Pretendian
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A pretendian is a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by claiming to be a citizen of a Native American tribal nation, or to be descended from Native ancestors.
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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. 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.
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, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance,
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.
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.
2000s: Contemporary controversies
U.S. 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 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."
In recent times several controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and found broad circulation within media.
In January 2021, Navajo 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. 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.
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. 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."
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. Research into her claims by colleagues indicated 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. 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.
See also
- Cherokee descent
- Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990
- List of unrecognized tribes in the United States
- Passing (racial identity)
- Plastic shaman
- Reel InjunTemplate:Snd A 2009 Canadian documentary film about the portrayal of Native Americans in Hollywood films
