pretendian

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.{{cite book|last=Deloria|first=Philip J.|authorlink=Philip J. Deloria|title=Playing Indian|date=1999|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=9780300080674|pages=64–8, 91, 101, et al|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQFBTKi4aYsC&pg=PA126|accessdate=February 28, 2019|archive-date=June 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608063410/https://books.google.com/books?id=dQFBTKi4aYsC&pg=PA126|url-status=live}} In his 1998 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.

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,Laura Browder, " 'One Hundred Percent American': How a Slave, a Janitor, and a Former Klansmen Escaped Racial Categories by Becoming Indians", in Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identity in a Multicultural Context, ed. Timothy B. Powell, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press (1999) Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance,{{cite conference |first=Melinda |last=Micco |article=Tribal Re-Creations: Buffalo Child Long Lance and Black Seminole Narratives |title=Re-placing America: Conversations and Contestations |editor1-last=Hsu|editor1-first=Ruth|editor2-last=Franklin|editor2-first=Cynthia|editor3-last=Kosanke|editor3-first=Suzanne |place=Honolulu |publisher=University of Hawai'i and the East-West Center |year=2000}} and Grey Owl.{{cite news |last=Murray |first=John |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |title=APTN Investigates: Cowboys and Pretendians |work=Aboriginal Peoples Television Network |date=April 20, 2018 |access-date=July 8, 2021 |quote=Canada's most famous pretendian is a man who called himself Grey Owl. |archive-date=October 7, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211007175631/https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |url-status=live }}{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Donald B. |title=From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl |place=Saskatoon |publisher=Western Prairie Books |year=1990}}

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.{{cite book |first=Joel W. |last=Martin |chapter='My Grandmother Was a Cherokee Princess': Representations of Indians in Southern History |title=Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in Popular Culture |editor-first=Elizabeth |editor-last=Bird |location=London |publisher=Routledge |year=1996}}

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 or "culture vulture". 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. "Who Stole Native American Studies?" Wíčazo Ša Review, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Spring, 1997), p. 23.

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn wrote of the influence of pretendians in American academia and political positions:

{{blockquote|[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 Indian Nation heritage and blood directed the discourse. This phenomenon took place following the "Indian Preference" regulations in new hiring practices at the Bureau of Indian 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.}}

By 1990, as noted in The New York Times Magazine, many years of "significant pushback by Native Americans against so-called Pretendians or Pretend Indians" resulted in the successful passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA){{snd}}a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in the marketing of American Indian or Alaska Natives arts and crafts products within the United States. The IACA makes it illegal for non-Natives to offer or display for sale, or sell, any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian, Indian tribe, or Indian arts and crafts organization. For a first-time violation of the act, an individual can face civil or criminal penalties up to a $250,000 fine or a five-year prison term, or both. If a business violates the act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000.[http://www.doi.gov/iacb/act.html "The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990".] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060925020543/http://www.doi.gov/iacb/act.html |date=September 25, 2006 }} US Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board. Retrieved May 24, 2009.

United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) writes:

{{blockquote|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 {{sic}} 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.{{cite book |last1=Harjo |first1=Joy |authorlink=Joy Harjo |editor1-last=Harjo |editor1-first=Joy |editor2-last=Howe |editor2-first=Leanne |editor3-last=Foerster |editor3-first=Jennifer |title=When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry |date=2020 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York |isbn=9780393356816 |page=4 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Z-6DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22When+individuals+assert%22&pg=PT20 |chapter=Introduction |access-date=December 30, 2021 |archive-date=March 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220322025959/https://books.google.com/books?id=5Z-6DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22When+individuals+assert%22&pg=PT20 |url-status=live }}}}

While modern DNA testing can confirm some degree of Native American ancestry, as well as family relatedness, it is less able to indicate tribal belonging or Native American identity, which is based on culture as well as biology.{{Cite web |title=Tracing American Indian and Alaska Native Ancestry {{!}} Indian Affairs |url=https://www.bia.gov/guide/tracing-american-indian-and-alaska-native-aian-ancestry |access-date=November 27, 2023 |website=www.bia.gov |language=en}}{{cite news|last1=Geddes|first1=Linda|title='There is no DNA test to prove you're Native American' |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129554-400-there-is-no-dna-test-to-prove-youre-native-american/ |accessdate=May 31, 2019 |work=New Scientist|date=February 5, 2014|archive-date=March 15, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170315112433/https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129554-400-there-is-no-dna-test-to-prove-youre-native-american/|url-status=live}} Attempts by non-Natives to racialize Indigenous identity through DNA tests have been seen by some Indigenous people, such as Kim TallBear, as insensitive at best, though often racist, politically and financially motivated, and dangerous to the survival of Indigenous cultures.{{cite news|last1=TallBear|first1=Kim|authorlink=Kim TallBear|title=Elizabeth Warren's claim to Cherokee ancestry is a form of violence - Be it by the barrel of a carbine or a mail-order DNA test, the American spirit demands the disappearance of Indigenous people|url=https://www.hcn.org/issues/51.2/tribal-affairs-elizabeth-warrens-claim-to-cherokee-ancestry-is-a-form-of-violence |accessdate=November 5, 2019 |work=High Country News|date=January 17, 2019|archive-date=November 22, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122135715/https://www.hcn.org/issues/51.2/tribal-affairs-elizabeth-warrens-claim-to-cherokee-ancestry-is-a-form-of-violence/|url-status=live}}{{efn|name=DNA|While there are some genetic markers that are more common among Native Americans, these markers are also found in Asia, and in other parts of the world.{{cite web|url=http://www.weyanoke.org/historyculture/hc-DNAandNativeAmericanAncestry.html|title=Can DNA Determine Who is American Native American?|year=2008|website=|publisher=The WEYANOKE Association|author=Kim TallBear|authorlink=Kim TallBear|accessdate=May 11, 2009}}{{Dead link|date=January 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} The commercial DNA companies that offer ethnicity tests do not have a large enough pool of North American DNA to provide reliable matches. The most popular companies have admitted to having no North American DNA, and that their "matches" are to Central Asian and South or Central American populations; smaller companies may have a very small pool from one tribe who participated in a medical study.{{cite web |last1=Tennant |first1=Amie Bowser |title=Why Your DNA Results Didn't Show Your Native American Ancestry |url=https://thegenealogyreporter.com/native-american-dna-test/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181205083711/https://thegenealogyreporter.com/native-american-dna-test/|archive-date=December 5, 2018|website=The Genealogy Reporter |accessdate=May 28, 2019 |date=February 9, 2018}}{{cite web|title=Native Americans fear potential exploitation of their DNA|first=Arvind|last=Suresh|url=https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/10/06/native-americans-fear-potential-exploitation-dna/|publisher=Genetic Literacy Project|date=October 6, 2016 |access-date=September 7, 2021 |archive-date=November 23, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211123212846/https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/10/06/native-americans-fear-potential-exploitation-dna/ |url-status=live}}{{cite web|title=DNA tests stand on shaky ground to define Native American identity|first=Teresa L.|last=Carey|url=https://www.genome.gov/news/news-release/DNA-tests-stand-on-shaky-ground-to-define-Native-American-identity|publisher=National Human Genome Research Institute|date=May 9, 2019|access-date=September 7, 2021 |archive-date=January 11, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220111093421/https://www.genome.gov/news/news-release/DNA-tests-stand-on-shaky-ground-to-define-Native-American-identity |url-status=live}} The exploitation of Indigenous genetic material, like the theft of human remains, land and artifacts, has led to widespread distrust to outright boycotts of these companies by Native communities. While a DNA test may bring up some markers associated with some Indigenous or Asian populations (and the science there is fairly problematic, as TallBear describes in her book Native American DNA), as Indigenous identity is based in citizenship, family and community, a genetic marker does not make a person Indigenous.}}

While Indigenous communities have always self-policed and spread word of frauds, mainstream media and arts communities were often unaware or did not act upon this information, until recent decades. 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.

In April 2018, APTN National News in Canada investigated how pretendians{{snd}}in the film industry and in real life{{snd}}promote "stereotypes, typecasting, and even, what is known as 'redface'."{{cite news |last=Murray |first=John |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |title=APTN Investigates: Cowboys and Pretendians |work=Aboriginal Peoples Television Network |date=April 20, 2018 |access-date=July 8, 2021 |quote=Actors who do this are sometimes called “pretendians” but that term is also used for people who play at being Indigenous in their real life. |archive-date=October 7, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211007175631/https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |url-status=live }} Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee Nation) voiced a similar position in 2019, writing for High Country News that:

{{blockquote|Pretendians perpetuate the myth that Native identity is determined by the individual, not the tribe or community, directly undermining tribal sovereignty and Native self-determination. 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.{{cite news|last1=Nagle|first1=Rebecca |authorlink=Rebecca Nagle |title=How 'pretendians' undermine the rights of Indigenous people - We must guard against harmful public discourse about Native identity as much as we guard against harmful policy. |url=https://www.hcn.org/articles/tribal-affairs-how-pretendians-undermine-the-rights-of-indigenous-people |accessdate=26 Dec 2021 |work=High Country News|date=2 April 2019|archive-date=June 19, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190619151448/https://www.hcn.org/articles/tribal-affairs-how-pretendians-undermine-the-rights-of-indigenous-people/|url-status=live}}}}

In January 2021, Navajo journalist Jacqueline Keeler began investigating the problem of settler self-indigenization in academia.{{cite web |last1=Hilleary |first1=Cecily |title=Across North America, academics have allegedly manufactured indigenous identity for personal, professional and financial gain |url=https://www.voanews.com/a/native-first-nations-scholars-fake-indians-prevalent-in-higher-education-/6511681.html |website=Voice of America |access-date=October 27, 2022 |date=April 3, 2022}} Working with other Natives in tribal enrollment departments, genealogists and historians, they began following up on the names many had been hearing for years in tribal circles were not actually Native, asking about current community connections as well as researching family histories "as far back as the 1600s" to see if they had any ancestors who were Native or had ever lived in a tribal community. This research resulted in the "Alleged Pretendians List",{{cite web |last1=Cyca |first1=Michelle |title=The Curious Case of Gina Adams: A 'Pretendian' investigation |url=https://macleans.ca/culture/the-curious-case-of-gina-adams-a-pretendian-investigation/ |website=Maclean's |access-date=October 23, 2022 |date=September 6, 2022}} of about 200 public figures in academia and entertainment, which Keeler self-published as a Google spreadsheet in 2021.{{cite web |first=Jacqueline |last=Keeler |author-link=Jacqueline Keeler |url=https://www.pollennationmagazine.com/pollen-nation/2020/5/5/the-alleged-pretendians |title=The Alleged Pretendians List |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608063411/https://www.pollennationmagazine.com/pollen-nation/2020/5/5/the-alleged-pretendians |archive-date=June 8, 2021 |date=May 5, 2020 |work=Pollen Nation Magazine}}

While some people have criticized her for "conducting a witch hunt", Native leaders interviewed by VOA, such as Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe, report Keeler has strong support in Native circles. Academic Dina Gilio-Whitaker, who reviewed Keeler's documentation on Sacheen Littlefeather before it was published, wrote that in her opinion Keeler did solid research. Keeler has stressed that the list does not include private citizens who are "merely wannabes", but only those public figures who are monetizing and profiting from their claims to tribal identity and who claim to speak for Native American tribes. She says the list is the product of decades of Native peoples' efforts at accountability.

