Photo latest fuel in Churchill flap
Author says CU prof used picture of hers without permission
By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
May 16, 2006
The photograph of a child's grave in University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill's 2004 book about Indian boarding schools jumped out at Brenda Child.
That's because Child, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwa tribe, took the picture and published it in 1998 in her own award-winning book on the same subject. "I was surprised that was there because he's never sought my permission to use it and it appeared without my knowing that it would be in his book," said Child, a University of Minnesota faculty member in American studies.
Worse, from Child's standpoint, is the caption Churchill appended to the photograph. It said that half the children at the nation's Indian boarding schools suffered the same fate as the child whose grave is pictured in the photograph.
That figure is a "tremendous exaggeration," Child said. "That is just beyond belief." No historian has an accurate estimate on the true number of deaths, she said.
The flap over the photo comes to light just as the university's standing committee on research misconduct prepares to release a report on its investigation of Churchill on seven charges, including whether Churchill falsified data or misrepresented historical facts in some of his scholarly work. The report could be released as early as today.
Churchill and his attorney, David Lane, could not be reached for comment.
CU officials investigating the research misconduct allegations contacted Child in April to ask about Churchill's use of her photograph.
Because Churchill credits Child at the end of the caption, it could be construed that she endorses the misinformation, Child said.
"I thought, 'I don't want anybody thinking that I said this in my book, because it's not true,' " she said.
CU business professor Joseph Rosse, the member of the committee who contacted Child, declined to elaborate. "I need to protect the whole process, which includes not only respondents, but complainants," Rosse said.
In fact, Child did not file a complaint with CU, and she is not pursuing the matter legally. "I looked at it, I saw it, I thought, 'That's wrong,' but it didn't seem worth pursuing," Child said.
Churchill's 2004 book,
Kill the Indian, Save the Man, and Child's 1998 volume,
Boarding School Seasons, go over an ugly piece of U.S. history that is not in dispute.
Beginning in the 1870s, Indian children as young as 5 years old were taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools far from their homes. The intent was to strip Indians of their culture and make them more like "Americans."
The children were given Christian names, their hair was shorn, their native clothes were replaced by European garb and they were forbidden to speak their native languages. Parents who objected were confronted by reservation police or even U.S. soldiers. Nineteen Hopi fathers were imprisoned at Alcatraz, the nation's harshest prison at the time, for eight months in 1895, according to the Library of Congress Web site.
Some of the schools exist today, but reforms begun in the late 1920s softened the harshness of the institutions.
Child's book, which won the North American Indian Prose Award, is based on letters written by students at the schools and their families, including Child's relatives.
Churchill's book dwells heavily on similarities between the treatment of Indians and the Nazi Holocaust, a major theme in all of Churchill's work.
He credits Child's book in 15 footnotes. Child said the attributions are correct and the quotations are rendered accurately.
But then there's the photo.
It shows the gravestone of a 16- year-old Chippewa boy who died at a Kansas Indian school in 1902. Child said she doesn't mind that Churchill misspelled her name as "Childs" in the caption; it's rendered correctly in the footnotes. But she doesn't understand why Churchill exaggerated the number of deaths. "If several students a year died in any particular school, that's a tragedy, especially for children separated from their families. It doesn't need to be exaggerated," she said.
"Which is kind of the whole thing on Churchill," she added. "What happened to Indians in the United States is bad enough, without making anything up."
Child's grandmother attended the Indian boarding school at Flandreau, S.D., in the 1920s. "I want to portray that history as fairly as I can and as honestly as I can," she said.
On the horizon
The University of Colorado committee that investigated research misconduct allegations against professor Ward Churchill is expected to release its findings today. Here's what happens next:
• CU officials plan to hold an afternoon press conference at the school's Coors Events and Conference Center.
• The report also will be available online.
• After Churchill and his attorney have time to respond to the findings, the standing committee will make a recommendation to the chancellor and provost about what action - if any - CU should take against Churchill.
• The final decision will be left to Chancellor Phil DiStefano. CU officials have said they would like to announce that decision within the next month.
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