a racist wouldn’t understand that very important difference. And a racist would have ignored the other facts about who stopped it and who ordered it as well. A racist, instead, would have already bought into some alternative explanation based exclusively in race.
Kinda like the one you’re suggesting.
On this blog you tell people to go back where they came from. Go back to their country.
When and where have we said that? If you’re going to make an accusation you should have some facts or examples to back it up. Otherwise, you should withdraw it.
How about 5 current states once being part of Mexico?
Operative phrase? "[O]nce being a part". It is no more. So what’s your point? The US was no more an invader or imperialist than was the Mexico of that era.
The US is not an imperial power?
Compared to who, Mexico? Do you know the history of the US-Mexican war of 1846-1848? Point out the US imperialism for me, will you?
No, it’s not hating America, it’s trying to get control back from the robber-barons who want to crack open the social security nest-egg and spread the loot around to all their cronies.
Great meaningless boilerplate rhetoric. What "nest-egg"? The loot, sir, was "spread around" years ago by politicians ... the same ones who today try to sell the idea that there’s no problem. All that resides in the "nest-egg" are IOUs.
I suppose you think the Chicago Police Dept. took the correct action in assassinating the leadership of the Black Panther Party in that pre-dawn raid? They killed them while they slept. Including Mark Clark, a former room-mate of Ward Churchill. And you wonder why he has a case of the ass?
Why would I think killing someone in their sleep was a "correct action?" Again, you’re totally uninformed and into world class conclusion jumping.
I’m a libertarian. I believe everyone’s rights should be protected. So obviously, absent any threat, no, I wouldn’t think their action to be ’correct’.
As for Ward Churchill’s case of the ass, he, like you, need to get past the hateful rhetoric and have discussions with people.
That is if you really care about this stuff you spout.
If not, spout away ... but don’t expect others to take your ideas or those of people like Churchill with more than a grain of salt.
Oh, to answer your first part of your question, what it has to do with Ward Churchill? This is precisely what he talks about in his article on "...Roosting Chickens" i.e. the impact of US policy and practice on the rest of the world. John, honestly in your opinion, does the US stand as a giant on the world stage, or a bully? Why do you think we are so hated by so many people and so many countries. Why do young Americans back-packing through Europe feel the need to sew Canadian flags on their backpacks? You have to read the writing on the wall. It's later than you think; you have to wake up and smell the starbux....We're not living in an America with Jerry Mathers as it's poster child, it's Marshall Mathers. Will the real slim shady please stand up? Will the real Americans please stand up?
"The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, "was possibly" caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which "Israeli and American nuclear experts participated," an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday."
Good lord man ... the same Egyptian press which regularly reports that jews are kidnapping Arab children, killing them and draining their blood for use in holiday cooking?
Get a freakin' grip, will you? Why not quote the National Enquirer? I'd be much more inclined to believe it than some Egyptian rag.
Gee, can I have your autograph? Wes Studi was a cool actor.
What about this: Senor Tezozomoc Por favor a volver a su pais. Si va hacer nada mas que quejarse, seria mejor ir a un pais indigena del tercer mundo donde puede imaginar que Ud. es un rey y puede ofrecer sacrificios humanos.
Written By: karlli ebha
I'll translate for you: Please go back to your country. If you're going to do nothing more than complain, it would be better to to an indigenous country of the third world where you can imagine that you are a king and can offer human sacrifices.
Gee, can I have your autograph? Wes Studi was a cool actor.
Wes Studi still is a cool actor. Catch him in "Edge of America". Its a little different role for him.
What about this: Senor Tezozomoc Por favor a volver a su pais. Si va hacer nada mas que quejarse, seria mejor ir a un pais indigena del tercer mundo donde puede imaginar que Ud. es un rey y puede ofrecer sacrificios humanos.
Written By: karlli ebha
I'll translate for you: Please go back to your country. If you're going to do nothing more than complain, it would be better to to an indigenous country of the third world where you can imagine that you are a king and can offer human sacrifices.
And what has that to do with what our blog espouses any more than your comments?
The blog and "what it says" is represented by three people, Dale Franks, Jon Henke and me.