Academic Kim TallBear writes that all those mentioned on the list are public figures who have profited from their alleged Indigenous status, that Keeler's and her team's list documents that the overwhelming number of those who benefit financially from pretendianism are white, and that these false claims relate to white supremacy and Indigenous erasure. 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.{{cite web |last1=TallBear |first1=Kim |author-link=Kim TallBear|title=Playing Indian Constitutes a Structural Form of Colonial Theft, and It Must be Tackled |url=https://kimtallbear.substack.com/p/playing-indian-constitutes-a-structural |website=Unsettle |access-date=May 30, 2021 |date=May 10, 2021}}

Skeptics of the "Alleged Pretendians List" have contested statements about its reliability and countered by questioning the methodology and motivations of Keeler, in one case releasing a signed statement via Last Real Indians accusing her of exploiting the issue of Indigenous fraud - which they acknowledged "had long been a problem in Indian Country" - for her own personal agenda.{{cite web |title=Community Members Speak out Against the "Alleged Pretendians List" |date= May 27, 2021 |url=https://lastrealindians.com/news/2021/5/9/cp3jcylawd83oe095y8npx67n6jng0 |website=Last Real Indians |access-date=January 3, 2025 }} Signees felt Keeler's methods were not an appropriate way to address the problem and instead argued Keeler was weaponizing "lateral violence, colonial trauma, and colonial recognition" against people she disagreed with or had prior disputes with. Keeler was also accused of promoting herself as a "self-appointed arbiter of Indian identity", with the statement eventually requesting that Keeler "respect the rights of every tribe, and urban inter-tribal communities to determine their own people, kin and citizenship".

Lakota journalist Alexandra Watson wrote in "Who made the Pretendian?" for NtvTwt.com that an article she'd written was used for reference without her consent.{{cite news|author-last=Watson|author-first=Ali| url=https://ntvtwt.com/2021/06/13/who-made-the-pretendian/ |title=Who Made the Pretendian| website=NtvTwt.com |date=June 14, 2021|access-date=May 27, 2025|archive-date=September 24, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230924002814/https://ntvtwt.com/2021/06/13/who-made-the-pretendian/|url-status=dead}} Noting that she was not a genealogist and that the information she'd originally posted was publicly-available, Watson felt her writing shouldn't be used as an endorsement nor support of the List. Watson later questioned, after discussing the history of Pretendians and lack of accountability they had beyond an apology in most cases, whether the List truly effected change in a society with "fake Natives being hired and passed off as Natives in Hollywood today no matter how many websites or how many Natives might speak up." She did not dismiss the need for Pretendians to be exposed - noting she and other Native writers and sites did so - but distinguished her methodology by noting "there is a lot of information to consider and reasons not to support the person" and felt that the process used to form the Alleged Pretendians List needed to be reconsidered and planned beyond merely listing people.

Other journalists have echoed similar concerns about the "Alleged Pretendians List's" accuracy and effect on the sovereignty of tribes. Northern Cheyenne journalist Angelina Newsom wrote in an op-ed for Powwows.com that Keeler had questioned the enrollment of the Native politician Ben Nighthorse Campbell and included him in her research, despite Campbell being a member of the federally-recognized tribe.{{cite news|author-last=Newsom|author-first=Angelina| url=https://www.powwows.com/the-problem-with-jacqueline-keelers-pretendian-list |title=Opinion: The Real Problem With Jacqueline Keeler's 'Alleged Pretendian' List| website=Powwows.com |date=May 14, 2021|access-date=January 3, 2025|archive-date=May 20, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210520000000/https://www.powwows.com/the-problem-with-jacqueline-keelers-pretendian-list |url-status=dead}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20210520032149/https://www.powwows.com/the-problem-with-jacqueline-keelers-pretendian-list/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=onsignal Alt URL] Newsom stated that it was unclear whether Keeler "reached out to Northern Cheyenne tribal officials" before making the decision and that at the time of writing, Newsom stated Keeler had not removed Campbell's name from the list. 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." Newsom argued in the closing of her article that tribes should be in charge of investigating citizenship claims, claiming that Keeler's method -which Newsom believed implicated people who were verifiably Native- wasn't "safe for Indian Country nor should it be the standard".

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.{{cite web |author-last= La Tray |author-first= Chris |title=The Pretendians |date= February 21, 2021 |url=https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-pretendians-131 |website=Culture Study |access-date=January 3, 2025 }}

Noting that he "felt greasy" after viewing it, La Tray mentioned it was unclear how individuals he recognized were selected, nor who had nominated them. La Tray cited the inclusion of Thomas King as an example of this: "Why is he here? Who said he's a pretendian? And where on this list is it detailed the steps made to put him here in the first place?" While La Tray stated that he respected Keeler's previous work and also felt the cause was needed, La Tray nonetheless considered the list to be "McCarthyismish bullshit". He stated that "throwing a list of names out there for people to eyeball and gossip" was unproductive, calling the process unsubstantiated. King has been accused of falsely representing himself as Cherokee by the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds through separate research.https://tribalallianceagainstfrauds.org/thomas-king

On September 13, 2021, the CBC News reported on their ongoing investigation into a "mysterious letter", dated 1845 (but never seen before 2011{{cite news|author-last=Leo|author-first=Geoff|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/letter-lagarde-algonquin-1.6121432|title=Mysterious letter linking 1,000 people to $1B Algonquin treaty likely fake, CBC investigation finds – Author of conspiracy theory books says letter was dropped in his mailbox in 2011|work=CBC News|date=August 9, 2021|access-date=December 26, 2021|archive-date=December 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211226224737/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/letter-lagarde-algonquin-1.6121432 |url-status=live}}) that is now believed to be a forgery. Based solely on the one ancestor listed in this letter, over 1,000 people were enrolled as Algonquin people, making them "potential beneficiaries of a massive pending land claim agreement involving almost $1 billion and more than 500 sq. kilometres of land".{{cite news|author-last=Leo |author-first=Geoff |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/algonquin-ancestry-lagarde-letter-follow-1.6171830 |title=Push to remove 'pretendians' from Algonquin membership rekindled after CBC investigation – Analysis revealed letter linked to 1,000 Indigenous ancestry claims is likely fake|work=CBC News |date=September 13, 2021|access-date=December 26, 2021|archive-date=December 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211226224737/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/algonquin-ancestry-lagarde-letter-follow-1.6171830| url-status=live}} The CBC investigation used handwriting analysis, and other methods of archival and historical evaluation to conclude the letter is a fake. This has led to the federally recognized Pikwakanagan First Nation to renew efforts to remove these "pretendian" claimants from their membership. 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".

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.{{Cite web|last=Leo|first=Geoff|date=October 27, 2021|title=Indigenous or pretender?|url=https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/preview/carrie-bourassa-indigenous |url-status=live |access-date=October 28, 2021 |website=CBC News |archive-date=October 28, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211028214903/https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/preview/carrie-bourassa-indigenous}} Research into her claims indicated that 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. 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.{{cite news|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carrie-bourassa-indefinite-leave-indigenous-1.6233247|title=Health scientist Carrie Bourassa on immediate leave after scrutiny of her claim she's Indigenous |website=CBC News |last=Leo|first=Geoff|date=November 1, 2021|access-date=December 20, 2021|archive-date=November 29, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211129054348/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carrie-bourassa-indefinite-leave-indigenous-1.6233247|url-status=live}}

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:

{{blockquote|We have been so heavily affected by stolen identities that the word "pretendian" has become a colloquially used term.

Stolen identities undermine us to the point where we end up fodder for the tabloids the likes of Daily Mail. We become a spectacle for those who at best think of us as a Halloween costume idea. To people like Bourassa, we are indeed a costume, except one you get to wear all year long and benefit from professionally because it checks that box that was created to even-out the field that cannot ever be evened out just by a box.{{cite news |last1=McCusker |first1=K.J. |title=The violence of pretending to be Indigenous - The recent call for organizing a Canada-wide dialogue about Indigenous identity by the First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) is a solid step toward recognizing this as an ongoing problem. We must proactively address the issue of fraudulent proclamations |url=https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/11/30/the-violence-of-pretending-to-be-indigenous.html |date=30 Nov 2021 |access-date=27 Dec 2021 |work=Toronto Star |quote=We have been so heavily affected by stolen identities that the word “pretendian” has become a colloquially used term. |archive-date=December 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211224190907/https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/11/30/the-violence-of-pretending-to-be-indigenous.html |url-status=live }}}}In October 2022, Macleans magazine published a detailed article that elaborated on Carrie Bourassa, in addition to a detailed look at Gina Adams. The article also discusses the questioned identities of Amie Wolf, Cheyanne Turions, and Michelle Latimer.

