Pretendian
[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.
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.
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.
Individuals who made careers out of pretending an Indigenous identity include James Beckwourth,[15] Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance,[16] and Grey Owl.
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.
[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.
[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'.
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.
[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.
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.
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."
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.
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".
[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.
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.
[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.
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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
