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| jon schledewitz/global aware |
Earlier this year, Indigenous rights activist and scholar Ward Churchill spoke in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Churchill titled his talk A Little Matter of Genocide: Linking US Aggression Abroad to the Domestic Oppression of Indigenous Peoples. At the time, Churchill was at the centre of an enormous controversy back in the US - and enduring vicious daily attacks from right-wing pundits - over his long-published essay “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” written in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
In that essay, Churchill said of the attackers that “the most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people.” (He made that point in the context of the horrible crimes perpetrated by the US against the Iraqi people during the Gulf War and the sanctions that followed.) Churchill argued provocatively that many of those who died in the attacks constituted “a technocratic corps at the heart of America’s global financial empire,” and therefore could not be considered “innocent” victims. The specific and much-misunderstood phrase that the right wing seized on in their attacks was Churchill’s reference to those at the top of the towers as “little Eichmanns.”
After concluding his formal remarks in North Battleford, Churchill opened up the discussion to those in attendance, prompting the following exchange with members of the audience.
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