File:Sacheen Littlefeather Oscar 45 (cropped).jpg at the 45th Academy Awards in 1973, which she attended on behalf of Marlon Brando]]

In October 2022, actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather died. 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. As Littlefeather had been a beloved activist, these reports were met with controversy, challenges, and attacks on Keeler, largely on social media. 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:{{cite web |url=https://theconversation.com/sacheen-littlefeather-and-ethnic-fraud-why-the-truth-is-crucial-even-it-it-means-losing-an-american-indian-hero-193263 |title=Sacheen Littlefeather and ethnic fraud – why the truth is crucial, even if it means losing an American Indian hero|first=Dina |last=Gilio Whitaker |author-link=Dina Gilio-Whitaker |work=The Conversation |date= October 28, 2022 |access-date=October 29, 2022}}

{{blockquote|The stereotype Littlefeather embodied depended on non-Native people not knowing what they were looking at, or knowing what constitutes legitimate American Indian identity. There is a pattern that "pretendians" follow: They exploit people's lack of knowledge about who American Indian people are by perpetuating ambiguity in a number of ways. 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. Pretendians rarely can name any people they are related to in a Native community or in their family tree. They also just blatantly lie. Pretendianism is particularly prevalent in entertainment, publishing and academia. [...] Harm is caused when resources and even jobs go to fakes instead of the people they were intended for.}}

There are several possible explanations for why people adopt pretendian identities. Mnikȟówožu Lakota poet Trevino Brings Plenty writes: "To wear an underrepresented people's skin is enticing. I get it: to feast on struggle, to explore imagined roots; to lay the foundational work for academic jobs and publishing opportunities."{{cite journal|last1= Brings Plenty|first1= Trevino|authorlink= Trevino Brings Plenty|date= December 30, 2018|title= Pretend Indian Exegesis: The Pretend Indian Uncanny Valley Hypothesis in Literature and Beyond |url= https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/648/1356|journal= Transmotion|volume= 4|issue= 2|pages= 142–52 |doi= 10.22024/UniKent/03/tm.648|access-date= November 25, 2021|archive-date= November 25, 2021 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20211125082654/https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/648/1356 |url-status= live}} Helen Lewis, wrote in The Atlantic that perhaps personal trauma from unrelated events in their lives, such as a difficult upbringing, may motivate hoaxers to desire to be publicly perceived as victims of oppression{{snd}}to identify with those they see as victims rather than the perpetrators.{{Cite web |last=Lewis |first=Helen |date=March 16, 2021 |title=The Identity Hoaxers |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/03/krug-carrillo-dolezal-social-munchausen-syndrome/618289/ |access-date=July 21, 2023 |website=The Atlantic |language=en |quote=The need to be associated with the victims rather than the perpetrators in such a context was, he said, often linked to another trauma in a person’s life. [....] Perhaps the subconscious reasoning runs like this: White people are oppressors, but I’m a good person, not an oppressor, so I can’t be white.}}

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.Wolfe, Patrick (2006) Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387-409, DOI: 10.1080/14623520601056240 Deloria also explores the white American dual fascination with "the vanishing Indian" and the idea that by "Playing Indian", the white man can then be the true inheritor and preserver of authentic American identity and connection to the land, aka "Indianness".{{cite book|last=Deloria|first=Philip J.|authorlink=Philip J. Deloria|title=Playing Indian|date=1999|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=9780300080674|pages=64–5, 91, 101, et al|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQFBTKi4aYsC&pg=PA126|accessdate=February 28, 2019|archive-date=June 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608063410/https://books.google.com/books?id=dQFBTKi4aYsC&pg=PA126|url-status=live}}

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.{{cite AV media|subject= Jacqueline Keeler |subject-link= Jacqueline Keeler |interviewer-last=Ridgen |interviewer-first=Melissa |interviewer-link= Melissa Ridgen |date=January 28, 2021|title=Pretendians and what to do with people who falsely say they're Indigenous|url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/infocus/pretendians-and-what-to-do-with-people-who-falsely-say-theyre-indigenous-put-infocus/|access-date=November 18, 2022|publisher=APTN News|language=en-US |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210713021512/https://www.aptnnews.ca/infocus/pretendians-and-what-to-do-with-people-who-falsely-say-theyre-indigenous-put-infocus/ |url-status=live|archive-date=July 13, 2021|format=Television broadcast|time=13:47 |location = Winnipeg|quote=White people are so accustomed, they are centered by white supremacy to such an extent they feel no compunction about doing this ... maybe even they covet what we have and they feel we don't deserve it. And so they decide they can perform the identity better than we can. And they can - for a white audience. ... White people like to see other white people in redface.}}{{cite web |last=Teillet |first=Jean |date=November 11, 2022 |title=There is nothing innocent about the false presumption of Indigenous identity |url= https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-there-is-nothing-innocent-about-the-false-presumption-of-indigenous/ |work=The Globe and Mail |access-date=November 17, 2022}} In Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts{{snd}}"Community, Pretendians, & Heartbreak", Robinson posits that:

{{blockquote|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. The assumption of Indigenous identity, through the growth of the so-called "Eastern Métis" movement, is clearly, at least in terms of its foundational leadership and organizational nature, antagonistic at a fundamental level towards Indigenous peoples and livelihoods.{{cite thesis|last= Robinson|first= Rowland|date= 2020|title= Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts: An Autoethnographic Account of the Imaginarium of Late Capitalist/Colonialist Storytelling|type= Phd.|publisher= [Waterloo, Ontario]: University of Waterloo|oclc= 1263615440|chapter-url= https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1263615440|chapter=4. Interlude: Community, Pretendians, & Heartbreak|page= 236|access-date= 28 Dec 2021}}}}

In October 2022, Teillet published the report, Indigenous Identity Fraud, for the University of Saskatchewan.{{cite report | last=Teillet |first= Jean |date = October 17, 2022|title= Teillet Report on Indigenous Identity Fraud | url = https://leadership.usask.ca/documents/about/reporting/jean-teillet-report.pdf | publisher = University of Saskatchewan| access-date = November 17, 2022 | quote =}} Discussing her research, she wrote for the Globe and Mail:

{{blockquote|Who are these people? In the academy and government, they are mostly white women. In the hunting and fishing realm, they are mostly white men. ... What these claims have in common is that they are entirely disconnected from any living Indigenous people.}}

{{blockquote|Why do they do it? Indigenous impersonation is not an accident. People do it to get something they want – to stop Indigenous people from closing a land claim, to access hunting and fishing rights, or to gain access to jobs. And the payoff is well worth it. Imposters in the academy gain six-figure jobs, prestige, grants and tenure in exchange for a few lies. This kind of impersonation can only be carried out by those with immense privilege. It takes a person with enough knowledge of the gaps in the system to exploit them. It is also another colonial act. If colonialism has not eradicated Indigenous people by starvation, residential schools, the reserve system, taking their lands and languages, scooping their children, and doing everything to assimilate Indigenous peoples, then the final act is to become them. It's a perverse kind of reverse assimilation.}}

In Canada in 2024, Karima Manji and her twin daughters, a non-Indigenous family, were charged with defrauding the Nunavut government of over $150,000 by claiming Inuit identity to receive financial aid earmarked for Indigenous.{{Cite news |last=Cecco |first=Leyland |date=June 28, 2024 |title=Canadian woman gets three years' jail in first ever sentencing for a 'Pretendian' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/28/canadian-woman-sentenced-inuit-benefit-fraud |access-date=June 29, 2024 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}{{Cite web |title= Iqaluit family pleased with 3 year sentence for Karima Manji|date=June 27, 2024 |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/featured/karima-manji-sentencing/ |access-date=June 29, 2024}} Manji took full responsibility for the Inuit misrepresentation and was sentenced to three years in prison, while charges against her daughters were dropped; Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI) has called this “unacceptable” since her daughters benefited from the fraud. Her daughters had earlier been dismissed from their jobs at law and engineering firms. Manji had previously been convicted in 2016 of defrauding the March of Dimes charity of $800,000 and received a conditional sentence. https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/gill-sisters-pretendian-fraud/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-fraud-karima-manji-three-years-1.7248264

In Canada in 2024, the government funding Tri-agency (including the NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR) announced an 8-month pilot project to ensure that grants, awards, and jobs intended for Indigenous people go to those that are genuinely Indigenous.{{Cite news |last=Leo |first=Geoff |date=September 4, 2024 |title=Federal research funder launches pilot aimed at rooting out Indigenous identity fraud |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/federal-research-funder-launches-pilot-aimed-at-rooting-out-indigenous-identity-fraud-1.7312194 |pages=CBC}}

Individuals who have been accused of being pretendians include:

