May an enrolled American Indian express an opinion? Ward Churchill has been trading on his apparently non-existent Indian ancestry for his entire public career. At the minimum, he is a fraud. His politics don't enter into it, as far as I am concerned. There are qualified people of legitimate American Indian ancestry who could have been hired for his position. As a non-Indian, he is not qualified to head up an Indian studies department or to act as a spokesman for Indians. I am sure that most Indians would agree with me that there are more than a few 'wannabees' out there, especially in the academic setting, who claim vague Indian ancestry (almost always 'Cherokee', for some reason) but whose ties to actual living Indians are tenuous to non-existent. Why some whites have this strange compulsion to represent themselves as Indians, even if they have a small quantum of Indian blood, is strange to me; it seems to bespeak an unhealthy self-hatred. Ward Churchill is a symptom of this phenomenon. He is an impostor, and his post should go to a genuine Indian.