Karlli Ebha does not represent this blog, just his or her opinion.
Would you say our blog is for Ward Churchill just because you have made comments in that regard?
For the record, that comment was left after I'd already begun my comment, so I didn't see it until I'd left my own.
Not that it would have changed my opinion. Produce a peer-reviewed piece, or a prominent, notable scientist suggesting that such a thing may have happened, and we'll talk. As McQ said, that is hardly credible substantiation.
And such a claim would require a VERY great deal of proof. The idea that a nuclear test could affect the tectonics of up to 5 continental plates is...ridiculous.
John, honestly in your opinion, does the US stand as a giant on the world stage, or a bully?
Both perceptions exist, and always have. It is my belief that the US aim is a worthy one, though it has not been--and can not be--cost-free.
Those who feel the cost often regard us as a bully. Those who receive the benefit are less often aware of our role.
Why do you think we are so hated by so many people and so many countries.
[CP] Could an underwater nuclear test have caused this tsunami?
CounterPunch www.counterpunch.org 30 December 2004
Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Nuclear Testing Unnatural Disaster?
By LILA RAJIVA
Q: What are some other disturbances that can cause tsunamis?
A: Landslides or explosions such as underwater nuclear testing.
Q: Is underwater nuclear testing common?
A: Yes, The United States has conducted 1,054 tests of nuclear devices between July 16, 1945 and September 23, 1992. Before 1962, all the tests were atmospheric (on land or in the Pacific or Atlantic oceans) but overall the majority - 839 - were underground tests. From 1966 to 1990, 167 French nuclear test explosions have been performed on two atolls in French Polynesia, Morurua and Fangataua. Of the 167 tests, 44 were atmospheric. Atmospheric explosions were carried out until 1974, but only underground tests after that. The underground tests have been conducted at the bottom of shafts bored 500-1200 meters into the basalt core of the atoll. Initially these shafts were drilled in the outer rim of the atoll. In 1981, most likely due to the weakening of that rim, the tests with higher yields were shifted to shafts drilled under the lagoon itself.
Q: What are the effects of underwater nuclear testing?
A: To quote from a 1995 case brought against the French government, Case T-219/95 R, by Marie-Thrse Danielsson, Pierre Largenteau and Edwin Haoa, all residing in Tahiti, French Polynesia: "Short-term effects include geological damage and the venting of gaseous and volatile fission products into the biosphere. Nuclear tests, the applicants say, can cause landslides and did indeed cause a major underwater landslide at Mururoa in 1979, when a nuclear device was exploded after jamming half-way down its shaft. Since the geology of Mururoa is already unstable due to large-scale fracturing caused by previous tests, further major landslides are likely. Such landslides in the past have given rise to tsunamis causing coastal damage in areas as far away as Pitcairn and Tahiti and endangering residences such as that of Ms. Danielsson. They can also release radioactive material into the sea, with catastrophic effects on the food chain in an area such as French Polynesia where fish is an important part of the diet.
This is a difficult topic to research, because much of the information surrounding nuclear testing is classified. During the Cold War there was fear of tsunamis produced by the detonation of nuclear bombs on the continental shelf off the East Coast of the US. A nuclear bomb was never detonated on the shelf, however a huge explosion did generate a tsunami during World War I causing vast destruction Any large disturbance that displaces a large volume of water can be a potential cause of a tsunami.
1. The state department, the Pentagon and the American naval base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia were alerted before the destructive earthquake ... 2. Experimental "Tsunami Bomb" Tests Conducted in the 40s; 3. A Bomb That Triggers A Tidal Wave 4. The Great Wave Man Made Weapons 5. Was the tsunami caused by a bomb? 6. Tsunami Cover Up? 7. Tsunami spawns wild conspiracy plots
The idea of a bomb that triggers a tidal wave is not as outlandish as it may first appear. Towards the end of WWII a top-secret project was underway in the waters off the coast of New Zealand to perfect just such a weapon. Project Seal as it was known was a secret weapon developed under the auspices of British and American defence chiefs who considered it as important as the atomic bomb.
Prof Thomas Leech, dean of engineering at Auckland University, conducted the experiments in the sea off Auckland on the so-called Tsunami bomb; in recognition he was awarded the CBE in 1947. The existence of the weapon was only disclosed in 1999 when New Zealands Foreign Ministry released declassified documents. According to the papers British and American defence chiefs were keen to see the development of the weapon, which would be exploded near enemy territory with the intention of creating devastating tidal waves (9). It doesnt take a genius to realise that if the bomb were to carry a nuclear charge it would inundate such low lying countries as Holland and southern England. Significantly the Russians are also said to have developed such a weapon. - the TruthSeeker, 10/22/04
Corroboration has to do with whether your claim DID happen, not whether someone THINKS it could happen.
The story you cited claimed this happened.
Although Al-Osboa' does not rule out the possibility that the tsunami could have been caused by a natural earthquake it speculates however that, "while it has not been proved yet, there has been a joint Israeli-Indian secret nuclear experiment [conducted on December 26] that caused the earthquake."
We want to see corroboration of that claim.
And this as well:
Despite warnings not to carry out nuclear experiments in and around the 'Fire Belt', "Israel and India continue to conduct nuclear tests in the Indian Ocean, and the United States has recently decided to carry out similar tests in the Australian deserts, which is included in the 'Fire Belt', the Egyptian weekly magazine wrote.
The last nuclear test in the Australian desert was by Britian in 1957. The US, due to advanced computer technology with which it can test nuclear devices through simulation, has not had a need to do nuclear testing for over 2 decades.
As to this:
Q: Is underwater nuclear testing common?
A:Yes, The United States has conducted 1,054 tests of nuclear devices between July 16, 1945 and September 23, 1992.
Yes they did, of which 4 and only 4 were "subsurface" and only 3 of them were "underwater". None were even close to the tsunami areas of Indonesia.
One on Bikini Atoll lagoon, 23 July, 1946 (23KT - underwater), one on 16 May 1958 (8 KT - Enewetak underwater), one on 9 June 1958 (8 KT- Enewetak - subsurface but on land) and one on 11 May 62 (19 KT - underwater) 400 nautical miles west of San Diego, CA.
All but the last (eastern Pacific) were in the CENTRAL PACIFIC. The Marshall Islands. IOW, on the other side of where the Indonesian tectonic plates meet. All US testing in the Pacific ended in 1962.
"...839 - were underground tests."
Yes, and 835 of them were in Nevada.
To review: The question isn't whether a bomb can cause a tsunami, it is whether you can corroborate the claim from the EGYPTIAN press which asserts that a nuclear test on Dec 26 caused the quake.
McQ, are you an apologist for US nuclear testing? Don't you think that US nuclear scientists and experts are involved in any testing outside of the "official" testing of the US government? What of the vassal states? At least I think I've dispelled the notion that I'm a "...certifiable, tin-foil hat wearing, America-hating loon." Do you deny that American scientists were on-site of the Indian nuclear testing? Or that such testing involved technology sharing? This position has been reported in far more than the Egyptian press. Methinks you're sticking your head in the sand. In your world, it could't happen? Do you believe that a nuclear explosion cannot cause a tsunami? Do you really believe that? Don't hide behind your obfuscation of semantics, this isn't a scholarly forum. Are you really, America right or wrong? Are you that afraid of the rest of the world?
Who infered that all of that was the cause of tsuniami’s Guillermo?
Wasn’t me.
Don’t you think that US nuclear scientists and experts are involved in any testing outside of the "official" testing of the US government?
Why would they be?
What of the vassal states?
Which "vassal" states are those?
At least I think I’ve dispelled the notion that I’m a "...certifiable, tin-foil hat wearing, America-hating loon."
How so?
Do you deny that American scientists were on-site of the Indian nuclear testing?
Since we didn’t know anything about it (i.e., we were completely surprised when they lit off their first nuke), I think that’d be a pretty safe assumption.
Or that such testing involved technology sharing?
It might if you could prove they were there. Thus far, no soap.
This position has been reported in far more than the Egyptian press.
Then produce it. That’s precisely what we’ve asked you for twice now. So far no corroboration. Methinks you’re sticking your head in the sand.
How so? You’ve made what appears to be an unsubstantiated claim. Why am I the one sticking their head in the sand?
