Interview with Ward Churchill - Andy Lewis and

The Old law is also the law of Moses which is full of rules and regulations, but there does not seem to be a moral consistency amongst it - e.g. it says don't kill but it also prescribes capital punishment for some offences. The essence of the law of Moses is restoration - the Sabbath laws. On the 7th day and the 7th year and in the 7X7 year Cycle of Jubilee restoration - everything is returned to the year zero. Sins and debts are extinguished, the people live by hunting and gathering rather than toiling the land and in the Jubilee year all land is returned to its traditional owner family so everyone is politically and economically equal and prosperous. The land redistribution, the land resting and the sacrifices for sin are all to restore the people (as a collective tribal entity, not individual souls) to right relationship with God, the land and the people - the kingdom of God. In Jesus' time, the law of Moses was administered by a class of politician/priests - the Sanhedrin, who had collaborated with the Roman colonisation of Israel through joint government - effectively turning the temple - the seat of political power - into an agency of Caesar. The temple itself was renovated and extended by Herod the great with Rome's money. The temple collected tax for Rome. The Sanhedrin, while being political rulers, were also the only people who could forgive people of their sins through sacrifices according to Moses law. The ritual bathing (baptism) and the sacrifices of the temple were all corrupted. Sabbath laws were used legalistically to repress the people rather than, as they were intended, to be times of restoration. Jesus embraced and proclaimed the essence of the law of Moses and the covenant of Abraham which is restoration and justice. This brought him in direct conflict with the religious authorities and the corrupt administration of the law of Moses. When Jesus died the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom as God left the building. The corrupt administration of Moses law by the politician/priests had ended. In abolishing the corrupt law of the temple, the essence of the covenant of Abraham and the law of Moses was fulfilled. Its a bit more complicated than that because Jesus not only re-engineers the temple law, by doing so he also extinguishes the king tradition in the archetype of Saul, David and Solomon, and returns government to the structures of tribalism. But that's another story.

Interview with Ward Churchill Interview with Ward Churchill Interview with Ward Churchill Interview with Ward Churchill

November 7, 2009 Interviewed by Andy Lewis and Liza Menno-Bloom

Andy—Has anarcho-primitivism contributed anything to indigenous resistance movements over the past decade or so?

WC—Well, after you get past the term, which is a little off-putting, it’s not as bad as anarchosyndicalism, but that aside, I don’t see that its played any particular role in terms of indigenous resistance per say. It has, on the other hand, created the basis for a lot of resonance with indigenous ideas that has translated into concrete action. So, that dynamic is very healthy. It doesn’t make anarcho-primitivists indigenous. Anarcho-primitivists envision an alternative reality but it doesn’t mean you’re there yet. Only a fool would attempt to actualize that alternate reality absent the context for actualization. John Zerzan uses a computer for example. And whether you’re an anarcho-primitivist or not, the geographical space of North America is an issue for anyone living in that space. And there’s no getting around the fact that you’re either a settler or indigenous. So how you deal with that reality is important. There are con42

structive exchanges based upon the root of the word primitive, meaning first, first peoples, first nations. And I think that’s the anarchist notion that’s embraced under this mantle in a way. So I’d say right now, anarcho-primitivism is instructive but not decisive, at least not yet. The parameters drawn around anarcho-primitivism are pretty narrow at this point. You have people who subscribe in one way or another to that outlook and I know a number of them. But the number of people who understand and subscribe to it is very small compared with something like union organizing, for example, which has been eclipsed for a long time in the US.

One of the things with indigenous people and being first is you get a tradition that’s being maintained. With anarcho-primitivism, you have the attempt to synthesize an attachment to various traditions and to explain what those attachments mean.

Andy—Do you think anarchist ideas have gained much traction over the past decade and where do you see radical political orientations going in the future?

