[IPSM] Ward Churchill: What He Said and Why

[Devin Butler Burke]

"I Drove My Picket Stake, My Picket Pin Is In."
What Did I Really Say? And Why Did I Say It?

By WARD CHURCHILL; February 21, 2005 - Counterpunch

Editors' Note: The following is a the first written transcript of Ward
Churchill's February 8, 2005 speech at the University of Colorado.
CounterPunch thanks Clarke Iakovakis for laboriously transcribing the
introductions by Emma Perez and Russell Means, Churchill's speech and the
rowdy Q&A. A video of the event is available online at:
http://www.c-span.org/. --AC / JSC

Hello my relatives; you humble me. Bill Owens: do you get it now?
[applause] If you can count on your toes, you'll be able to count the
percentage points of contribution to the budget the University of Colorado
you and your ilk have reduced the taxpayer contribution to. It comes to
seven. I do not work for the taxpayers of the state of Colorado. I do not
work for Bill Owens. [applause] I work for you. [loud student cheers &
applause] That's my institutional role and I take it very seriously; I
take the institution and its well being, its mission, it's ability to
perform that mission very seriously. That's one piece. That's where I am
and that's who's invited me to speak. But here is another reality: I am
not an abstract, detached academic. I have responsibilities and grounding
in an actual community. I take those responsibilities very seriously ­ in
fact, they are preeminent. I don't answer to Bill Owens; I don't answer
(in the sense that they think I do) to the Board of Regents. The Board of
Regents should do its job and let me do mine. [applause] And if Tom Lucero
and his friends want to debate the propriety of that, I welcome them to
come and join an open dialogue. I have not yet been officially informed
they are even having a meeting about me. I read it in the Rocky Mountain
News, I watch it on TV, I understand I am being reviewed. I haven't been
notified of that in any official sense either. [audience boos]...


To read the entire speech, visit: http://resist.ca/story/2005/2/21/18552/2338