Pretendian (portmanteau of pretend and Indian [1] [2] [3] ) is a pejorative colloquialism describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or First Nation tribal nation, or to be descended from Native American or First Nation ancestors. [4] [5] [6] [7] As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, [8] especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate. [3] [8] [9] [10] The practice has sometimes been called Indigenous identity fraud, [11] [1] ethnic fraud, and race shifting. [12] [13]
Early false claims to native identity, often called "playing Indian", go back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party. There was a rise in pretendians after the 1960s for a number of reasons, such as the reestablishment of tribal sovereignty following the era of Indian termination policy, the media coverage of the Occupation of Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Occupation, and the formation of Native American studies as a distinct form of area studies which led to the establishment of publishing programs and university departments specifically for or about Native American culture. At the same time, hippie and New Age subcultures marketed Native cultures as accessible, spiritual, and as a form of resistance to mainstream culture, leading to the rise of the plastic shaman or "culture vulture". By 1990, many years of pushback by Native Americans against pretendians resulted in the successful passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) – a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States.
While native communities have always self-policed and spread word of frauds, mainstream media and arts communities were often unaware, or did not act upon this information, until more recent decades. Since the 1990s and 2000s, a number of controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and received coverage in mainstream media, leading to a broader awareness of pretendians in the world at large.
Historian Philip J. Deloria has noted that European Americans "playing Indian" is a phenomenon that stretches back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party. [14] In his 1998 book Playing Indian , Deloria argues that white settlers have always played with stereotypical imagery of the peoples that were replaced during colonization, using these tropes to form a new national identity that can be seen as distinct from previous European identities.
Examples of white societies who have played Indian include, according to Deloria, the Improved Order of Red Men, Tammany Hall, and scouting societies like the Order of the Arrow. Individuals who made careers out of pretending an Indigenous identity include James Beckwourth, [15] Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, [16] and Grey Owl. [7] [17] [18]
The academic Joel W. Martin noted that "an astonishing number of southerners assert they have a grandmother or great-grandmother who was some kind of Cherokee, often a princess", and that such myths serve settler purposes in aligning American frontier romance with southern regionalism and pride. [19]
The rise of pretendian identities post-1960s can be explained by a number of factors. The reestablishment and exercise of tribal sovereignty among tribal nations (following the era of Indian termination policy) meant that many individuals raised away from tribal communities sought, and still seek, to reestablish their status as tribal citizens or to recover connections to tribal traditions. Other tribal citizens, who had been raised in American Indian boarding schools under genocidal policies designed to erase their cultural identity, also revived tribal religious and cultural practices.
At the same time, in the years following the Occupation of Alcatraz, the formation of Native American studies as a distinct form of area studies, and the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction to Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday, publishing programs and university departments began to be established specifically for or about Native American culture. At the same time, hippie and New Age cultures marketed Native cultures as accessible, spiritual, and as a form of resistance to mainstream culture, leading to the rise of the plastic shaman or "culture vulture". All of this added up to a culture that was not inclined to disbelieve self-identification, and a wider societal impulse to claim Indigeneity. [20]
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn wrote of the influence of pretendians in American academia and political positions:
[U]nscrupulous scholars in the discipline who had no stake in Native nationhood but who had achieved status in academia and held on to it through fraudulent claims to Indian Nation heritage and blood directed the discourse. This phenomenon took place following the "Indian Preference" regulations in new hiring practices at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the early 1970s. Sometimes unprepared for such outright aggression or suffering polarization from the conflicts in the system, Native scholars in the academy often seemed to be silent witnesses to such occurrences. Their silence has not meant complicity. It has meant, more than anything, a feeling of utter powerlessness within the structures of strong mainstream institutions. [20]
By 1990, as noted in The New York Times Magazine , many years of "significant pushback by Native Americans against so-called Pretendians or Pretend Indians" resulted in the successful passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) –a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in the marketing of American Indian or Alaska Natives arts and crafts products within the United States. [2] The IACA makes it illegal for non-Natives to offer or display for sale, or sell, any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian, Indian tribe, or Indian arts and crafts organization. For a first-time violation of the act, an individual can face civil or criminal penalties up to a $250,000 fine or a five-year prison term, or both. If a business violates the act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000. [21]
United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) writes:
