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Indybay Feature

Ward: I admit I killed JFK

by Hilda
Ward Churchill spoke at the annual anarchist bookfair on March 26, 2005 in golden gate park, San Francisco. He has no relation to Frank Chiu in the picture, who had the 12 Galaxies bar in the Mission Dist named after him, and is a common halloween costume.
There was a lot of noise to the side where many happy attendees were mingling, and there were areas with hippies, hip hop, punk, circus gypsies playing accordions and violins and doing tricks, plus people selling items - so this is audible if you turn the sound up, and most audible at the end.
A longer full speech given later will be in the first comment to this story.
wardchiures.jpg
In this recording, a man from a Sierra foothills radio station interviewed him for a show, and I was in the vicinity so I made a voice recording of this interview. Unfortunately, a 4 minute chunk of this mysteriously ended up garbled after the first two minutes when I accidentally pressed record later on when it was in my pocket. He covers Churchill's latest situation at the university, where he seems to say that he is not interested in a buyout agreement, and will not apologize for anything, and that he has solid support among academics and also many indians. Churchill also admits to shooting JFK in Dallas.
At the end, I was able to ask a question I had been interested in regarding criticism of his footnote in an essay on another topic which appeared to back up his claim that the U.S. gov't intentionally wished the Mandan tribe of North Dakota to catch and spread deadly smallpox.
I interpret a piece by Diane Pearson as demonstrating this fact, citing primary sources such as memos and papers by Bureau of Indian affairs or Dept. of War heads which stated that the Mandan tribe were not to receive a smallpox vaccine which had been scheduled to be given to other east coast tribes who they viewed as cooperative, such as the Creeks and Cherokees who were removed to Oklahoma a few years later. The Mandan were viewed as an aggressive tribe which would not sign over their land for fur trapping and agriculture.
So what I was asking, was why Churchill cited John Thornton who didn't write about this aspect of history and instead talked about the general dates of events and number of people present . Churchill is under investigation by the university of Colorado for this footnote, and the media is spinning this by saying that the idea of smallpox blankets was an invention, and there have been stories getting the whole concept wrong - such as saying that Ward Churchill was referring to mexicans, and not mandans, and Ann Coulter claimed here that people only understood vaccines in the 1900s and later, which is incorrect - people have been inoculating against smallpox since centuries which is why indians died in high numbers while the people in east coast cities were not dying in high numbers. In a second column, Coulter was using slurs such as "injun" and said "hey kemosabe, time to pack up the teepee and hit the trail of tears".

That's just a quick explanation of why this question was asked at the end.



§~ 8 minute interview
by Hilda
churchillfair.jpg
§Fair
by description
.wav files are taking an hour to upload.

The audience at the fair was very receptive. In contrast to mixed audiences in Wisconsin, Colorado and Hawaii, and despite some threads on regional right-wing bulletin boards, there were only two brief heckles, and one was a '9-11 was a whitehouse frameup' guy. John Zerzan had a similar mellow reception earlier on. There were several moments of great audience applause.
Churchill covered the main themes of his latest book, and added some interesting new material at points. He discussed a bar I've never heard of in the financial district that displays the teeth that General Custer knocked out of his 'squaw's' mouth, when he took her as a wife after fighting her family?? Someone go get a picture.
§#2 sound file
by Hilda
Listen now:
Copy the code below to embed this audio into a web page:
This is the main talk.
§#1 interview file
by Hilda
Listen now:
Copy the code below to embed this audio into a web page:
Here again is this 8 minute interview that hasn't been loading well via dialup.

I thought it was quite interesting to hear Ward's perspective on things, and he said a number of things I hadn't been hearing in the papers. Apparently the university hasn't been communicating with him regarding issues, and instead has compiled a long list of complaints and gives them all equal weight without objective criteria, including some that might easily be dismissed.
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eichmann's grandchild
Thu, Mar 31, 2005 1:06AM
cp
Wed, Mar 30, 2005 6:10PM
it sounds like
Wed, Mar 30, 2005 5:29PM
PJ
Wed, Mar 30, 2005 4:56PM
-o-
Tue, Mar 29, 2005 8:14PM
Socialist
Tue, Mar 29, 2005 8:01PM
historian
Tue, Mar 29, 2005 10:26AM
Yawn snore
Tue, Mar 29, 2005 12:26AM
Socialist
Mon, Mar 28, 2005 7:28PM
cp
Mon, Mar 28, 2005 9:57AM
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