In your world, it could’t happen?
WHAT couldn’t happen?
Do you believe that a nuclear explosion cannot cause a tsunami?
When did I ever say they couldn’t? I said I don’t believe the claim you put up here that the tsunami was caused by an Indian/Israeli nuclear test in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26.
What part of that don’t you understand?
Now ... where is your proof in the form of corroboration? That’s the THIRD time I’ve asked.
Don’t hide behind your obfuscation of semantics, this isn’t a scholarly forum.
How is asking for corroboration "obfuscation"? Do you accept everything anyone throws out there as true Gillermo?
Are you really, America right or wrong?
Never have been, but you wouldn’t know that because, as has been obvious through this entire exchange, you know nothing about me, but have no problem making mondo assumptions which fit your agenda.
Are you that afraid of the rest of the world?
Why should I be? Are you?
So far, you’ve claimed all sorts of stuff and when challenged with factual rebuttal, moved on to other stuff. Now we seem to be into a litany of questions.
Unlike you, I answered every one of them or asked for clarification.
Tezozomoc was from the Tepanec of Central Mexico. His tribe used the Mexica as mercenaries. They also collected tribute from subordinate tribes. I bring this up because it seems strange for someone to choose the name of a dominating warrior king from mesoamerica who oppressed his neighbors and then decry the results of these characteristics in colonizers.
A premise: The truth is like an elephant. The truth about the nature of a particular government is multifaceted. The US gov't is one big elephant. Folks like Ward Churchill smell manure and don't/can't move beyond getting their head out of the elephant's behind. Seeing everything their gov't does with a jaundiced eye is every bit as narrow-minded as someone would never question anything that was ever done in the name of their nation.
Tezozomoc was from the Tepanec of Central Mexico. His tribe used the Mexica as mercenaries. They also collected tribute from subordinate tribes. I bring this up because it seems strange for someone to choose the name of a dominating warrior king from mesoamerica who oppressed his neighbors and then decry the results of these characteristics in colonizers.
George was an empirilistic king.... in England...
So, does this mean that george bush is that same person... there millions of people named george...
So, if someone is named Tezozomoc, does that necessarily mean that they picked for some ruler in atzcapolzalco?
Give me a break... your brain can't be that small...
It is unfortunate the Churchill used that comparison to Adolf Eichmann, but what does that have to do with his own heritage? There is some evidence that Hitler himself had Jewish ancestry.
If Tezozomoc wishes to use that name, so what? Who cares? Does that make him a bad person? Does that mean people on this blog should tell him to go 'back' to his country. Here's a newsflash: We didn't cross the river, the river crossed us...
Why did you pick the name McQ? And yes, the original question WAS whether a nuclear explosion can cause a Tsunami. It is very possible. People on this blog expressed disbelief, including you, that such an action could have such a reaction. But tonight when you sleep, you can dream of nuclear explosions and the relationship to the earthquakes they cause.
It is unfortunate the Churchill used that comparison to Adolf Eichmann, but what does that have to do with his own heritage? There is some evidence that Hitler himself had Jewish ancestry.
You tell me Gilluermo. All I did was report what was being said by the United Keetoowah Band Cherokees and AIM. Why not take your question to them?
And its more than a little bit ’unfortunate’ that Churchill used the comparison ... it was purposely used.
If Tezozomoc wishes to use that name, so what? Who cares?
Apparently karlli ebha cares. What’s it to you?
Does that mean people on this blog should tell him to go ’back’ to his country.
Why are you asking me? Why not ask the person who said that?
Here’s a newsflash: We didn’t cross the river, the river crossed us...
Whatever that means.
Why did you pick the name McQ?
Because its short for my last name. It isn’t short for some ancient king.
And yes, the original question WAS whether a nuclear explosion can cause a Tsunami
Uh, no it wasn’t. You cited an Egyptian paper which claimed the tsunami was caused by a joint Indian/Israeli nuclear test in the Indian Ocean on Dec 26.
For the fourth time ... can you corroborate that claim?
People on this blog expressed disbelief, including you, that such an action could have such a reaction.
