Pretendian

Pretendian is a term used to describe people who, it is asserted, have falsely claimed to be citizens of Native American tribal nations, or to be descended from Native ancestors. As a practice, it is a form of cultural appropriation.

History

Historian Philip 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 and Grey Owl.

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.

Post 1969

The rise of pretendian identities post-1960's 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 to reestablish their status as tribal citizens. 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.

Alleged Pretendians spreadsheet

Journalist Jacqueline Keeler has published a list of alleged pretendians, noting that "Everyone on this list monetizes their claims to tribal identity and/or speaks for American Indian Tribes on a national or international level."

Notable examples

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

Academic

• Ward Churchill
• Andrea Smith

Acting

• Johnny Depp

Literary

• Joseph Boyden
• Forrest Carter
• Jamake Highwater
• Nasdijj
• Margaret Seltzer

Political

• Elizabeth Warren

Visual Arts

• Jimmie Durham
• Gina Adams

See also

• Plastic shaman
• Cherokee descent

Further Reading

• Circe Sturm