Pretendian

A Pretendian is a person who is asserted to have falsely claimed Indigenous identity by claiming to be a citizen of a Native American tribal nation, or to be descended from Native ancestors.^[1][2] As a practice, pretendianism is an extreme form of cultural appropriation, sometimes also referred to as ethnic fraud or race shifting.^[3][4]

History of false claims to Indigenous identity[]

Early claims[]

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.^[5] In his 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. Patrick Wolfe goes further, arguing that settler colonialism actively needs to erase and then reproduce Indigenous identity in order to create and justify claims to land and territory.^[6]

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,^[7] Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance^[8] and Grey Owl.^[2][9][10]

Joel W. Martin notes 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.^[11]

Post-1960s: Rise of pretendians in academia and political positions[]

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. All of this added up to a culture that was not inclined to disbelieve self-identification, and a wider societal impulse to claim Indigeneity.

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn wrote of the influence of pretendians in 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 lndian Nation heritage and blood directed the discourse. This phenomenon took place following the "lndian Preference" regulations in new hiring practices at the Bureau of lndian 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.^[12]

2000s: Contemporary controversies[]

In recent times several controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and found broad circulation within media.^[4]

In January 2021 Journalist Jacqueline Keeler posted an article and link to a google spreadsheet of a list of individuals, almost all of whom she has alleged have no Indigenous ancestry or involvement in the communities they claim, or who lack documentation of these criteria.^[13] The list has been amplified by some Indigenous academics such as Kim TallBear, who point out that there are few if any criteria to judge citizenship or other forms of tribal recognition employed in academia, media, or the entertainment industry and that, as a result, many supposed experts on Indigenous politics and cultures in these fields do not in fact have Indigenous ancestral or cultural ties. TallBear also notes that all those mentioned on the list have used their Indigenous status for monetary gain.^[14]

Some have criticized the list for what they say is its lack of consultation, lack of rigor, the use of genealogists who have been criticized for anti-black racism, and potential lack of sensitivity given the multitude of challenges in reclaiming Indigenous identity.^[15][16] Chris La Tray points to issues such as what he says is a lack of ethics around the list, lack of clarity on methodology, and the possibility of negative connections to ideas of "blood purity."^[16]

Notable examples[]

Individuals who have been accused in multiple sources of being a Pretendian include;

Academic[]

• Ward Churchill^[17][18][19] Churchill built his career as a scholar and an activist based on his claims of Indigenous identity.
• Rachel Dolezal^[20][21] Dolezal is better known for claiming to be African-American, but began her career claiming to be Native American, telling people that she was born in a tipi, and grew up hunting for food with bows and arrows.^[21]
• Andrea Smith^{[22][23][24][25][26]} Smith has built a career as a scholar, author and activist based on her claim that she is a Cherokee woman. Despite many articles and statements by Cherokee people and genealogists stating she has no Cherokee heritage or citizenship, she has never retracted her claim to be Cherokee.

Film[]

• Iron Eyes Cody^[27][28] Italian-American actor, most noted for playing the "Crying Indian" in a 1970's anti-littering commercial. Cody subsequently pretended to be from various tribes.
• Johnny Depp^[29][30][31] Depp has claimed both Creek and Cherokee descent on numerous occasions, including when cast as Tonto.^[32]

Literary[]

• Joseph Boyden^[33][34][35]
• Forrest Carter^[36][37] Founder of a Ku Klux Klan paramilitary group and white supremacist politician under his birth name, Asa Earl Carter.
• Jamake Highwater^[38][39][40]
• Nasdijj^[41][42][43]
• Margaret Seltzer^[44][45]

Political[]

• Kaya Jones^[46] - singer and model who joined the National Diversity Coalition for Trump as their "Native American Ambassador"; falsely claimed to be Apache.^{[46][47][48][49]}
• Elizabeth Warren^[50][51][52]

Visual arts[]

• Jimmie Durham^[53][54]
• Gina Adams^[55][56]
• Cheyanne Turions^[57][58] (Turions later stated that she had investigated her family's history and that as a result "I changed my self-identification to settler."^[59]).

See also[]

• Cherokee descent
• Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990
• List of unrecognized tribes in the United States
• Passing (race)
• Plastic shaman

Further reading[]

• Laura Browder. Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• Dean Chavers. Around the Campfire: Fake Indians. Native Times, 2013.
• Adam Gaudry.“ Communing with the Dead: The ‘New Métis,’ Métis Identity Appropriation, and the Displacement of Living Métis Culture.”American Indian Quarterly, 42, no. 2 (2018): 162–90
• Darryl Leroux. Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity. University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
• Darryl Leroux. "Inventing an Indigenous People in Algonquin Territory". Canadian Journal of History, vol 56, pp 71-72, 2021.
• Darryl Leroux. Self-made Métis,. Maisonneuve (magazine), 2018.
• Circe Sturm. Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 2010.
• Kim TallBear. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
• Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Moves to innocence I: Settler Nativism, pp 10-13. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012.

References[]

External links[]

• #359 The Convenient "Pretendian", Canada Land podcast
• Raceshifting, resource on Eastern Euro-Canadians and Euro-Americans posting as Indigenous peoples
• Indigenous “Race Shifting” Red Flags: A Quick Primer for Reporters and Others, by Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton)