Wielding Words Like Weapons

Wielding Words Like Weapons is a collection of acclaimed American Indian Movement activist-intellectual Ward Churchill’s essays on indigenism, selected from material written between 1995 and 2005. The book includes material illustrating the range of formats Churchill has adopted in stating his case, from sharply framed book reviews and review essays, to equally pointed polemics and op-eds, and formal essays designed to reach both scholarly and popular audiences. The items selected, several of them previously unpublished, also reflect the broad range of topics addressed in Churchill’s scholarship, from the fallacies of archeological/anthropological orthodoxy to the historical and ongoing genocide of North America’s native peoples. Also included are both the initial “stream-of-consciousness” version of Churchill’s famous—or notorious—"little Eichmanns" opinion piece analyzing the causes of the attacks on 9/11, as well as the counterpart essay which garnered an honorable mention for the 2004 Gustavus Myers Award for best writing on human rights.