|
| |
 |
| Back to The CD Reviews Page |
 WARD
CHURCHILL- In a
Pig’s Eye; Reflections on the Police State, Repression and Native
America (Alternative
Tentacles)
In this 120 minute speech recorded May 16, 2001, Ward Churchill,
who is Co-Director of the American Indian Movement (AIM) of Colorado, a
National Spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, and an
associate professor of American Indian Studies and Communications at the
University of Colorado/Boulder, discusses the history of how the United
States Government dismantled several activist movements with
counterinsurgency. Churchill explains that counterinsurgency is the state
financed act of infiltrating an activist movement, blaming, framing, and
murdering activists leaders till the point of the movement’s near or
total destruction. Using seventy-five percent of his speech to discuss
various examples of counterinsurgency, Churchill leads his talk to the
1975 incident at The Pine Ridge Reservation where two FBI Agents were
killed and how Leonard Peltier was later convicted of the murders.
Churchill presents sloppy police/FBI work, contradicting evidence,
eyewitness testimony, and even a statement by the prosecuting attorney
declaring his lack of confidence of Peltier’s guilt to backup his belief
that Peltier shouldn’t be imprisoned for these murders. Not being one to
beat around the bush, Churchill doesn’t let a sentence come out of his
mouth that isn’t an informative one. Now, I do not know how factual this
stuff is, but judging how confident Churchill sounds, you can’t help but
to at least listen to what he has to say. I will admit, some of the
content comes across as almost paranoia, but I am often skeptical when the
discussion of an issue is so one-sided. I’m not so sure the government
could so clumsily succeed with so much damage and getting away with it
every single time. The talk concludes with a 10-15 minute question and
answer session with the audience and as usual with q&a sessions, the
audience’s questions are often long winded, pointless, and are vehicles
for windbags to blabber about a subject they think they know a lot about.
On the plus side, a good number of the questions can’t be heard clearly
so you really don’t have to pay attention to them. I have listened to
approximately fifty spoken word recordings over the past ten years and
Ward Churchill is by far the most attention grabbing and convincing
speaker I’ve heard so far. Whether you agree with him or not, Churchill
gets you to listen. – Denis Sheehan
|
|