We ... have had to contend with an onslaught of what we call 'Pretendians', that is, non-Indigenous people assuming a Native identity. DNA tests are setting up other problems involving those who discover Native DNA [ sic ] in their bloodline. When individuals assert themselves as Native when they are not culturally Indigenous, and if they do not understand their tribal nation's history or participate in their tribal nation's society, who benefits? Not the people or communities of the identity being claimed. It is hard to see this as anything other than an individual's capitalist claim, just another version of a colonial offense. [22]
While modern DNA testing that can generally confirm if there is some degree of Native American ancestry and determine family relatedness, it is less able to indicate tribal belonging or Native American identity which is based on culture as well as biology. [23] [24] Attempts by non-Natives to racialize Indigenous identity by DNA tests have been seen by some Indigenous people, such as Kim TallBear, as insensitive at best, often racist, politically, and financially motivated, and dangerous to the survival of Indigenous cultures. [25] [a]
While Indigenous communities have always self-policed and spread word of frauds, mainstream media and arts communities were often unaware or did not act upon this information, until recent decades. [8] However, since the 1990s and 2000s, a number of controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and received coverage in mainstream media, leading to a broader awareness of pretendians in the world at large. [2] [4] [8]
In April 2018, APTN National News in Canada investigated how pretendians –in the film industry and in real life –promote "stereotypes, typecasting, and even, what is known as 'redface'." [30] Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee Nation) voiced a similar position in 2019, writing for High Country News that,
Pretendians perpetuate the myth that Native identity is determined by the individual, not the tribe or community, directly undermining tribal sovereignty and Native self-determination. To protect the rights of Indigenous people, pretendians like Wages and Warren must be challenged and the retelling of their false narratives must be stopped. [31]
In January 2021, Navajo journalist Jacqueline Keeler began investigating the problem of settler self-indigenization in academia. [32] Working with other Natives in tribal enrollment departments, genealogists and historians, they began following up on the names many had been hearing for years in tribal circles were not actually Native, asking about current community connections as well as researching family histories "as far back as the 1600s" to see if they had any ancestors who were Native or had ever lived in a tribal community. [32] This research resulted in the "Alleged Pretendians List", [33] of about 200 public figures in academia and entertainment, which Keeler self-published as a Google spreadsheet in 2021. [34]
While some people have criticized her for "conducting a witch hunt", Native leaders interviewed by VOA, such as Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe, report Keeler has strong support in Native circles. [32] Academic Dina Gilio-Whitaker, who reviewed Keeler's documentation on Sacheen Littlefeather before it was published, wrote that in her opinion Keeler did solid research. [35] Keeler has stressed that the list does not include private citizens who are "merely wannabes", but only those public figures who are monetizing and profiting from their claims to tribal identity and who claim to speak for Native American tribes. [34] She says the list is the product of decades of Native peoples' efforts at accountability. [32]
Academic Kim TallBear writes that all those mentioned on the list are public figures who have profited from their alleged Indigenous status, that Keeler's and her team's list documents that the overwhelming number of those who benefit financially from pretendianism are white, and that these false claims relate to white supremacy and Indigenous erasure. Tallbear stresses that people who fabricate fraudulent claims are in no way the same as disconnected and reconnecting descendants who have real heritage, such as victims of government programs that scooped Indigenous children from their families. [36]
Skeptics of the "Alleged Pretendians List" have contested statements about its reliability and countered by questioning the methodology and motivations of Keeler, in one case releasing a signed statement accusing her of exploiting the issue of Indigenous fraud - which they acknowledged "had long been a problem in Indian Country" - for her own personal agenda. [37] Signees felt Keeler's methods were not an appropriate way to address the problem and instead argued Keeler was weaponizing "lateral violence, colonial trauma, and colonial recognition" against people she disagreed with or had prior disputes with. Keeler was also accused of promoting herself as a "self-appointed arbiter of Indian identity", with the statement eventually requesting that Keeler "respect the rights of every tribe, and urban inter-tribal communities to determine their own people, kin and citizenship".
Other journalists have echoed similar concerns about the "Alleged Pretendians List's" accuracy and effect on the sovereignty of tribes. Northern Cheyenne journalist Angelina Newsom wrote in an op-ed that Keeler had questioned the enrollment of the Native politician Ben Nighthorse Campbell and included him in her research, despite Campbell being a member of the federally-recognized tribe. [38] Newsom stated that it was unclear whether Keeler "reached out to Northern Cheyenne tribal officials" before making the decision and that at the time of writing, Newsom stated Keeler had not removed Campbell's name from the list. Newsom accused Keeler of lacking proper documentation, possible bias, as well as using Ancestry.com records in part of her research, and warned that the publishing of private information could also "negatively impact the actual Native folks listed as relatives and in-laws." Newsom argued that tribes should be in charge of investigating citizenship claims, claiming that Keeler's method -which Newsom believed implicated people who were verifiably Native- wasn't "safe for Indian Country nor should it be the standard".