No, they did not. They expressed disbelief that a nuclear event took place in the Indian Ocean on Dec 26th as you claimed.
But tonight when you sleep, you can dream of nuclear explosions and the relationship to the earthquakes they cause.
Actually tonight I’m going to dream about how damn well I did with Philadelphia and 6.
"Yet theyve been unable to produce earlier remains than those found successively heading south from the Bering Strait (this is off the top of my head, but as I recall the earliest remains found date somewhere around 11,000 years ago and they were found near the Bering Strait). No older remains have been found south of there."
How about this? Evidence for the earliest migrations into the Americas is scarce and usually not as clear as archaeologists would wish. Evidence from the comparative study of Native American languages, as well as analysis of some genetic materials, suggest that these earliest migrations may have taken place around 30,000 years ago. More direct evidence from archaeological sites places the date somewhat later. For example, in the Yukon, in what is now Canada, bone tools have been discovered that have been radiocarbon-dated to 22,000 BC. Campfire remains in the Valley of Mexico, in central Mexico, have been radiocarbon-dated to 21,000 BC, and a few chips of stone tools have been found near the hearths, indicating the presence of humans at that time. In a cave in the Andes Mountains of Peru, near Ayacucho, archaeologists have found stone tools and butchered animal bones that have been dated to 18,000 BC. A cave in Idaho, in the United States, contains similar evidence-stone tools and butchered bone-dated to 12,500 BC.
"Native Americans," Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99. 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Actually I said that, but as I pointed out it was "off the top of my head".
OK, 30,000 years ago, not that it really matters in the big scheme of things.
To begin with, Homo sapien emerged 100,000 years ago.
If "indigineous" people were here all the time (i.e. were "native" to the Western Hemisphere), where are the remains dating back 100,000 years ago as are found over the rest of the world (that’s a big gap of 70,000 years)?
Or would you assume that since there’s a 70,000 year gap between what’s here and what’s elsewhere, that perhaps those found here came from elsewhere and it took them a while to migrate?
Reasonable and logical assumption, wouldn’t you say?
And, of course, you then have to ask why there are no remains of our anthropoid ancestors from which we evolved to be found here ... if "indigineous" people were actually always here and all. If they were, their evolutionary ancestors would be here as well, just as they are in the rest of the world.
Without all of that, you really don’t have a case for indigenous development. Because, you see, Homo Sapien is much older than 30,000 years and evolved from series of "homo" genus ancestors such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis and Homo ergaster. With none of them in evidence here, its nigh on impossible to make a reasonable case that those who’s remains were found dating back 30,000 years are from here originally.
And yes, the original question WAS whether a nuclear explosion can cause a Tsunami.
Actually, I asked if you were seriously suggesting that nuclear testing could shift tectonic plates.
Since a nuclear test *could* displace water, it could cause great waves. However, there's simply no chance in hell that a nuclear test could shift continental plates. If you want to have anybody seriously consider that notion for even a moment, you're going to have to present something better than an Egyptian Weekly World News, and some independent journalist who has a book out about Abu Ghraib.
I thought the Gnome testing indicated that the "indig's" were largely descended from the same gene pool as that found in Asia. I suppose someone will mumble that the dirt the Great Spirit used in both places produced similar results.....
It's mot weird science Mr. Anonymous, who didn't sign your name, but that's probably an oversight on your part. A nuclear test could displace water? Hello...What are you an expert in 5th grade science? The right bomb on the right fault could cause an EARTHQUAKE which could result in a tsunami. It's not exactly a new idea.
T-Rex remains have been found in N. America. Were you aware of that? Just last year. We don't know everything. Gorillas were discovered in the early 1900's. New discoveries are made every day. The Beringia theory is just that, a "theory".
Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, scientists generally agree that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, at least 12,000 years ago.
The exact epoch and route is still a matter of controversy. Until recently there was a consensus that the migrants crossed the strait around 10,000 BCE via the Bering Land Bridge which existed during the last ice age (24,000 to 9,000 BCE), and that they followed an inland route through Alaska and Canada that had just been freed of its ice cover. There are a number of difficulties in this theory in particular, growing evidence of human presence in Brazil and Chile by 9,500 BCE or earlier [1] (http://www.andaman.org/book/chapter53/luzia/luzia.htm). Thus other possibilities, not necessarily exclusive, have been suggested:
* The migrants may have crossed the land bridge several millennia earlier and followed a coastal route, thus avoiding the ice-covered interior. * They may have been seafaring people who moved along the coast. (Which is highly unlikely to the undeveloped seafaring capacity of ancient peoples of this time period). * The crossing of the Bering Land Bridge may have occurred during the previous ice age, around 35,000 BCE. * A more radical alternative is that the Siberians were preceded by migrants from Oceania, who arrived either by sailing across the Pacific Ocean or by following the land route through Beringia at a much earlier date. Proponents of this theory claim that the oldest human remains in South America and in Baja California show distinctive non-Siberian traits, resembling those of Australian Aborigines or the Negritos of the Andaman Islands. These hypothetical American Aborigines would have been displaced by the Siberian migrants, and may have been ancestral to the distinctive Native Americans of the Tierra del Fuego, who are nearly extinct.
Mainstream anthropologists and archaeologists consider the genetic, linguistic, and cultural evidence for a primarily Siberian origin overwhelming. According to this evidence, at least three separate migrations from Siberia to the Americas are highly likely to have occurred:
* The first wave came into a land populated by the large mammals of the late Pleistocene, including mammoths, horses, giant sloths, and wooly rhinoceroses. The Clovis culture would be a manifestation of that migration, and the Folsom culture, based on the hunting of bison, would have developed from it. This wave eventually spread over the entire hemisphere, as far south as Tierra del Fuego. * The second migration brought the ancestors of the Na-Dene peoples. They lived in Alaska and western Canada, but some migrated as far south as the Pacific Northwestern US and the American Southwest, and would be ancestral to the Apaches and Navajos. * The third wave brought the ancestors of the Eskimos and the Aleuts. They may have come by sea over the Bering Strait, after the land bridge had disappeared. * In recent years, molecular genetics studies have suggested as many as four distinct migrations from Asia. These studies also provide surprising evidence of smaller-scale, contemporaneous migrations from Europe, possibly by peoples who had adopted a lifestyle resembling that of Inuits and Yupiks during the last ice age.
One result of these successive waves of migration is that large groups of Native Americans with similar languages and perhaps physical characteristics as well, moved into various geographic areas of North, and then Central and South America. While Native Americans have traditionally remained primarily loyal to their individual tribes, ethnologists have variously sought to group the myriad of tribes into larger entities which reflect common geographic origins, linguistic similarities, and life styles. (see Classification of Native Americans)
While many Native American groups retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European occupation of the New World, in some regions, specifically in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, in Mexico, Central America, the Andes of South America, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states.
Other theories have been advanced, some with growing acceptance, as to the ultimate origin of Native Americans:
* Several anthropologists, historians, and archeologists have suggested that Native Americans are descendants of Europeans or Africans who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in prehistory. Some proponents argue that there is a resemblance between Olmec and African physiques. Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated that the trip is possible by sailing from Africa to America on a replica of an Ancient Egyptian reed boat. There is also genetic evidence of such African predecessors among some descendants in Argentina, and archeological evidence of European natives in North America, including Clovis point weapons of European design pre-dating Asian-descended occupation, and the apparently European traits of those weapons' owners' bones. * Most Native American religions teach that humans were created in America at the beginning of time and have continuously occupied the area.
Another, in a long line of them, who doesn't understand the concept of "theory' in science.
Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, scientists generally agree that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, at least 12,000 years ago.
Very interesting discussion! I would like to make one observation: HOMO SAPIENS, with an -S which does NOT denote the plural, is the correct singular of this Latin phrase. The -NS is the mark of the present participle (-ing, in English) and SAPIENS means "thinking," LUDENS means "playing," etc. The plural is HOMINES SAPIENTES. Dropping the -S from the present is hypercorrection.
