Talk:Ward Churchill

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Ward Churchill article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15: 3 months

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This page is not a forum for general discussion about Ward Churchill. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Ward Churchill at the Reference desk.

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

Ward Churchill was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 7, 2006	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
May 26, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
July 31, 2009	Good article reassessment	Kept
July 13, 2022	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Current status: Delisted good article

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Musicians / Politics and Government / Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by WikiProject Musicians.
	This article is supported by the politics and government work group (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Indigenous peoples of North America Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Native Americans, Indigenous peoples in Canada, and related indigenous peoples of North America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Indigenous peoples of North AmericaWikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North AmericaTemplate:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North AmericaIndigenous peoples of North America articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States: Colorado Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Colorado portal This article is supported by WikiProject Colorado, our collaboration to create, improve, and update Wikipedia articles about the U.S. State of Colorado. To comment about this article, select the Add topic tab above. For questions about, or to make suggestions for Colorado articles, go to our project's talk page. We invite you to join us!

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

Clarification needed!

As present the article says "It was in this book that Churchill first made the claim that the United States distributed "smallpox-infested blankets" to Indian tribes, a claim which he repeated several times over the next decade. The claim has been criticized as a falsification."

This reads like the whole concept of smallpox blankets used to destroy the indians is 1) an idea of Churchill, 2) is considered to be a falsification.

Yet in reality Churchill was found guilty of inventing an incident that allegedly happened at Fort Clark against the Mandan Indians in 1837. (Near Missouri river in todays North Dakota) and this story was found to be completely fabricated and that led to Churchill's being found guilty of academic misconduct. (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009?rgn=main;view=fulltext).

There are other cases, proven and documented by contemporary sources, when smallpox blankets were really used to extirpate the indians and neither the use of smallpox, nor the intent to completely annihilate the indians is questioned. (http://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html)

Please reword the cited sentence so it states clearly what was questioned and proven false otherwise it is wrong and greatly misleading. (I would do it myself if i felt capable to.) 176.63.176.112 (talk) 16:01, 12 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

okay, i have reworded it, now it is "It was in this book that Churchill first made the claim of an alleged incident in which the United States distributed "smallpox-infested blankets" to Indian tribes, a claim which he repeated several times over the next decade. The claim of this incident has been criticized as a falsification." It points to the particular falsification instead of denying the smallpox blankets (which are proven) altogether. However if anyone can make the text more fluent or clearer, pls dont hesitate.176.63.176.112 (talk) 16:13, 12 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Underlying the particular falsification would appear to be a second one, namely that the distribution of smallpox blankets by anyone in the USA ever happened at all. The notorious Fort Pitt incident was before the USA existed. There appears to be in fact zero evidence that any US citizen or agency ever did such a thing. But it's become an American myth, yet one which Ward Churchill was happy to liken to genocide. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.45.3 (talk) 14:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Babel, babel

As a long-time WP editor, I'm really put off by this article's excessive tirade about Churchill's heritage. It's not only un-encyclopedic, it's clearly an ad hominem exercise (as is most criticism of Churchill). A brief recap of the decades-long slurring would be adequate ... and leave room for a balanced critical description of the point-of-view he has consistently represented for all that time. Briefly said, it's currently the crappiest bio (of the living or the dead) I've encountered on Wikipedia in 14 years. Twang (talk) 06:31, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 17 external links on Ward Churchill. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:09, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Smallpox isn't caused by infected blankets

The article reads: "In 2005, University of Colorado Boulder administrators ordered an investigation into seven allegations of research misconduct,[37] including three allegations of plagiarism, and four allegations of fabrication or falsification regarding the history of the Dawes Act, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, and statements that smallpox was intentionally spread to Native Americans by John Smith in 1614 and by the United States Army at Fort Clark in 1837 (not to be confused with the well-documented use of smallpox-infected blankets at Fort Pitt in 1764)."

It is worth pointing out in the article that this is not an effective means of spreading smallpox. Smallpox is spread primarily by face to face contact, sneezing, saliva, etc.--not by sharing articles that have been used by infected people. Attempts at weaponizing the smallpox disease have failed. It is not an effective biological agent, not now, and not in the 18th century.107.77.207.110 (talk) 01:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, it happened at least once in the 1760s -- see Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst and Henry Bouquet -- but I don't think there's any evidence it was a general or often-recurring practice. AnonMoos (talk) 02:30, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is he now?

Or perhaps, what is he doing now? Has he retired? ''Paul, in Saudi'' (talk) 10:29, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

He hasn't held an academic post since he was fired from Boulder in 2007. The most recent Google News coverage is here in September 2018, when he spoke at an event in Pittsburgh.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 10:36, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment

I have tagged this article for a good article reassessment. This article was listed as a good article back in 2009. Surprising. I just made some changes (reorganizing, adding information on personal life, and condensing the lead) that help, but it still doesn't fit the criteria for a good article. Too much unsourced material/original research. Also, there is little to nothing about Churchill's work or activities following the disposition of his lawsuit, so the article may need an update. I don't believe that it's well-written enough to be a good article, either. 74.67.6.88 (talk) 19:29, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ward Churchill

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Delisted. Femke (talk) 15:58, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of citations, cleanup banners, lack of updates on post-2009 work, poor prose in areas (elaboration on the talk page) (t · c) buidhe 12:53, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The "Writings" section definitely needs a trim / citation update that only uses primary source references as extra backup. That said, I'm not convinced "lack of updates on post-2009 work" is a problem. Google News seems to show that the only notable thing that happened after 2009 was the Supreme Court rejecting his appeal in 2013 - which is already in the article - and him showing up at U Colorado Boulder for a single 90-minute speaking / venting session in 2017, which was barely newsworthy and really just an excuse to tell his story again. Everything else seems to be retrospectives talking about the original incident, the 9/11 deal, and so on. It seems like he hasn't really done much of anything notable since 2009. (To be clear, I agree that the prose & citations in writing sections still need to be fixed for the article to stay a GA - just not the "comprehensive" concern.) SnowFire (talk) 18:50, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. (t · c) buidhe 19:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delist. No edits on the article after a month, problems remain unresolved. SnowFire (talk) 03:09, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delist - this must be delisted, no improvements on warranted and reasonable buidhe and SnowFire suggestions.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 03:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I have no opinion about good article status, but noting for the record that the initial complainant, IP address 74.67.6.88, was blocked here on 6 Feb as a sock of User:SunCrow. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 13:22, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]