Métis author Chris La Tray, a member of the Little Shell Tribe, expressed his own thoughts about the debate after reportedly gaining access to the list, in an article published on the online publication Culture Study. [39] Noting that he "felt greasy" after viewing it, La Tray mentioned it was unclear how individuals he recognized were selected, nor who had nominated them. La Tray cited the inclusion of Thomas King as an example of this: "Why is he here? Who said he's a pretendian? And where on this list is it detailed the steps made to put him here in the first place?" While La Tray stated that he respected Keeler's previous work and also felt the cause was needed, La Tray nonetheless considered the list to be "McCarthyismish bullshit". He stated that "throwing a list of names out there for people to eyeball and gossip" was unproductive, calling the process unsubstantiated.
On September 13, 2021, the CBC News reported on their ongoing investigation into a "mysterious letter", dated 1845 (but never seen before 2011 [40] ) that is now believed to be a forgery. Based solely on the one ancestor listed in this letter, over 1,000 people were enrolled as Algonquin people, making them "potential beneficiaries of a massive pending land claim agreement involving almost $1 billion and more than 500 sq. kilometres of land". [4] The CBC investigation used handwriting analysis, and other methods of archival and historical evaluation to conclude the letter is a fake. This has led to the federally recognized Pikwakanagan First Nation to renew efforts to remove these "pretendian" claimants from their membership. In a statement to CBC News, the chief and council of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation say that those they are seeking to remove "are fraudulently taking up Indigenous spaces in high academia and procurement opportunities". [4]
In October 2021, the CBC published an investigation into the status of Canadian academic Carrie Bourassa, who works as an Indigenous health expert and has claimed Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit status. [41] Research into her claims indicated that her ancestry is wholly European. In particular, the great-grandmother she claimed was Tlingit, Johanna Salaba, is well-documented as having emigrated from Russia in 1911; she was a Czech-speaking Russian. [41] In response, Bourassa admitted that she does not have status in the communities that she claimed but insisted that she does have some Indigenous ancestors and that she has hired other genealogists to search for them. [41] Bourassa was placed on immediate leave from her post at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research after her claims of Indigenous ancestry were found to be baseless. [42]
In November 2021, writing for the Toronto Star about the Bourassa situation as well as the actions of Joseph Boyden and Michelle Latimer, K. J. McCusker wrote,
We have been so heavily affected by stolen identities that the word "pretendian" has become a colloquially used term. Stolen identities undermine us to the point where we end up fodder for the tabloids the likes of Daily Mail. We become a spectacle for those who at best think of us as a Halloween costume idea. To people like Bourassa, we are indeed a costume, except one you get to wear all year long and benefit from professionally because it checks that box that was created to even-out the field that cannot ever be evened out just by a box. [5]
In October 2022, Macleans magazine published a detailed article that elaborated on Carrie Bourassa, in addition to a detailed look at Gina Adams. The article also discusses the questioned identities of Amie Wolf, Cheyanne Turions, and Michelle Latimer. [33]
In October 2022, actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather died. Shortly thereafter her sisters spoke to Navajo reporter Jacqueline Keeler and said that their family has no ties to the Apache or Yaqui tribes Sacheen had claimed. [43] As Littlefeather had been a beloved activist, these reports were met with controversy, challenges, and attacks on Keeler, largely on social media. [44] Academic Dina Gilio-Whitaker wrote that the truth about community leaders is "crucial", even if it means losing a "hero", and that the work Littlefeather did is still valuable, but there is a need to be honest about the harm done by pretendians, especially by those who manage to fool so many people that they become iconic: [35]
The stereotype Littlefeather embodied depended on non-Native people not knowing what they were looking at, or knowing what constitutes legitimate American Indian identity. There is a pattern that "pretendians" follow: They exploit people's lack of knowledge about who American Indian people are by perpetuating ambiguity in a number of ways. Self-identification, or even DNA tests, for instance, obscure the fact that American Indians have not only a cultural relationship to a specific tribe and the United States but a legal one. Pretendians rarely can name any people they are related to in a Native community or in their family tree. They also just blatantly lie. Pretendianism is particularly prevalent in entertainment, publishing and academia. [...] Harm is caused when resources and even jobs go to fakes instead of the people they were intended for. [35]
