Let's note that most of the time, I just post whatever I find in the media. I don't pick out the articles on "full bloods" or "mixed bloods." If the media reports on one type of Indian five or ten times in a row, so do I.
The number of times I question someone's "Indianness" is vanishingly small. It happens maybe one or two times out of 100. If articles say someone is an Indian, I generally take their word for it.
So who gets championed?
As I said in "Actual Indian" Defined, my definition is inclusive. All "actual Indians" are eligible to be covered here. That includes (almost) full-blooded Indians such as Russell Means, Sherman Alexie, and Adam Beach. It also includes mixed-blooded Indians such as Will Rogers, John Herrington, and Sam Bradford. I'd even include Johnny Depp, Taylor Lautner, and Todd Palin if Natives included them as well.
Of course, if the Native community questions or doubts someone's Indianness, I acknowledge their questions and doubts. Again, my definition of "actual Indian" includes those whom Indians accept as Indians. If they don't accept someone like Ward Churchill, I don't either.
For more on the subject, see Educating Russ on Who's an Indian.
Below: One gets championed, one doesn't.
1 comment:
Hmmm...,
Perhaps I meant to say that most of the Indians mentioned in this particular entry appear, to me at least, to be substantially MORE Caucasian than Indian.
However, I do agree 100% with Rob's criteria as to Indianness as there is a basic conformity to a realistic and fair analytical structure here that I believe most other Indians would also agree with.
Re: Ward Churchill
In the early '80s, I attended the University of Colorado at Denver as a full-time student while also working full-time. I saw Ward Churchill around campus then and I thought he was Indian, maybe 1/4 at least. I was very dismayed when it came out that he had hoaxed his way into a professorship at CU.
Since I was in my 20's then, he was sort of a "role model" for me as I was one of a mere handful of Indian students at CU at that time (he also smoked my brand of cigs then, Pall Mall non-filters, so to me he was definitely a "cool dude"). But then again, those were the bad, old, dark days of Indian academia when it seemed as though every Indian college student was pressured into majoring in Sociology with the sole objective of a baccalaureate degree - hasty prep work for a dismal future as welfare administrators at our "agencies."
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