Angry in the Great White North

The story around Canada's residential schools is a sad one. Aboriginal children were taken from their communities and raised in boarding schools, without exposure to their own culture. Whatever good intentions might have driven the plan have been lost in the legacy of abuse and misery, for which all Canadians, whatever their background, are paying for today.

So it is even more disturbing to hear that Ward Churchill, the American professor notorious for his essay written in the aftermath of 9/11 calling the World Trade Center victims Nazis, for his lack of academic credentials, and for allegations of plagiarism or fabricated research, is now alleged to have stolen research related to the residential school tragedy:

Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?

Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.

So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?

"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise used in that movie and snuck himself into the Department of Indian Affairs at midnight, he's not seen the documents," said John S. Milloy, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Churchill's book, Kill the Indian, Save the Man, and Milloy's book, A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, deal with an ugly chapter in U.S. and Canadian history.

Milloy, who published first, had access to files of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada because he was a researcher with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a massive government probe into mistreatment of Indians.

Milloy said he was the only person, apart from Department of Indian Affairs officials, with access to the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada files. Even his graduate assistants had to stay outside the room where he reviewed the materials, he said.

So how did Ward Churchill get that information?

Milloy was given copies of documents, but only under promises not to share them. He said all of the references in his book were to confidential documents.

Churchill, in three cases in his book, cites documents with the same file numbers as the ones Milloy quotes.

"If he's quoting INAC," Milloy said, "then he's taken it from me, plain and simple, no doubt."

With Ward Churchill, it always seems to plain and simple. Ward Churchill likes to make it seem complicated -- he's being persecuted, he's defending academic freedom, he's the victim of racism -- but he's a cheat and a thief. Plain and simple.