FAKE AMERICAN INDIANS

Churchill can get away with so few credentials and such a heap of sloppiness because he claims to speak on behalf of a disenfranchised minority. The basis for this assertion rests on Churchill's ancestry, which he has variously described as three-sixteenths Cherokee and one-sixteenth Cree. Yet he has never provided any documentary evidence on his background, which Indians commonly do to prove their status within a tribe. He did gain membership to the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in 1994, but it was an associate membership that was temporarily available to people who aren't in fact Indian. (Bill Clinton, who has said that his grandmother's grandmother was a Cherokee, is also an honorary member of the Keetoowah.)

"You can spot these phony baloneys across the continent," says Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee who first met Churchill about 15 years ago. "Right away, I could tell he was a faker because he refused to talk about his family."

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