There are several possible explanations for why people adopt pretendian identities. Mnikȟówožu Lakota poet Trevino Brings Plenty writes: "To wear an underrepresented people's skin is enticing. I get it: to feast on struggle, to explore imagined roots; to lay the foundational work for academic jobs and publishing opportunities." [9] Helen Lewis, wrote in The Atlantic that perhaps personal trauma from unrelated events in their lives, such as a difficult upbringing, may motivate hoaxers to desire to be publicly perceived as victims of oppression –to identify with those they see as victims rather than the perpetrators. [45]
Patrick Wolfe argues that the problem is more structural, stating that settler colonial ideology actively needs to erase and then reproduce Indigenous identity in order to create and justify claims to land and territory. [46] Deloria also explores the white American dual fascination with "the vanishing Indian" and the idea that by "Playing Indian", the white man can then be the true inheritor and preserver of authentic American identity and connection to the land, aka "Indianness". [47]
Academics Kim TallBear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville), Rowland Robinson (Menominee), as well as journalist Jacqueline Keeler (Navajo Nation) and attorney Jean Teillet (great-grandniece of Louis Riel) also name white supremacy, in addition to ongoing settler colonialism, as core factors in the phenomenon. [36] [35] [48] [49] [50] [51] In Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts –"Community, Pretendians, & Heartbreak", Robinson posits that
Quite often this seems to be a cynical ploy towards some kind of anti-Indigenous political programme, as Darryl Leroux and others have demonstrated quite convincingly and handily regarding the explosion of groups in eastern Ontario, Québec, the Maritimes, and parts of New England (2019) where quite often the absolutely astronomical growth in new claimants of Indigeneity can be clearly traced back to white supremacist, anti-Native, political projects in opposition to Aboriginal and Treaty rights. The assumption of Indigenous identity, through the growth of the so-called "Eastern Métis" movement, is clearly, at least in terms of its foundational leadership and organizational nature, antagonistic at a fundamental level towards Indigenous peoples and livelihoods. [49]
In October 2022, Teillet published the report, Indigenous Identity Fraud, for the University of Saskatchewan. [52] Discussing her research, she wrote for the Globe and Mail ,
Who are these people? In the academy and government, they are mostly white women. In the hunting and fishing realm, they are mostly white men. ... What these claims have in common is that they are entirely disconnected from any living Indigenous people. [51]
Why do they do it? Indigenous impersonation is not an accident. People do it to get something they want – to stop Indigenous people from closing a land claim, to access hunting and fishing rights, or to gain access to jobs. And the payoff is well worth it. Imposters in the academy gain six-figure jobs, prestige, grants and tenure in exchange for a few lies. This kind of impersonation can only be carried out by those with immense privilege. It takes a person with enough knowledge of the gaps in the system to exploit them. It is also another colonial act. If colonialism has not eradicated Indigenous people by starvation, residential schools, the reserve system, taking their lands and languages, scooping their children, and doing everything to assimilate Indigenous peoples, then the final act is to become them. It's a perverse kind of reverse assimilation. [51]
In Canada in 2024, Karima Manji and her two daughters, a non-Indigenous family, were charged with defrauding the Nunavut government of over $150,000 by claiming Inuit identity. [53] Manji must serve jail time as a result. [54]
In Canada in 2024, the government funding Tri-agency (including the NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR) announced an 8-month pilot project to ensure that grants, awards, and jobs intended for Indigenous people go to those that are genuinely Indigenous. [55]
Individuals who have been accused of being pretendians include:
Native Americans are the Indigenous peoples of the United States, particularly of the lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", whom it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America ... and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment". The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians, which it tabulates separately.
Maria Louise Cruz, better known as Sacheen Littlefeather, was an American-born actress and activist for Native American civil rights. After her death, she was accused by family members and journalists of falsely claiming Native American heritage.
Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws that define Native Americans in the United States status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups. By contrast, many tribes do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria. Blood quantum laws were first imposed by white settlers in the 18th century. Blood quantum (BQ) continues to be a controversial topic.