WC—I don’t know, we can go into Adorno and Marcusse and the nature of this synthetic reality which passes as culture. It’s almost like Andy Warhol in a way, anarchism caught as a term and a fashion statement. So maybe there are a lot, maybe even a preponderance of people out there who would identify as anti-authoritarian. Within that broad framework there’s a much smaller group of people who actually came to grips with what anarchism means and are serious in thought and action. Over the past few decades there seem to be quite a few people who have adopted the term anarchist as a viable option to a whole range of unpalatable options. They didn’t want to be communists, didn’t want to be socialists. They didn’t want to be, didn’t want to be, didn’t want to be. Well, that’s the first thing, by process of elimination they ended up anarchists and often in a serious way. But some people don’t know it takes more than a pair of black Levi’s, more than Doc Martin boots. Some of the people who adapted the fashion were and are serious, but it’s difficult to decipher. So the answer is yes, anarchism has played an increasingly significant role over the past 10-20 years. But I couldn’t say just how significant in terms of staying power. Fashions pass. I don’t call myself an anarchist. I am indigenist in orientation and I think anarchism is as close as you can get coming out of the Western paradigm. I think there’s a basis for working together on a whole lot of issues, so I see anarchism as very constructive, but that doesn’t mean I am one. I see black militancy as being very constructive, always have, doesn’t make me black. My closest relationships personally, politically, and otherwise are with black activists, I’m not one. We can be in solidarity. We can have commonality. We can struggle together as human beings and more objectively on analytical grounds. Having said that, if I was going to pursue organizing within the white community, anarchism is the stance I would take.

I reject the notion of the legitimacy of the state as indigenous people always have. They can talk about proto-states all they want but they can’t come up with anything that’s analogous to the European statist model. Nothing like the dominance it took on after the Treaty of Westphalia. The non-statist model includes social organization, political organization, so forth…a “nation,” if you will. I don’t consider nationalism as inherently the enemy. A nation and a state are two different things. In other words, looking at indigenous societies may give anarchists some idea of what an anarchist society may look like.

Liza—Do you see Anarchists as being in a unique position to support indigenous struggles more than liberals or progressives may be?

WC—Sure, certainly. The rejection of the state as antithetical to indigenous tradition is one example. When I say that I don’t intend to universalize, I don’t know all indigenous traditions. But I know about a bunch of them and I can say I’ve never encountered an indigenous tradition that even conceptualized something like the state and that includes the so called Aztec Empire and so forth. They were radically out of step with the indigenous traditions of this hemisphere that I understand. But they were in no sense a state as it was formed and conceptualized in Europe. So, in my view, you see with the Aztecs, for example, a unique cultural mutation. I’m not even sure it’s an evolution. There are some ruptures, some disjunctures in there that are a radical departure from the indigenous traditions around them, but it’s very different from the state, which is a purely European concept.

P r o g r e s s i v e i s t a k e n a s a n “enlightened,” preferred alternative within the political discourse of the opposition. It essentially means—more of the same! It’s the trajectory that’s defined the evolution of European political, social, and economic forms of organization and those are interlocked since at least 800 AD. So you take that trajectory if you’re a progressive and you work to help advance it, move it further along. That’s progress you’re talking about. I don’t see anything constructive in the notion of progressivism at all, quite to the contrary. I came up at a time, the late 60’s, when liberals/progressives were quite often the enemy. It wasn’t conservatives. When you look at what distinguishes liberals from conservatives, that is, when you get right down to it, they want the same thing. They’re working off the same assumptions. So I don’t see there’s a way to distinguish and it’s becoming very clear within mainstream political discourse. Blue dog democrats are further to the right than some republicans. That’s what happens when you work off the same basic set of principles. The paradigm articulated by those who espouse a belief in western liberalism is the box they’re working within. So it essentially becomes a question of which route do you want to take to attain the same result. Often times the liberal approach is much more insidious and cruel than conservatives because they have to keep up the charade that they aren’t that way. Liberalism is the enemy—that’s what we learned from the perspective of SDS.

Andy—You mentioned earlier that anarchism is the best political option for white people. What’s the best way for white people to support indigenous resistance?