It might not be true, but for the sake of argument let's say as fact that Ward Churchill lied about his heritage. In fact, let's say he lied about in a particularly offensive way, claiming direct relation with both Tecumseh and Crazy Horse, that he had relatives die on the Trail of Tears and at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Let's multiply that times fifty for fun making him a truly sour character as far as his claims about his personal history go. Man, what a punk no?

Now, let's find the relevance between his excellent scholarly works such as; A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the Fbi's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, Kill the Indian, Save the Man : The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools among many others and his offensively dubious geneological claims. There is no relevance. What it would make him is a sad sorry ass and a liar that writes excellent scholarly books.

His political essays would be a different matter because of the arbitrariness of opinion (as opposed to an accurate, however biased, description of the colonization of America as in ALMOG) but still. what relevance to his geneological claims? Is there any reason to care about this any more than one would care about Clinton's extramarital humping? It's of importance only to those directly affected which I doubt includes anyone on this site.

There is an interesting discussion that might be peripheral to this about ethnic vs. cultural identity given how surprisingly close everyone's ancestry is. Mathmatical models show that everyone on Earth could be traced back to a single shared ancestor less than 2,000 years ago (Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, Olson, 2002). With at least some shared ancestry can people pick their cultural identity? It's a neat discussion probably and one that might be borderline relevant in some way. Certainly it would be more relevant than Churchill's stories, true or not, of his personal life.