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Cherokees in the United States. It includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen and Natchez Nation. As of 2024, over 466,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
David Cornsilk is a professional genealogist and served as the managing editor of the Cherokee Observer, an online news website founded in 1992. He founded of the grassroots Cherokee National Party in the 1990s, seeking to create a movement to promote the Nation as a political entity. While working as a full-time store clerk at Petsmart, he "took on America’s second-largest Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation, in what led to a landmark tribal decision. Cornsilk served as a lay advocate, which permits non-lawyers to try cases before the Cherokee Nation’s highest court." Cornsilk had worked for the nation as a tribal enrollment research analyst and for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a genealogical researcher. He also has his own genealogical firm. He ran in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election. He lost the election to incumbent principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.
Cherokee heritage groups are associations, societies and other organizations located primarily in the United States. Such groups consist of persons who do not qualify for enrollment in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. As the Cherokee Nation enrolls all people who can prove descent from a Cherokee ancestor, many of these groups consist of those who claim Cherokee ancestry but have no documentation to prove this alleged heritage. Some have had their claims of ancestry checked and proven to be false. A total of 819,105 Americans claimed Cherokee heritage in the 2010 Census, more than any other named tribe in the Census.
Native American identity in the United States is a community identity, determined by the tribal nation the individual or group belongs to. While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, for Native Americans in the United States it is considered a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships. As culture can vary widely between the 574 extant federally recognized tribes in the United States, the idea of a single unified "Native American" racial identity is a European construct that does not have an equivalent in tribal thought.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 is a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States. It is illegal to offer or display for sale or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian Tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization, resident within the United States. For a first time violation of the Act, an individual can face civil or criminal penalties up to a $250,000 fine or a five-year prison term, or both. If a business violates the Act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000.
Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.
The Choctaw Freedmen are former enslaved Africans, Afro-Indigenous, and African Americans who were emancipated and granted citizenship in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War, according to the tribe's new peace treaty of 1866 with the United States. The term also applies to their contemporary descendants.
Chrystal Neria, known professionally as Kaya Jones, is a Canadian-born American singer and model. She originally became known in 2003 for performing with the American girl group the Pussycat Dolls. Since 2004, she has pursued a solo career in music.
The Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama is a state-recognized tribe in Alabama and Cherokee heritage group. It is based in northern Alabama and gained state-recognition under the Davis-Strong Act in 1984.
Jacqueline Keeler is a Native American writer and activist, enrolled in the Navajo Nation and of Yankton Dakota descent, who co-founded Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry (EONM), which seeks to end the use of Native American racial groups as mascots.
The Indian princess or Native American princess is usually a stereotypical and inaccurate representation of a Native American or other Indigenous woman of the Americas. The term "princess" was often mistakenly applied to the daughters of tribal chiefs or other community leaders by early American colonists who mistakenly believed that Indigenous people shared the European system of royalty. This inaccurate portrayal has continued in popular animation, with characters that conform to European standards of beauty, with the most famous misrepresentation being that of Pocahontas. Frequently, the "Indian Princess" stereotype is paired with the "Pocahontas theme" in which the princess "offers herself to a captive Christian knight, a prisoner of her father, and after rescuing him, she is converted to Christianity and lives with him in his native land." - a false narrative which misrepresents the events of Matoaka's life. The phrase "Indian princess", when used in this way, is often considered to be a derogatory term, a type of racial slur, and is deemed offensive by Native Americans.
Circe Sturm is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin. She is also an actress, appearing mainly in films and commercials.
Kim TallBear is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science. Holding the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, TallBear has published on DNA testing, race science and Indigenous identities, as well as on polyamory as a decolonization practice.
Individuals with some degree of documented Cherokee descent who do not meet the criteria for Cherokee tribal citizenship may describe themselves as "being of Cherokee descent" or "being a Cherokee descendant". These terms are also used by non-Native individuals whose ancestry has not been independently verified.
Racial or ethnic misrepresentation occurs when someone deliberately misrepresents their racial or ethnic background. It may occur for a variety of reasons, such as someone attempting to benefit from affirmative action programs for which they are not eligible.
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) is a non-profit organization based in the United States that is dedicated to exposing individuals and organizations that have falsely claimed to be American Indian, as well as to educating the public on the harms to American Indian people and sovereignty caused by identity fraud. The organization employs certified experts in American Indian genealogy to conduct genealogical investigations of individuals who have profited from fraudulent claims of American Indian heritage.
