Thursday, July 28, 2005

"Nobody likes a drunk Indian"

Pirate Ballerina links to an RMN report that the CU committee investigating Ward Churchill might consider complaints about the preface Churchill wrote to a posthumous book by his wife, Leah Renae Kelly. Kelly's family have said that the preface contains (what else?) many inaccuracies.

Somehow I stopped myself from reading this preface, but I did notice that for a Churchill production it's surprisingly ill-sourced; only 185 footnotes, well below the Churchill gold standard of 400 footnotes (per unit of writing) for real scholarly rigor. He's always boasted about his skill with primary sources too, though, and it was his wife, after all, so the Kellys are probably overreacting.

Leah Kelly's book, In My Own Voice: Explorations in the Sociopolitical Context of Art and Cinema, doesn't exactly sound like a beach read, either. In fact a glance at the chapter titles had me ready to take the gas pipe: "A question of internal colonialism," "Nazi cinema: A comparison to Hollywood westerns," "Through the lens of cultural despair," and, most fittingly, "Boredom or death."

I'll take that second choice.

Update: I used the "drunk Indian" quote from Churchill's preface as a title because as far as I know it's the only indisputably true thing he's ever written.

Update II: Here's a li'l linky to a Canadian First Nations Assembly resolution last year in support of the Kelly family (members of a Canadian tribe) against Ward. Are there any Indians left who aren't out for Ward's sc--who don't dislike Ward?

Update III: Churchill watchers should have some sympathy for poor Leah Renae Kelly. Whatever her problems (including her pathetic Marxism), she didn't deserve to be treated as most of us would guess Ward treated her.

Update IV: Answer to question in update II: No. (via Ward Churchill is a Fraud)

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