Well to follow the studies of every liberals favorite mascot Darwin. The entire truth of the "white man" invading this country adn taking it from the indians is the sad truth of SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. So before praising Darwin and Complaining about the poor Native Americans, stop and think... Hypicrit
Well to follow the studies of every liberals favorite mascot Darwin. The entire truth of the "white man" invading this country adn taking it from the indians is the sad truth of SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. So before praising Darwin and Complaining about the poor Native Americans, stop and think... Hypicrit
Could Exxon-Mobil Works Have Tripped Indonesian Tsunami? Exxon at Aceh More than 1600 Indonesian troops have guarded the Exxon-Mobil facilities in Aceh at one time in recent years. The Indonesian government gleans more than $100 million per year from the works.
One cubic mile of natural gas extracted every four years at epicenter Aceh facility presents a probable man-made trigger in 9.0 earthquake with accompanying tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people.
12,000-Year-Old Bones Found in Kansas Science - AP
GOODLAND, Kan. - Scientists say mammoth and camel bones unearthed in northwest Kansas that date back 12,200 years could be part of "one of the most important archaeological sites in North America."
The bones, found last June in Sherman County near the Colorado border, were alongside a piece of stone that archaeologists say was the kind used in tools that humans once used to butcher animals.
Archaeological geologist Rolfe Mandel of the Kansas Geological Survey said carbon-14 dating completed last week shows the bones are between 12,200 and 12,300 years old, which could mean humans lived on the Great Plains 1,300 years earlier than previously thought.
Mandel said if excavations this summer verify the finding of the stone tool, it would make the archaeological site among the oldest in the New World.
"It would be one of the most important sites in North America," he said.
Researchers initially found mammoth bone and stone-tool flint next to each other in soil dating back 11,000 years at the site. Below that, they found mammoth and camel bone that were fractured in a way that they say could only have been caused by people who shattered bone with stone to either make flaked bone tools or get to the marrow.
"Some scientists won't be convinced that the older bones got here because of human hunters," said Mandel, who is leading the team that found the bones. "I'm not convinced, either. But I'm 75 percent convinced. There are few other ways the bones could be broken naturally the way they're broken."
Ancient and more modern stone-age hunters sharpened their butchering tools alongside the bodies of the animals they killed, flaking flint off dulled stone-knife blades and leaving traces of their sharpening work beside the bones.
Mandel said he's absolutely positive about the layer of 11,000-year-old bones and stone artifacts, which he said make the Sherman County dig the oldest site of verified human occupation and activity in Kansas, and among the oldest in North America.
The dig began after a landowner in the area found a mammoth tooth in 1976 and contacted the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. In the 1980s, a paleontologist who found animal bones there noted that the fracture patters on the bones were unusual.
Based on mammoth-kill sites in western North America, scientists previously dated the earliest confirmed evidence of humans on the Great Plains at 11,000 to 11,500 years ago. Mandel said the new evidence will add to the debate over when humans inhabited the Western Hemisphere.
Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago. But Mandel said the northwest Kansas dig means "we're rethinking not only when people arrived, but where they came from."
Mandel said material at the site indicates a small family of nomads likely used it as a campsite. Those people would have drifted across the land, following herds of animals, he said.
"It would have been a very rough lifestyle," Mandel said.
lots of mental masturbation here. ward churchill lives the life of a white man therefore he is a whiteman . tezozomoc ,makes up things along the way , looks whiter and less indian than ward churchill ,so he's got to defend him . If tezozomoc was sincere he would honor the name his parents gave him and stop pretending to be an elder . the so called "elders" I seen him with strip their wives of what the elders left to them. tezozomoc be who you are un MOC-oso.Guillermo no vale que te metas a defender lo. los demas no saben nada de maiz que da de comer a todo el mundo. without Tomas Alva Edison they would be more in the dark than they already are. Einsteins theory of relativity came to him when he was at Teotihuacan . It was an indio who came up with color TV . that guy who published paper on computers , use it to find the truth . quinine ,ipecac that is native american medicine. white , Indian , etc. ,we are all being robbed of the truth by american educational system.
Ward Churchill was recently on tv. Everything about Ward Churchill’s facial features spells his being full caucasion and not american indian like he claims. His face is very narrow and the rest of his features are very european in origin. It is too bad that Ward Churchill is unhappy being a full white guy and tries to pretend that he is american indian. Ward Churchill is a WANNABE american indian.