'pretendians' (short for 'pretend Indians')... Ms. TallBear said, there is no excuse for outright lies. 'If they're lying and they've gotten job benefits or scholarship benefits, they should be required to figure out how to make restitution,' she said, likening fake identity claims to falsifying academic credentials. 'It's fraud.'
the 1990s saw the beginning of what would eventually be significant pushback by Native Americans against so-called Pretendians or Pretend Indians
[The] phenomenon of what I and many other Indigenous people have for some time called Pretendians, as well as the related, and very often overlapping, phenomenon of Fétis*. This not-new phenomenon, to put it perhaps overly simply, is the practice of settler individuals (and sometimes others, but primarily settlers) putting forth a false Indigenous identity, and placing themselves out in front of the world as Indigenous people, and sometimes even attempting to assert themselves in some way as a kind of voice of their supposed peoples. *Portmanteaus of "Pretend" and "Indian" and "Fake" and "Métis", respectively. Pretendian, as a descriptive term, has been around most of my life, to the extent that I am not sure that placing its origin on the timeline is readily possible.
We have been so heavily affected by stolen identities that the word "pretendian" has become a colloquially used term.
Pretendians – noun – A person who falsely claims to have Indigenous ancestry – meaning it's people who fake an Indigenous identity or dig up an old ancestor from hundreds of years ago to proclaim themselves as Indigenous today. They take up a lot of space and income from First Nation, Inuit and Metis Peoples.
In 2011 there were over 250 self-identified Cherokee 'tribes' in the U.S., according to anthropologist Circe Sturm. Like efforts by self-identified Métis, Sturm suggests that "race shifting" among white Americans to Cherokee identity is an attempt to 'reclaim or create something they feel they have lost, and … to opt out of mainstream white society'. The end result, however, has been the proliferation of self-identified Cherokee 'tribes' in the U.S. and 'Métis communities' in Eastern Canada with minimal connections to Indigenous peoples who they claim as long-ago ancestors.
Canada's most famous pretendian is a man who called himself Grey Owl.
Actors who do this are sometimes called "pretendians" but that term is also used for people who play at being Indigenous in their real life.
The need to be associated with the victims rather than the perpetrators in such a context was, he said, often linked to another trauma in a person's life. [....] Perhaps the subconscious reasoning runs like this: White people are oppressors, but I'm a good person, not an oppressor, so I can't be white.
White people are so accustomed, they are centered by white supremacy to such an extent they feel no compunction about doing this ... maybe even they covet what we have and they feel we don't deserve it. And so they decide they can perform the identity better than we can. And they can - for a white audience. ... White people like to see other white people in redface.
While Russell Means' commented above come from a volume edited by debunked "pretendian" Ward Churchill, he is reacting to a specific historical failure of Marxists to recognize Indigenous land rights (Buvollen Citation1987, 595).
Keeler has played a huge role in bringing to light other infamous Pretendians like Rachel Dolezal, Ward Churchill, Rebecca Roanhorse and Sacheen Littlefeather.
In the Pretendian department, a remarkable story broke in early May about Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, who admitted that she's 'a White Person' who 'incorrectly' claimed Native identity for her 'whole life.'
Though not a 'pretendian' to the degree of Iron Eyes Cody, the Sicilian American impostor of 'Keep America Beautiful' fame, or Johnny Depp for that matter, Lackteen appropriated Native American culture.
My great grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian. Makes sense in terms of coming from Kentucky, which is rife with Cherokee and Creek.
Yet [Disney] has the gall and audacity to knowingly cast a non-Native person in the role of an established Native character. ... American Indians in Film and Television's argument is not so much with Johnny Depp, a charlatan at his best, as it is with the machinations of Disney proper. The controversy that will haunt this endeavor and ultimately cause its demise at the box office is the behind-the-scenes concerted effort and forced manipulation by Disney to attempt to sell Johnny Depp as an American Indian. American Indians, as assimilated and mainstream as they may be today, remain adamantly resistant to anyone who falsely claims to be one of theirs.
While promoting The Lone Ranger, Depp was made an honorary son by LaDonna Harris, a member of the Comanche Nation. Although now an honorary member of his family, he is not a member of any tribe.
Numerous Twitter users have balked at her claims, referring to Jones as a 'pretendian' ... If you need evidence that Kayla is absolutely a pretendian, here it is
Durham is neither enrolled nor eligible for citizenship in any of the three federally-recognized and historical Cherokee Tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation.