Lies, Damned Lies, and the Complicated Accounting of Identity [Counterpoint]

Pale Moon has nonetheless had a great deal of success as a Native American spokesperson. She sang the national anthem at two Republican conventions and has raised millions of dollars for Native causes. Unfortunately, those causes are often aimed at her own self-promotion. Of the $197,000 AIHF spent on programs in 1998, $24,566 was spent on “TV and public appearances to present cultural values and to educate the non-Indian public of the aspirations and needs of Indian people,” according to the charity’s 1998 IRS filings.

The IRS has currently revoked the tax-exempt status for the American Indian Heritage Foundation, after failure to file tax returns.

But from here, it gets harder to definitively call people out, in part because we start getting into race and history. Taylor Lautner was not the only actor to fall under scrutiny from the Twilight saga. Tinsel Korey was also put in the crossfire for claiming Native heritage. While she has not reversed her position, others around the net have pointed to her birth name (Harsha Patel) and lack of registration as proof that she is not truly Native. However, most of these sites are tumblrs and wordpress sites without much else to go on but a few posts detailing the (usually anonymous) perspective on Korey’s heritage. For her part, Korey has declined to specifically name a tribe affiliation, though she has thrown out Ojibway and Anishinaabe at different points. Though sources close to Korey say that she is who she claims to be, there isn’t definitive evidence either way. Korey’s parents have not (to our knowledge) publicly gone on the record about their daughter’s background, and as far as the internet knows, no tribe has denounced her as being fraudulent. So do we assume she is being truthful, or assume she is lying?

Our final example is one that almost made me fall out of my chair when I heard it. During the Warhorse conversations, Deb Reese told me that the Cherokee nation challenged and rejected Andrea Smith’s claim to status. My initial reaction was complete and total disbelief, and some quick Googling didn’t turn up anything about the problem. A more specific search turns up a reference on Indian Country today – but it is an op-ed, written by Steve Russell and it essentially argues that if Smith is committing identity fraud, it isn’t that serious:

So we come to the question whether Smith is an ethnic fraud like Ward Churchill. My position is that even though not Cherokee, she cannot be a fraud of Churchill’s stature. He made public statements that no tribal person I know would endorse. He then abused Hannah Arendt’s work when he claimed that her study of Eichmann supported the idea that some undocumented worker washing dishes in the Windows on the World restaurant deserved his fiery death on Sept. 11, 2001. [...]

If the University of Michigan wants a researcher and teacher, it would appear by objective criteria they have one. If they want a Cherokee, not.

Smith’s record does not appear to require augmentation by hereditary advantage. Ethnic fraud is harmful to tribes and sometimes to individual real Indians if they are passed over for a fake in a job that really does call for a tribal person. Ethnic fraud is not harmful to universities unless they allow it to be. The University of Michigan should articulate its values and rule according to those values.

That’s the university. That is not me. I’m not sure I would want to associate with an ethnic fraud, as some I have met are truly disturbed individuals. How can somebody choose to insult his or her real relatives so gravely? Often, these people are outed by offended relatives. If they do take something meant for real Indians, they are no better than any other thieves. That’s my moral judgment. That’s not a judgment that is open to a public university unless ethnicity was a bona fide qualification for the job.

If the purpose of Indian studies is to create jobs for incompetent Indians, let alone incompetent fakes, Indian studies has no business existing. It breaks my heart to hear Indian scholars claim their scholarship would not stand up to the level of scrutiny that Churchill’s antics drew. Pray tell, why not? Are we scholars or, as the Rush Limbaughs of the world would say, ”race pimps?”

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