Ward Churchill

Ward LeRoy Churchill was born on 2 October 1947 in Urbana, Illinois, to Jack LeRoy Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen. His parents divorced before he was two, and he grew up in Elmwood, Illinois, where he attended local schools.

In 1966 he was drafted into the United States Army. He later gave varying accounts of his service, including claims of paratrooper training and reconnaissance patrols in Vietnam; in 2005 The Denver Post reported that Defense Department records showed he had trained as a film projectionist and light truck driver. He earned a bachelor's degree in technological communications in 1974 and a master's degree in communication theory in 1975, both from Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois Springfield.

Churchill joined the University of Colorado Boulder in 1978 as an affirmative action officer and also lectured on Native American issues in the ethnic studies programme. In 1990 the university hired him as an associate professor, although he did not hold a doctorate, and he received tenure the following year. He received an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in 1992, became a full professor in 1997 and was named chair of the ethnic studies department in 2002.

His writing focused on what he described as the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and on government repression of dissent. With Jim Vander Wall he wrote Agents of Repression (1988) and The COINTELPRO Papers (1990) about FBI operations against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party. His other books included Fantasies of the Master Race (1992), Struggle for the Land (1993), Indians Are Us? (1994), A Little Matter of Genocide (1998), Pacifism as Pathology (1998), On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (2003) and Kill the Indian, Save the Man (2004). Pacifism as Pathology, which criticised nonviolence on the American left, was widely debated among activists.

In January 2005 his 2001 essay on the September 11 attacks, which argued the attacks were a consequence of U.S. foreign policy and compared some World Trade Center workers to Adolf Eichmann, drew national attention after Hamilton College invited him to speak. He stepped down as department chair. The university then investigated seven allegations of research misconduct, and in May 2006 its investigative committee unanimously found serious misconduct including falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. On 24 July 2007 the Board of Regents voted to fire him.

Churchill sued, arguing he had been punished for his political speech. In April 2009 a Denver jury found he had been wrongly fired and awarded $1 in damages, but in July 2009 Judge Larry Naves vacated the verdict on grounds of quasi-judicial immunity and declined to reinstate him. The Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court upheld that ruling, and in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. He was also an artist whose prints often depicted Native American subjects.

Churchill lived with Dora-Lee Larson from 1977 in what was later described as a common-law marriage, which ended in 1984. He then married Marie Annette Jaimes, a University of Colorado colleague; they divorced in 1995. His third wife, Leah Kelly, was killed when she was hit by a car in May 2000. At the time of his death he was married to Natsu Saito, a professor of ethnic studies.

Churchill said he was of Creek and Cherokee descent and described himself as an enrolled member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. The band said in 2005 that he had been given only an honorary associate membership and was not eligible for enrolment, and genealogical research by the Rocky Mountain News found no documented Native American ancestor. Churchill rejected the idea of being vetted by the federal government, and some Native activists, including Russell Means, defended him.

Ward Churchill died on 11 August 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 78. His former lawyer said he died of a stroke, and reports described the cause as complications of a stroke. His death was reported by CBS Colorado and The Denver Post. Tink Tinker, professor emeritus at the Iliff School of Theology and a member of the Osage Nation, said Churchill's books got at the truth of what had happened to American Indians.

Churchill remained one of the most contested figures in American higher education. To supporters, including the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which backed his legal challenge, and a 2011 report by Colorado faculty of the American Association of University Professors that called his dismissal unjustified, he was a scholar punished for expressing views many Americans found offensive. To critics, he represented a failure of academic standards that could not be excused as protected speech. His books on FBI surveillance and on the treatment of Native Americans continue to be read and debated.