[3] Smith earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Comparative Study of Religion, and her Masters of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in 1997.

[9][10] In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz; her dissertation was on the Bible, gender, and nationalism in both the American Indian communities and among activists of the Christian Right.

is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities.

"[17] Smith has worked with Amnesty International as a Bunche Fellow, coordinating the research project on sexual violence and American Indian women.

[18] She represented the Indigenous Women's Network and the American Indian Law Alliance at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in 1991.

"[26] Some 30 faculty and students concluded "the University's tenure evaluation process discriminates against women of color and interdisciplinary professors.

Cherokee genealogist David Cornsilk stated that Smith "told [him] her employment depended on finding proof of Indian heritage."

[6][4][31] Native lawyer Steve Russell (Cherokee Nation) publicly accused Smith of ethnic fraud in a 2008 editorial published by Indian Country Today, but it was not widely read.

She continued to be identified at professional events as Cherokee or Native American, and claimed it was part of the reason for her denial of tenure at the University of Michigan (see above).

Incite would rather place our collective resources into abolishing settler colonialism than in perpetuating this ideology by policing her racial and tribal identity.

[30][35][36] An open letter, signed by twelve Native American women scholars, reads in part, "Asking for accountability to our communities and collectivities is not limited to Andrea Smith.

[37] They continued, "Andrea Smith has a decades-long history of self-contradictory stories of identity and affiliation testified to by numerous scholars and activists, including her admission to four separate parties that she has no claim to Cherokee ancestry at all.

'[35] Native American studies ethnographer David Shorter wrote, "Andrea Smith surely thinks she is Cherokee; or she did at some point.

[21][36] She was announced as Native American when hired by the Saint Paul School of Theology in Oklahoma, but left after three months after being confronted about her identity when the Cherokee Nation disputed her claim.

[40][7] In May 2021, an article by Sarah Viren for The New York Times Magazine detailed how Smith has continued to be published as an academic despite overwhelming evidence that she is not Cherokee as she claims.