• Ward Churchill{{cite journal |last1=Guernsey |first1=Paul J. |title=Reframing So-Called Primitive Accumulation for Settler Colonial Contexts: Ancestral Enclosures and Spatial Conceptions of History |journal=Capitalism Nature Socialism |date=12 December 2023 |volume=35 |issue=2 |page=138 |doi=10.1080/10455752.2023.2291523 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10455752.2023.2291523 |access-date=1 January 2025 |quote=While Russell Means’ commented above come from a volume edited by debunked “pretendian” Ward Churchill, he is reacting to a specific historical failure of Marxists to recognize Indigenous land rights (Buvollen Citation1987, 595).|url-access=subscription }}{{cite news |last1=Giago Davies |first1=James |title=Fake Indian celebrity exposed |url=https://www.lakotatimes.com/articles/fake-indian-celebrity-exposed/ |access-date=31 December 2024 |work=Lakota Times |date=1 November 2023 |quote=Keeler has played a huge role in bringing to light other infamous Pretendians like Rachel Dolezal, Ward Churchill, Rebecca Roanhorse and Sacheen Littlefeather.}} (born 1947) – A professor of ethnic studies and political activist, Churchill built his career on his claims of Indigenous identity that were unsupported by membership in any tribe or by later genealogical research that failed to find any evidence of Indigenous ancestry.Richardson, Valerie. [http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/report.html "Report on Conclusion of Preliminary Review in the Matter of Professor Ward Churchill".] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120629204440/http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/report.html |date=June 29, 2012 }} University of Colorado at Boulder. 2005. Retrieved July 26, 2009.Brown, Thomas. [http://hnn.us/articles/10633.html "Is Ward Churchill the New Michael Bellesiles?"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100726032600/http://hnn.us/articles/10633.html |date=July 26, 2010 }} George Mason University's History News Network. March 14, 2005. Retrieved July 26, 2009.{{cite news |last=Harjo |first=Suzan Shown |authorlink=Suzan Shown Harjo |url=http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28201419.html |title=Ward Churchill: The White Man's Burden |website=Indian Country Today |date=August 3, 2007 |access-date=July 26, 2009 |archive-date=March 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220322030000/https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive |url-status=live }}
• Qwo-Li Driskill (Paul Edward Driskill) (born 1975){{cite web |last1=Palmer |first1=Kathryn |title=Oregon State Professor Accused of Falsely Claiming Native Ancestry |url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/07/oregon-state-professor-accused-falsely-claiming |website=Inside Higher Ed |access-date=21 November 2024 |archive-date=21 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241121000353/https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/07/oregon-state-professor-accused-falsely-claiming |url-status=live}} – Former Associate Professor at Oregon State University claiming to be Cherokee, Lenape (Delaware), Osage, Lumbee and African.{{cite web |title=*Paul Edwards" Qwo-Li Driskill |url=https://tribalallianceagainstfrauds.org/%22qwo-li%22-driskill |website=Tribal Alliance Against Frauds |access-date=18 October 2024}} Driskill resigned from their position in September 2024, after accusations of academic misconduct and misrepresentation of their ethnicity.{{cite web |title=Professor accused of falsely claiming Native American ancestry no longer at OSU |url=https://gazettetimes.com/news/local/education/professor-no-longer-at-osu/article_33d2618a-aa85-54cb-a233-823505c07947.html |website=Corvallis Gazette Times |date=September 13, 2024 |access-date=21 November 2024 |archive-date=21 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241121003351/https://gazettetimes.com/news/local/education/professor-no-longer-at-osu/article_33d2618a-aa85-54cb-a233-823505c07947.html }}
• Nadya Gill and Amira Gill (twins born 1998) – In September 2023, the twins, along with their mother, were charged with two counts of fraud for posing as adopted Inuit children in order to benefit from the 1993 Nunavut Agreement, which entitles Inuit students to benefits and scholarships, which the twins erroneously claimed.{{Cite news |date=2023-09-22 |title=Canadian mother and twins charged with pretending to be Inuit |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66890945 |access-date=2024-10-18 |language=en-GB}} Before their deception was uncovered, the twins had been awarded over $158,000 in benefits.{{Cite web |title=Editor's Letter: The shameful legacy of Canada's pretendian phenomenon |date=February 15, 2024 |url=https://torontolife.com/city/editors-letter-pretendians/ |access-date=2024-10-18}} In February 2024, charges were dropped against the twins after their mother pled guilty to one count of fraud.{{Cite web |title=Woman pleads guilty in Inuit identity fraud case, charges dropped against daughters |date=February 10, 2024 |url=https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/woman-pleads-guilty-in-inuit-identity-fraud-case-charges-dropped-against-daughters-1.6763947 |access-date=2024-11-21}} In June 2024, the twins' mother was sentenced to 3 years in prison.{{Cite web |title=Karima Manji gets 3 years in prison in Inuit identity fraud case |date=June 27, 2024 |url=https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/karima-manji-gets-3-years-in-prison-in-inuit-identity-fraud-case/ |access-date=2024-11-21}}
• Elizabeth Hoover{{cite news |last1=Specktor |first1=Mordecai |title=Political Matters – June 2023 |url=https://thecirclenews.org/columnists/political-matters/political-matters-june-2023/ |access-date=31 December 2024 |work=The Circle: Native American News and Arts |issue=5 June 2024 |quote=In the Pretendian department, a remarkable story broke in early May about Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, who admitted that she’s 'a White Person' who 'incorrectly' claimed Native identity for her 'whole life.'}} – University of California Berkeley professor and Native food sovereignty activist with documented childhood identification as Native and involvement within Native culture. Following questions about her ancestry, Hoover conducted her own family genealogical research. She then announced in 2022 that she was not Native American, adding that she had been mistaken about her ancestry. Hoover did not resign from her university position.{{Cite web |date=May 8, 2023 |title=Berkeley professor Elizabeth Hoover apologizes for false Indigenous identity, admits she's white |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/berkeley-professor-elizabeth-hoover-apologizes-false-indigenous-identity-admits-white/ |access-date=August 15, 2023 |website=CBS News |language=en-US}}{{Cite magazine |last=Kang |first=Jay Caspian |author-link=Jay Caspian Kang |date=February 26, 2024 |title=A Professor Claimed to Be Native American. Did She Know She Wasn't? |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/a-professor-claimed-to-be-native-american-did-she-know-she-wasnt |access-date=March 1, 2024 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}
• Kay LeClaire – Madison, Wisconsin-based co-owner of "an Indigenous and queer art and tattoo space" who held a paid residency at the University of Wisconsin. LeClaire, who has also gone by the name Kathryn Le Claire and the self-chosen spirit name nibiiwakamigkwe, misrepresented themself as two spirit and was paid to educate students and LGBTQ audiences about food sovereignty, Indigenous queer identity, and the dangers of cultural appropriation. They were briefly a member of a state task force focused on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. LeClaire has since resigned and the tattoo collective has apologized to the community for the harm that they say was done by LeClaire, stating that they have cut all ties with LeClaire.{{cite news |last1=Meyerhofer |first1=Kelly |last2=Vaisvilas |first2=Frank |title=Tribal leaders in Wisconsin warn of 'pretendians' after Madison arts leader accused of pretending to be Native American resigns UW residency |url=https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2023/01/11/madison-pretendian-kay-leclaire-resigns-wisconsin-residency-amid-accusations/69778164007/ |access-date=May 26, 2023 |work=Milwaukee Journal Sentinel |date=January 11, 2023}}{{Cite instagram |author=red clover tattoo collective|user=redclovertattoocollective |postid=Cm7bcfyvTXL |date= January 2, 2023 |title= Statement on Kay Le Claire / Kathryn Le Claire / "nibiiwakamigkwe" |language= en|location= |access-date= |link= |url-status= dead |url=https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7bcfyvTXL/?hl=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230105014937/https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7bcfyvTXL/?hl=en|archive-date= January 5, 2023}}{{cite news |last=Huynh |first=Kayla |title=Shocking revelations of 'pretendian' leave Native community feeling burned |url=https://captimes.com/news/shocking-revelations-of-pretendian-leave-native-community-feeling-burned/article_77928a73-f23c-59d7-bb80-ce83cd4d9fea.html |access-date=May 26, 2023 |work=Milwaukee Journal Sentinel |date=January 2, 2023}}
• Susan Taffe Reed{{cite web |last=Frosch |first=Dan |date=October 5, 2015 |title=Dartmouth Removes New Native American Head Amid Ethnicity Questions: Tribes accused Susan Taffe Reed of misrepresenting herself as American Indian |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/dartmouth-removes-new-native-american-head-amid-ethnicity-questions-1444074620 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151009052715/http://www.wsj.com/articles/dartmouth-removes-new-native-american-head-amid-ethnicity-questions-1444074620 |archive-date=October 9, 2015 |url-status=live |work=The Wall Street Journal |access-date=October 31, 2022}}{{snd}} Former director of Dartmouth College's Native American Program. Fired in 2015 "after tribal officials and alumni accused her of misrepresenting herself as an American Indian".Pierce, Meghan, "[http://www.unionleader.com/Dartmouth_criticized_for_Native_American_Studies_hire_ "Dartmouth criticized for Native American Studies hire"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151001153056/http://www.unionleader.com/Dartmouth_criticized_for_Native_American_Studies_hire_ |date=October 1, 2015 }}, New Hampshire Union Leader, September 19, 2015. Retrieved October 9, 2015.
• Andrea Smith{{cite news |last1=Viren |first1=Sarah |title=The Native Scholar Who Wasn't |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/cherokee-native-american-andrea-smith.html |date=May 25, 2021 |access-date=December 27, 2021 |magazine=The New York Times Magazine |quote=the 1990s saw the beginning of what would eventually be significant pushback by Native Americans against so-called Pretendians or Pretend Indians |archive-date=May 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210527014040/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/cherokee-native-american-andrea-smith.html |url-status=live }}{{snd}} Smith built a career as a scholar, author and activist based on her claim that she is a Cherokee woman. Despite many articles and statements by Cherokee people and genealogists stating she has no Cherokee heritage or citizenship, she has never retracted her claim.{{cite web|last1=Shorter|first1=David|title=Four Words for Andrea Smith: 'I'm Not an Indian'|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/01/four-words-andrea-smith-im-not-indian|website=Indian Country Today Media Network|access-date=July 5, 2015|date=July 1, 2015|archive-date=July 5, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150705092520/http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/01/four-words-andrea-smith-im-not-indian|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/11/tribes-blast-wannabe-native-american-professor.html|title=Tribes Blast 'Wannabe' Native American Professor|first=Samantha|last=Allen|authorlink=Samantha Leigh Allen|date=July 11, 2015|website=The Daily Beast|access-date=July 11, 2015|archive-date=February 2, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202022400/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/11/tribes-blast-wannabe-native-american-professor.html|url-status=live}}{{cite web|last1=Russell|first1=Steve|authorlink=Steve Russell (writer)|title=Rachel Dolezal Outs Andrea Smith Again; Will Anybody Listen This Time?|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/comment/2155105|website=Indian Country Today Media Network|access-date=July 5, 2015|date=July 1, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150805234048/http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/comment/2155105|archive-date=August 5, 2015}}{{cite news|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/07/open-letter-indigenous-women-scholars-regarding-discussions-andrea-smith |title=Open Letter from Indigenous Women Scholars Regarding Discussions of Andrea Smith |date=July 7, 2015|work=Indian Country Today Media Network|access-date=October 9, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150810184329/https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/07/open-letter-indigenous-women-scholars-regarding-discussions-andrea-smith|archive-date=August 10, 2015}} Smith has been employed as a professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside. In August 2023, the university announced that she would resign from the university as an emerita professor in August 2024, due to charges that she "made fraudulent claims to Native American identity in violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct provisions concerning academic integrity".{{Cite web |last=Quinn |first=Ryan |title=Professor Leaving University After Being Dubbed 'Pretendian' for Years |url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/08/18/professor-leaving-after-being-dubbed-pretendian |access-date=August 18, 2023 |website=Inside Higher Ed |language=en}}
• Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (born 1963){{cite news |last1=Leo |first1=Geoff |title=Disputed history |url=https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/mary-ellen-turpel-lafond-indigenous-cree-claims |access-date=November 21, 2022 |work=CBC |date=October 12, 2022}}{{Cite news |last=Leo |first=Geoff |date=December 14, 2022 |title=Rescind Turpel-Lafond's honorary degrees or we'll return ours, say high-profile Indigenous women |work=CBC News |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/turpel-lafond-honorary-degrees-1.6684340 |access-date=December 15, 2022}}Doug Cuthand, [https://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/columnists/doug-cuthand-faking-indigenous-ancestry-doesnt-help-first-nations-causes "Faking Indigenous ancestry hurts First Nations causes"], Saskatoon StarPhoenix, November 25, 2022. {{snd}} A lawyer, academic, and former judge, for whom false claims to Indigenous ancestry were alleged by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2022. She was dismissed from a university faculty position, and various honors and awards that she had received were revoked or relinquished, including all her 11 honorary degrees and the Order of Canada. However, in 2024, the Law Society of British Columbia released a report which stated that DNA analysis indicated that Turpell-Lafond most likely had recent Indigenous ancestry, while confirming she had made numerous "mischaracterizations" in her credentials.{{Cite news |last=Leo |first=Geoff |date=July 31, 2024 |title=Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond says a DNA test backs her ancestry claims. CBC asked experts to weigh in |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/experts-question-meaning-turpel-lafond-reported-dna-analysis-1.7276028 |work=CBC News}}

• Mona Darkfeather (1882–1977)
• Chief Thundercloud (1899–1955)

File:Iron Eyes Cody-Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide.jpg and Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide, 1950]]

• "Iron Eyes" Cody (1904–1999){{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/05/arts/iron-eyes-cody-94-an-actor-and-tearful-anti-littering-icon.html |title=Iron Eyes Cody, 94, an Actor And Tearful Anti-Littering Icon |newspaper=The New York Times |first=Amy |last=Waldman |authorlink=Amy Waldman |date=January 5, 1999 |access-date=June 20, 2021 |archive-date=June 30, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190630171209/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/05/arts/iron-eyes-cody-94-an-actor-and-tearful-anti-littering-icon.html |url-status=live }}{{cite news |last=Aleiss |first=Angela |title=Native Son: After a Career as Hollywood's Noble Indian Hero, Iron Eyes Cody is Found to Have an Unexpected Heritage |newspaper=The New Orleans Times-Picayune |url=https://www.academia.edu/11282618 |date=May 26, 1996 |access-date=June 20, 2021 |archive-date=March 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220322030000/https://www.academia.edu/11282618 |url-status=live }}{{snd}} Born Espera Oscar de Corti, and later becoming known as "The Crying Indian", this Italian-American actor is most well known for his appearance in a 1970's anti-littering PSA. Cody pretended to be from various tribes and denied his Italian heritage for the rest of his life.
• Johnny Depp (born 1963){{cite news |author=Murray, John |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |title=APTN Investigates: Cowboys and Pretendians |work=Aboriginal Peoples Television Network |date=April 20, 2018 |access-date=July 8, 2021 |archive-date=October 7, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211007175631/https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ |url-status=live }}{{cite news|author=Jago, Robert|url=https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/robert-jago-criminalizing-pretendians-is-not-the-answer-we-need-to-give-first-nations-control-over-grants/ar-BB1di7Kg|title=Criminalizing 'Pretendians' is not the answer; we need to give First Nations control over grants|work=National Post|date=February 1, 2021|access-date=July 17, 2021|archive-date=July 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210717233212/https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/robert-jago-criminalizing-pretendians-is-not-the-answer-we-need-to-give-first-nations-control-over-grants/ar-BB1di7Kg|url-status=live}}{{cite news|author=Mouallem, Omar|authorlink=Omar Mouallem|url=https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/5/22/18634743/aladdin-middle-eastern-muslim-representation-hollywood|title='Billionaires, Bombers, and Bellydancers': How the First Arab American Movie Star Foretold a Century of Muslim Misrepresentation|work=The Ringer|date=May 22, 2019|access-date=July 17, 2021|quote=Though not a 'pretendian' to the degree of Iron Eyes Cody, the Sicilian American impostor of 'Keep America Beautiful' fame, or Johnny Depp for that matter, Lackteen appropriated Native American culture.|archive-date=July 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210717233225/https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/5/22/18634743/aladdin-middle-eastern-muslim-representation-hollywood|url-status=live}}{{snd}} This actor has claimed both Creek and Cherokee descent on numerous occasions, including when cast as Tonto in the 2013 film The Lone Ranger, but has no documented Native ancestry, is not a citizen in any tribe,{{Cite magazine |url=https://ew.com/article/2011/05/08/johnny-depp-tonto-lone-ranger/ |title=Johnny Depp on 'The Lone Ranger' |last=Breznican |first=Anthony |date=May 8, 2011 |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |access-date=August 8, 2011 |archive-date=July 8, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150708131555/http://www.ew.com/article/2011/05/08/johnny-depp-tonto-lone-ranger |url-status=live|quote=My great grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian. Makes sense in terms of coming from Kentucky, which is rife with Cherokee and Creek.}} and is regarded as "a non-Indian"{{cite web|title=Disney Exploiting Confusion About Whether Depp Has Indian Blood|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/17/disney-exploiting-confusion-about-whether-depp-has-indian-blood-149941|date=June 17, 2013|access-date=August 13, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130705002853/http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/17/disney-exploiting-confusion-about-whether-depp-has-indian-blood-149941|archive-date=July 5, 2013|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|title= Sonny Skyhawk on Johnny Depp, Disney, Indian Stereotypes and White Film Indians|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/11/sonny-skyhawk-johnny-depp-disney-indian-stereotypes-and-white-film-indians-149841 |last=Toensing |first=Gale Courney |date=June 11, 2013|access-date=May 3, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130715084025/http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/11/sonny-skyhawk-johnny-depp-disney-indian-stereotypes-and-white-film-indians-149841 |archive-date= July 15, 2013|url-status=dead|quote=Yet [Disney] has the gall and audacity to knowingly cast a non-Native person in the role of an established Native character. ... American Indians in Film and Television's argument is not so much with Johnny Depp, a charlatan at his best, as it is with the machinations of Disney proper. The controversy that will haunt this endeavor and ultimately cause its demise at the box office is the behind-the-scenes concerted effort and forced manipulation by Disney to attempt to sell Johnny Depp as an American Indian. American Indians, as assimilated and mainstream as they may be today, remain adamantly resistant to anyone who falsely claims to be one of theirs.}} and a "pretendian" by Native leaders. During the promotion for The Lone Ranger LaDonna Harris, a member of the Comanche Nation, adopted Depp, making him her honorary son, but not a member of any tribe.{{cite web |last=Moore |first=Nohemi M. |date=May 15, 2022 |title=Johnny Depp's History of Racism and Broken Promises to Native Americans |url=https://eighttribes.org/johnny-depps-history-of-racism-and-broken-promises-to-native-americans/ |access-date=June 21, 2022 |website=Eight Tribes|archive-date=December 6, 2022|archive-url=

https://web.archive.org/web/20221206205551/https://eighttribes.org/johnny-depps-history-of-racism-and-broken-promises-to-native-americans/|url-status=usurped|quote=While promoting The Lone Ranger, Depp was made an honorary son by LaDonna Harris, a member of the Comanche Nation. Although now an honorary member of his family, he is not a member of any tribe.}}

• Michelle Latimer – Canadian actress and film director whose claims of Indigenous ancestry and tribal membership have been questioned by the CBC,{{Cite web |title=Indigenous filmmaker wants fine… |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/calls-for-pretendians-to-face-fines-jail-1.5878330 |website=CBC News}} the Globe and Mail{{Cite news |title=Michelle Latimer's contentious claims of … |website=The Globe and Mail |date=December 18, 2020 |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/article-michelle-latimers-contentious-claim-of-indigenous-ancestry-has/}} and other media.{{Cite web |title=What are 'pretendians' and how |url=https://globalnews.ca/news/9450313/pretendians-canada-indigenous-ancestry/}} Latimer has said that her identification as Indigenous rested on the oral history of her maternal grandfather. A previously commissioned show was cancelled by CBC after Latimer's misrepresentations were made public.{{Cite web |url=https://variety.com/2021/tv/global/trickster-canceled-cbc-michelle-latimer-1234895893/ |title=CBC Cancels 'Trickster' Following Director Michelle Latimer's Indigenous Identity Scandal |website=Variety |date=Jan 21, 2021 |access-date=November 21, 2024}} Latimer later produced genealogical records to bolster her claim that she was a 'non-status Algonquin'; these claims were rejected by tribal leaders.{{Cite web|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/michelle-latimer-ancestry-report-expert-1.6024508 |access-date=November 21, 2024 |title=Michelle Latimer breaks silence, presents ancestry report following questions about Indigenous identity |website=CBC News |date=May 21, 2020}} However, one genealogical researcher has found that Latimer had two Indigenous ancestors dating from 1644,Ka'nhehsí:io Deer and Jorge Barrera, [https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/michelle-latimer-kitigan-zibi-indigenous-identity-1.5845310 "Award-winning filmmaker Michelle Latimer's Indigenous identity under scrutiny"]. CBC News Indigenous, December 17, 2020.{{Cite news|last=Monkman|first=Lenard|date=22 December 2020|title=NFB pulls Michelle Latimer's documentary Inconvenient Indian from Sundance festival|work=CBC News|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/nfb-pulls-inconvenient-indian-sundance-1.5852150|access-date=4 January 2021}} while others have found that Latimer has Indigenous ancestry from both her paternal and maternal lines that originate from a "historical community of Baskatong that was known for its Algonquin and Métis population."{{Cite news |title='All I can do is speak my truth': Filmmaker Michelle Latimer breaks her silence after Indigenous ancestry controversy |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/article-all-i-can-do-is-speak-my-truth-filmmaker-michelle-latimer-breaks-her/ |publisher=The Globe and Mail |last=Hertz |first=Barry |access-date=2 June 2024}} In 2020, Latimer apologized for having claimed historical roots to the Kitigan Zibi community.Barry Hertz, [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/article-i-made-a-mistake-canadian-filmmaker-michelle-latimer-addresses/ "'I made a mistake': Canadian filmmaker Michelle Latimer addresses Indigenous ancestry questions"]. The Globe and Mail, December 17, 2020.
• Sacheen Littlefeather (1946–2022) – Born Maria Louise Cruz, this actress took the stage in Plains-style attire at the Academy Awards to decline the 1972 Best Actor award on behalf of Marlon Brando for The Godfather, on being hired by him to do so and advocate for Native American rights. Subsequently presenting herself throughout her life as a White Mountain Apache and Yaqui as she had portrayed on-stage, who had grown up in a hovel without a toilet, her sisters and others later said her father was a Mexican-American of Spanish descent with no known ancestors who had a tribal identity in Mexico, while her mother was of French, German, and Dutch descent.{{cite web |first=Jacqueline |last=Keeler |author-link=Jacqueline Keeler |title=Sacheen Littlefeather was a Native American icon. Her sisters say she was an ethnic fraud |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Sacheen-Littlefeather-oscar-Native-pretendian-17520648.php |date=October 22, 2022 |work=San Francisco Chronicle}} An investigation by the Navajo writer-activist Jacqueline Keeler and her team, and reviewed by academics prior to publication, revealed no apparent ties to any tribe in the United States.{{cite web |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/10/sacheen-littlefeathers-sisters-say-claim-of-american-indian-heritage-was-a-fraud |title=Sacheen Littlefeather's Sisters Say Claim of American Indian Heritage Was A Fraud |first=Jordan |last=Hoffman |work=Vanity Fair |date=October 22, 2022}}
• Heather Rae (born 1966){{snd}} Born Heather Rae Bybee, having falsely claimed to be Cherokee, Rae became a prominent producer in Hollywood. She ran the Indigenous program at the Sundance Institute from 1996 to 2001, producing a number of projects centered around Native American experiences including the Oscar-nominated Frozen River (2008).{{cite web | last=Aratani | first=Lauren | title=Hollywood producer accused of faking Cherokee ancestry | website=the Guardian | date=March 27, 2023 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/27/heather-rae-hollywood-producer-accused-faking-cherokee-ancestry | access-date=March 30, 2023}} She serves on the Academy of Motion Pictures' Indigenous alliance, which "recognizes self-identification" for Native American identity. She has supported the casting of pretendians in Native roles as well as leading the charge for an apology by the Academy to fellow pretendian Sacheen Littlefeather.{{cite web | last=Agoyo | first=Acee | title='Not a tribal citizen': Prominent Hollywood figure Heather Rae lacks connection to Cherokee Nation | website=Indianz.Com | date=March 27, 2023 | url=https://www.indianz.com/News/2023/03/27/not-a-tribal-citizen-prominent-hollywood-figure-heather-rae-lacks-connection-to-cherokee-nation/ | access-date=March 30, 2023}}{{cite web | last=Ross | first=Martha | title=Key Sacheen Littlefeather supporter accused of faking Cherokee identity | website=The Mercury News | date=March 28, 2023 | url=https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/28/key-sacheen-littlefeather-supporter-accused-of-faking-cherokee-identity | access-date=March 30, 2023}} She is an adviser for IllumiNative, which says they are a "Native woman-led racial and social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of—and challenging the narrative about—Native peoples".{{cite web | title=About IllumiNative | website=Illuminative | date=November 11, 2022 | url=https://illuminative.org/about-illuminative/ | access-date=March 30, 2023}} The Cherokee Nation has stated that Rae is not a citizen of their nation and she did not receive funding for the film Fancy Dance (2023), which they funded. Research by the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds into her public family records shows that Rae's family identified as white across multiple records and no documented ties to a tribal community.
• Buffy Sainte-Marie (born 1941){{snd}} Born Beverly Jean Santamaria, Sainte-Marie is an American musician who has said since 1963 that she has Cree Indigenous Canadian roots. A 2023 investigation by CBC News featured her birth certificate, which stated that she had been born in Stoneham, Massachusetts of European ancestry and that the couple who she had asserted were her adoptive parents were in fact her biological parents. In the 1960s, she had performed at a powwow and falsely claimed that she might be the long-lost daughter of a Piapot First Nation family; a couple she met there then adopted her into their family and still claim her to this day.{{cite news|title=Who is the real Buffy Sainte-Marie? |first1=Geoff|last1=Leo|first2=Roxanna|last2=Woloshyn|first3=Linda|last3=Guerriero|date=October 27, 2023|work=CBC News|url=https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie|archive-date=October 27, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231027111549/https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie}}{{cite news |first=Chloe |last=Kim |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67242752 |title=Doubt cast on indigenous roots of Buffy Sainte-Marie |work=BBC News|date=October 27, 2023 }}{{cite news |first=Nadine |last=Yousif |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67351680 |title=Why Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'pretendian' case strikes a nerve |date=November 15, 2023 |work=BBC News}} For about 60 years, she built a career in part on her claimed Canadian and Native heritage. She was introduced as a regular character on the Sesame Street television series in 1975, at which time she stated that "Cree Indians are my tribe, and we live in Canada". The CBC investigation concluded that "her account of her ancestry has been a shifting narrative, full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies".
• Kelsey Asbille (born 1991) - Born Kelsey Asbille Chow, Kelsey is an American actress known for her roles in Wind River and Yellowstone, faced controversy regarding her claims of Native American heritage, particularly her claim of Eastern Band of Cherokee descent. While Asbille previously stated she was Taiwanese, British, and Eastern Band Cherokee, the tribe stated they have no record of her membership or Cherokee ancestry citing a lack of enrollment records or documentation supporting her claims. An inquiry from actor-producer Sonny Skyhawk prompted the tribe's statement, which stated that Asbille was not an enrolled member and that they had no evidence of her lineage. Asbille had previously told The New York Times that her Cherokee heritage was "in [her] blood." This discrepancy led to questions about her portrayal of Native American characters.{{Cite web |last=Crosbie |first=Eve |title=A complete list of all the controversies 'Yellowstone' has faced over the years |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/yellowstone-all-the-controversies-the-franchise-has-faced-over-2023-5 |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=Business Insider |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |title=Kelsey Asbille’s Ethnicity and Parents: Did She Deserve the Hate For Her Casting as Native American Character in Yellowstone? |url=https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64931427/#:~:text=She%20took%20on%20Native%20American,of%20Eastern%20Band%20Cherokee%20descent.&text=However,%20she%20ran%20into%20controversy,any%20documents%20supporting%20her%20claims. |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=IMDb |language=en-US}}{{Cite news |date=2023-05-30 |title=Yellowstone: Know major controversies of cast members over the years |url=https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/yellowstone-know-major-controversies-of-cast-members-over-the-years/articleshow/100602174.cms?from=mdr |access-date=2025-04-12 |work=The Economic Times |issn=0013-0389}}

File:Grey_owl_feeding_beaver_a_jelly_roll.jpg (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney) feeding a Swiss roll to a beaver]]

• Joseph Boyden (born 1966){{cite news|url= https://www.canadalandshow.com/question-joseph-boydens-indigenous-ancestry/|title= Why I Question Joseph Boyden's Indigenous Ancestry|work=Canadaland|first=Robert|last=Jago|date=December 24, 2016|access-date= June 8, 2021|archive-date= February 16, 2020|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200216222102/https://www.canadalandshow.com/question-joseph-boydens-indigenous-ancestry/|url-status= live}}{{cite news|title=Author Joseph Boyden's shape-shifting Indigenous identity|url=http://aptn.ca/news/2016/12/23/author-joseph-boydens-shape-shifting-indigenous-identity/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161224143827/http://aptn.ca/news/2016/12/23/author-joseph-boydens-shape-shifting-indigenous-identity/|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 24, 2016|work=APTN National News|access-date=December 23, 2016}}{{cite web|url=http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.3914159/joseph-boyden-must-take-responsibility-for-misrepresenting-heritage-says-indigenous-writer-1.3907253|title=Joseph Boyden must take responsibility for misrepresenting heritage, says Indigenous writer|access-date=January 20, 2017|archive-date=July 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210717200736/https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.3914159/joseph-boyden-must-take-responsibility-for-misrepresenting-heritage-says-indigenous-writer-1.3907253 |website=CBC News |url-status=live}}{{snd}} A Canadian novelist, Boyden has claimed Mi'kmaq, Métis, Nipmuc, and Ojibway heritage. He registered with the Ontario Métis Aboriginal Association, also known as the Woodland Métis Tribe.{{cite news|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/joseph-boyden/article35881215/|title=The making of Joseph Boyden|date=2017-11-12|work=The Globe and Mail|access-date=2018-09-07|language=en-US}} In January 2017, Boyden said he had erroneously identified himself as Mi'kmaq in the past and that he was a "white kid with native roots".{{cite web|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/boyden-admits-to-mistakes-backs-down-as-indigenous-spokesperson/article33593742/|title=Boyden admits to mistakes, backs down as indigenous spokesperson|access-date=20 January 2017|date=11 January 2017|work=The Globe and Mail}}{{cite web|url=http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-thursday-january-12-2017-1.3929478/joseph-boyden-addresses-his-heritage-in-exclusive-interview-with-candy-palmater-1.3932161|title=Joseph Boyden addresses his heritage in exclusive interview with Candy Palmater|access-date=20 January 2017}}
• Asa Earl Carter (1925–1979){{cite news|author=Carter, Dan T.|authorlink=Dan T. Carter|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/04/opinion/the-transformation-of-a-klansman.html?pagewanted=print|title=The Transformation of a Klansman|work=The New York Times|date=October 4, 1991|access-date=June 8, 2021|archive-date=June 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608114605/https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/04/opinion/the-transformation-of-a-klansman.html?pagewanted=print|url-status=live}}{{cite news |last=Gates |first=Henry Louis Jr. |author-link=Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |url=http://www.macalester.edu/internationalstudies/Gates-Authenticity.pdf |title='Authenticity', or the Lesson of Little Tree |work=The New York Times Book Review |date=November 24, 1991 }}{{Dead link|date=May 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{snd}} Published using the pseudonym Forrest Carter as a supposed Cherokee. The founder of a Ku Klux Klan paramilitary group and a white supremacist politician under his birth name, he used his pseudonym to write popular books including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales and The Education of Little Tree. Also known for co-authoring George Wallace's tagline, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".
• Grey Owl (1888–1938){{snd}} An Englishman born as Archibald Stansfeld Belaney who became a woodsman and wrote books and gave lectures as an activist primarily on environmental and conservationism issues, but was exposed after his death as having falsely claimed his Indigenous identity.
• Roxy Gordon – an American writer and musician who identified as being of white, Choctaw, and Assiniboine ancestry. A report from Texas Monthly alleged that he was a pretendian, concluding that he had no Native American heritage. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has stated that Gordon was not enrolled with the tribe. Gordon's son John Calvin has stated that he has found no evidence that his father had Choctaw heritage.{{cite web|url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/roxy-gordon-texas-history-music-writer-pretendian/ |title=His Art Was Real. His Native American Heritage Wasn't. |date=April 3, 2024 |publisher=Texas Monthly |accessdate=April 3, 2024}}
• Jamake Highwater (1931–2001){{cite book| first = Joane| last = Nagel| title = American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=4P1yTRVeBToC| date = September 25, 1997| publisher = Oxford University Press| isbn = 978-0-19-512063-9| access-date = June 8, 2021| archive-date = June 8, 2021| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210608114605/https://books.google.com/books?id=4P1yTRVeBToC| url-status = live}}Hoxie, Frederick E. [https://books.google.com/books?id=o-BNU7QuJkYC&dq=jamake+highwater+mamake&pg=PA191 Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life From Paleo-Indians to the Present.]{{Dead link|date=January 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006: 191-2. (retrieved through Google Books, July 26, 2009) {{ISBN|978-0-395-66921-1}}{{cite book| first = Jace| last = Weaver| title = Other Words: American Indian Literature, Law, and Culture| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=gQj_aQhYvfEC| date = November 1, 2001| publisher = University of Oklahoma Press| isbn = 978-0-8061-3352-2| access-date = June 8, 2021| archive-date = June 8, 2021| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210608114605/https://books.google.com/books?id=gQj_aQhYvfEC| url-status = live}}{{snd}} A prolific American writer and journalist born as Jackie Marks who passed as Cherokee and used Native American culture as his writing theme, although he was actually of eastern European Jewish ancestry.
• Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (1890–1932){{cite book |first=Eva Marie |last=Garroutte |year=2003 |title=Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America |isbn=0-520-22977-0 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley, California |oclc=237798744}}{{snd}} The persona of the African-American journalist, writer, and film actor Sylvester Clark Long, who falsely claimed Blackfoot and Cherokee heritage.
• Brooke Medicine Eagle (born 1943){{cite book |last=Grimes |first=Ronald L. |title=Deeply Into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage |year=2002 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520236752 |page=143}} {{snd}} the pseudonym of Brooke Edwards, an American author, singer-songwriter, and teacher specializing in a New Age interpretation of Native American religion.
• Nasdijj (born 1950)Italie, Hillel, [https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1541415&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 "Identity of Indian Memoirist is Disputed"], Associated Press, ABCNews.Go.Com, January 25, 2006. Retrieved July 30, 2006.Maul, Kimberly, [https://web.archive.org/web/20060220175810/http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001920149 "Agent Confirms Author Nasdijj and Gay-Erotica Writer Timothy Barrus Are Same Person"], The Book Standard, January 27, 2006. Retrieved July 30, 2006.{{cite web|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=20060131&id=hMIxAAAAIBAJ&pg=3539,3771764|title=Publisher stops issuing memoirs by disputed author|first=Hillel|last=Italie|work=Times Daily|date=January 31, 2006|via=Google News Archive|accessdate=January 4, 2020|archive-date=June 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608114605/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=20060131&id=hMIxAAAAIBAJ&pg=3539,3771764|url-status=live}}{{snd}} The pseudonym of writer Tim Barrus, an American author and social worker best known for having published three "memoirs" between 2000 and 2004 while presenting himself as a Navajo.
• Red Thunder Cloud (1919–1996){{cite journal |last1=Goddard |first1=Ives |authorlink=Ives Goddard |title=The Identity of Red Thunder Cloud |journal=The Newsletter -- Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas |date=2000 |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=7–10 |url=https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/88685/Red%20Thunder%20Cloud%20in%20SSILA.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |access-date=December 21, 2021 |language=en |format=PDF |archive-date=June 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624204330/https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/88685/Red%20Thunder%20Cloud%20in%20SSILA.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |url-status=live }}{{snd}} Born Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West, also known as Carlos Westez, a singer, dancer, storyteller, and field researcher who was promoted as the last fluent speaker of the Catawba language, but was later revealed to have learned what little he knew of the language from books and to have been of African American heritage.
• Sat-Okh (1920–2003), also known as Stanisław Supłatowicz, was a writer, artist, and soldier who served during World War II, who claimed to be of Polish and Shawnee descent. His origins were heavily disputed.Katarzyna Krępulec: [http://www.indianie.eco.pl/litera/Sat-Okh.pdf Stanisław Supłatowicz. Niezwykła biografia Sat-Okha, czyli jak się zostaje legendą], UMCS, Lublin 2004.
• Margaret Seltzer (born 1975){{cite news | last = Rich | first = M | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html | title = Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction | work = The New York Times | date = March 4, 2008 | access-date = March 4, 2008 | archive-date = June 8, 2021 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210608121248/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html | url-status = live }}{{cite news | url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-04-me-author4-story.html | title = Memoir a fake, author says | work = Los Angeles Times|first1=Bob|last1=Pool|first2=Rebecca|last2=Trounson | date = March 4, 2008 | access-date = June 8, 2021 | archive-date = June 8, 2021 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210608121249/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-04-me-author4-story.html | url-status = live }}{{snd}} The writer of a "memoir" of her supposed experiences as a half–Native American foster child and gang member in South Central Los Angeles was later revealed to have completely fabricated the story after growing up in an affluent neighborhood with no Native American background or heritage.
• Hyemeyohsts Storm (real name Charles Storm or Arthur C. Storm, born 1931 or 1935) is an author of German ancestry variously claiming Cheyenne, Sioux, Crow, and Métis ancestry, but has not provided credible evidence for these claims.{{cite web |last1=Storm |first1=Arthur C "Hyemeyohsts" |title=Hyemeyohsts Storm |url=http://www.universeofpoetry.org/metis.shtml |website=A United Nations of Poetry |publisher=UniVerse |access-date=June 1, 2023}}{{cite book |last1=McClinton-Temple |first1=Jennifer |last2=Velie |first2=Alan |title=Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature |date=May 12, 2010 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |location=New York |isbn=9781438120874 |page=346 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_HeSvlkGFl4C |access-date=June 1, 2023}}{{cite magazine |last=Shaw |first=Christopher |date=August 1995 |title=A Theft of Spirit? |url=https://thetrackingproject.org/a-theft-of-spirit/ |magazine=New Age Journal |location= |publisher= |access-date=June 1, 2023}} He is considered by many to be a plastic shaman,{{cite web |last1=Hagan |first1=Helene E |title=The Plastic Medicine People Circle |url=http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/features/spirg-hagan.html |publisher=Sonoma County Free Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140204010534/http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/features/spirg-hagan.html |archive-date=February 4, 2014}}{{cite book |last1=Castro |first1=Michael |title=Interpreting the Indian: Twentieth-century Poets and the Native American |date=1983 |publisher=University of New Mexico Press |location=Albuquerque |page=155 |isbn=9780826306722 |url=https://archive.org/details/interpretingindi0000cast/ |access-date=June 2, 2023}} and actual Cheyenne consider his purporting to present Cheyenne religion in his works as blasphemous, exploitative, disrespectful, stereotypical, and racist.{{cite web |last1=Chavers |first1=Dean |title=Around the Campfire: Fake Indians |url=https://www.nativetimes.com/index.php/life/commentary/8323-around-the-campfire-fake-indians |publisher=Native American Times |access-date=June 1, 2023}} When challenged, he presented a fraudulent Cheyenne enrollment card to his publisher, Harper and Row. Historians have criticized Seven Arrows as falsifying and desecrating the traditions of the Cheyenne due to the numerous errors in his descriptions.{{cite journal |last1=Jaeger |first1=Lowell |title=Seven Arrows: Seven Years After |journal=Studies in American Indian Literatures |date=1980 |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=16–19 |url=https://www.asail.org/hello-from-reykjavik/resources/archives/publ/sailns/42-2/ |access-date=June 1, 2023 |publisher=Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures}} He is known for inventing the medicine wheel symbol in his book, Seven Arrows (originally published as non-fiction but later reclassified as fiction in a settlement between the publisher and the Cheyenne tribe).{{cite web |last1=Thomason |first1=Timothy C |title=The Medicine Wheel as a Symbol of Native American Psychology |url=https://www.jungpage.org/learn/articles/culture-and-psyche/908-the-medicine-wheel-as-a-symbol-of-native-american-psychology |website=The Jung Page |publisher=The Jung Center of Houston |access-date=June 1, 2023 |date=October 27, 2013}}{{cite web |last1=Chavers |first1=Dean |title=5 Fake Indians: Checking a Box Doesn't Make You Native |url=https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/5-fake-indians-checking-a-box-doesnt-make-you-native |website=Indian Country Today |access-date=June 1, 2023 |date=October 15, 2014}}{{cite book |last1=Bear Nicholas |first1=Andrea |editor1-last=Hulan |editor1-first=Renée |editor2-last=Eigenbrod |editor2-first=Renate |title=Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics |date=April 2008 |publisher=Fernwood Pub Co Ltd |location=Halifax, NS |isbn=9781552662670 |pages=7–43 |chapter=The Assault on Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Past and Present}}
• Erika T. Wurth is a novelist who self-identifies as being of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent whose novel White Horse was reviewed favorably in The New York Times.{{cite news | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/books/review/white-horse-erika-t-wurth.html | title = An Ancient Bracelet, a Personal Haunting and an Overdue Reckoning | work = The New York Times |first=Laura|last=van der Berg| date = October 30, 2022 | access-date = July 23, 2024 }} Native American activists have alleged that Wurth is white and has no Native American ancestry.{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rachel-dolezal-pretendians-list-jacqueline-keeler-b2327583.html |title=Meet the 'race fakers' — and the people tracking them down |work=The Independent |date=April 28, 2023 |accessdate=July 23, 2024}}{{cite web|url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-native-american-activists-exposing-celebrity-race-fakers |title=The Native American Activists Exposing Celebrity 'Race-Fakers' |date=July 24, 2023 |publisher=The Daily Beast |accessdate=July 23, 2024}}

• Kaya Jones (born 1984){{Cite news|url=https://etcanada.com/news/284868/cher-refuses-to-apologize-for-half-breed-after-twitter-war-fuelled-by-trumps-diversity-coalition-appointee/|title=Cher Refuses To Apologize For 'Half-Breed' After Twitter War Fuelled By Trump's Diversity Coalition Appointee|last=Furdyk|first=Brent|date=December 31, 2017|work=ET Canada|access-date=January 7, 2018|quote=Numerous Twitter users have balked at her claims, referring to Jones as a 'pretendian' ... If you need evidence that Kayla is absolutely a pretendian, here it is|archive-date=January 8, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180108120339/https://etcanada.com/news/284868/cher-refuses-to-apologize-for-half-breed-after-twitter-war-fuelled-by-trumps-diversity-coalition-appointee/|url-status=dead}}{{snd}} A singer and model who joined the National Diversity Coalition for Trump as their "Native American Ambassador"; she falsely claimed to be Apache.{{Cite news|url=http://stoptribalgenocide.com/kaya-jones-the-apache-native-american-ambassador-for-trump/|title=Kaya Jones: The 'Apache' Native American Ambassador For Trump|date=December 26, 2017|website=Stop Tribal Genocide|access-date=January 7, 2018|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180130183059/http://stoptribalgenocide.com/kaya-jones-the-apache-native-american-ambassador-for-trump|archive-date=January 30, 2018|language=en-US}}{{Cite news|url=http://www.nativeamericacalling.com/monday-january-8-2018-native-american-ambassadorkaya-jones/|title=Monday, January 8, 2018 — Native American ambassador…Kaya Jones?|last=Hughes|first=Art|date=December 26, 2017|work=Native America Calling -Your National Electronic Talking Circle|access-date=January 8, 2018|language=en-US|archive-date=January 7, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180107232951/http://www.nativeamericacalling.com/monday-january-8-2018-native-american-ambassadorkaya-jones/|url-status=live}}
• Kevin Klein – Manitoba politician whose ongoing claims of Metis ancestry were debunked in a July 31, 2023, piece by the CBC.{{Cite web |title=Environment Minister Kevin Klein's claim to be Métis denounced by brother, Manitoba Métis Federation |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/kevin-klein-indigenous-manitoba-government-1.6876688 |access-date=August 15, 2023 |website=CBC News}}{{Cite web |title=CityNews |url=https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2023/08/01/kevin-klein-metis-indigenous-heritage/ |access-date=October 4, 2023 |website=winnipeg.citynews.ca|date=August 2023 }}
• Sherri Rollins{{snd}}Winnipeg City Councillor whose ongoing claims{{Cite web |title=Sherri Rollins |url=https://www.sherrirollins.net/about-sherri}} of being "...a proud Huron-Wendat woman" were refuted in a CBC article.{{Cite web |title=Rookie Winnipeg councillor's claim of being a 'proud Huron-Wendat woman' under scrutiny |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/sherri-rollins-councillor-identity-1.4916951 |website=CBC News}} as well as on APTN News, both published on November 23, 2018.{{Cite web |title=Sherri Rollins pretendian |date=November 23, 2018 |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/newly-elected-winnipeg-city-councillor-sherri-rollins-faces-questions-about-her-changing-indigenous-identity/}}
• Danielle Smith – Premier of Alberta who claimed to have a Cherokee great-great-grandmother who was a victim of the Trail of Tears. An investigation from APTN National News found no evidence that Smith's ancestors were Indigenous or victims of the Trail of Tears.{{Cite news |last=Paradis |first=Danielle |date=November 16, 2022 |title=Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she has Cherokee roots, but the records don't back that up |work=APTN |url=https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-says-she-has-cherokee-roots-but-the-records-dont-back-that-up/ }}
• Elizabeth Warren (born 1949){{snd}} A U.S. Senator and presidential candidate who said she grew up believing she had Cherokee and Delaware ancestry due to family members saying so, and then claimed such heritage publicly. After her heritage was called into question, she attempted to support her claim by releasing a video with DNA analysis, but her DNA claims were rejected by the Cherokee Nation,{{Cite web |url=https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/06/warren-american-indian-1154093 |title=Warren suggests 'American Indian' might appear on other documents |first=Matthew |last=Choi |date=February 6, 2019 |website=Politico |access-date=September 21, 2019 |archive-date=September 21, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190921113127/https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/06/warren-american-indian-1154093 |url-status=live }} which formally requires a documented lineage. Then-Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. (who became Principal Chief of the Nation in the following year) commented, "Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong".{{Cite web |url=http://cherokee.org/News/Stories/20181015_Cherokee-Nation-responds-to-Senator-Warrens-DNA-test |title=Cherokee Nation responds to Senator Warren's DNA test |first=Chuck |last=Hoskin Jr. |authorlink=Chuck Hoskin Jr.|date=October 15, 2018 |website=Cherokee Nation |access-date=November 7, 2021 |archive-date=October 16, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181016010653/http://cherokee.org/News/Stories/20181015_Cherokee-Nation-responds-to-Senator-Warrens-DNA-test|url-status=dead }} Warren eventually expressed regret and apologized for "claiming American Indian heritage".{{cite web |last1=Olmstead |first1=Molly |title=Report: Elizabeth Warren Identified as American Indian in Texas Bar Registration |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren-native-american-texas-bar-form-apology.html |website=Slate Magazine |language=en |date=February 6, 2019 |access-date=August 22, 2019 |archive-date=August 22, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190822015158/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren-native-american-texas-bar-form-apology.html |url-status=live }}{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html|title=Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself Native American|last=Linskey|first=Annie|date=February 5, 2019|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=February 9, 2019|archive-date=February 8, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190208232241/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html|url-status=live}}{{cite web |first=Shira |last=Tarlo |url=https://www.salon.com/2019/02/06/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-identifying-as-native-american-on-texas-bar-registration-card/ |title=Elizabeth Warren apologizes for identifying as Native American on Texas bar registration card |date=February 6, 2019 |website=Salon |access-date=February 9, 2019 |archive-date=February 8, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190208201314/https://www.salon.com/2019/02/06/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-identifying-as-native-american-on-texas-bar-registration-card/ |url-status=live }}
• Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (born 1963){{snd}}A Canadian lawyer, former judge, and advocate who falsely claimed Treaty Indian status as a Cree Nation member.{{Cite news |last=Leo |first=Geoff |date=October 12, 2022 |title=Disputed history |work=CBC |url=https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/mary-ellen-turpel-lafond-indigenous-cree-claims |access-date=November 21, 2022}}{{Cite news |last=Leo |first=Geoff |date=November 21, 2022 |title=Birth certificate contradicts Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's account of her father's parentage and ancestry |website=CBC News |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/birth-certificate-contradicts-turpel-lafond-account-father-parentage-1.6657129 |access-date=November 21, 2022}}

• Gina Adams (born 1965){{cite web | title=Should museums verify claims of Indigenous ancestry? Fruitlands show postponed over this 'profoundly divisive' issue | newspaper=The Boston Globe | first=Mark | last=Shanahan | date=May 31, 2021 | url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/31/arts/should-museums-verify-claims-indigenous-ancestry-fruitlands-show-postponed-over-this-profoundly-divisive-issue/ | access-date=June 8, 2021 | archive-date=June 8, 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608133121/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/31/arts/should-museums-verify-claims-indigenous-ancestry-fruitlands-show-postponed-over-this-profoundly-divisive-issue/ | url-status=live }}{{cite web|last=Agoyo|first=Acee|date=June 2, 2021|title=Museum won't verify claims of tribal ancestry after artists withdraw from show|url=https://www.indianz.com/News/2021/06/02/museum-wont-verify-claims-of-tribal-ancestry-after-artists-withdraw-from-show/|access-date=June 8, 2021|website=Indianz.Com|archive-date=June 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608133545/https://www.indianz.com/News/2021/06/02/museum-wont-verify-claims-of-tribal-ancestry-after-artists-withdraw-from-show/|url-status=live}}{{snd}} A visual artist and assistant professor at Emily Carr University,{{cite web |title=Gina Adams |url=https://www.connect.ecuad.ca/people/profile/348112 |website=Emily Carr University |access-date=January 22, 2022 |archive-date=January 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122212551/https://www.connect.ecuad.ca/people/profile/348112 |url-status=live }} Adams claims White Earth Ojibwe and Lakota ancestry, and that her grandfather lived on the White Earth Indian Reservation and was removed at age eight to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School,{{cite web |last1=Adams |first1=Gina |title=Gina Adams: Contemporary Hybrid Artist |url=https://www.ginaadamsartist.com/new-page |access-date=January 22, 2022 |archive-date=January 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122163813/https://www.ginaadamsartist.com/new-page |url-status=live }} which closed in 1918. Genealogists reported that Adams' grandfather "was a white man named Albert Theriault, who was born in Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents." Adams has also claimed that her great-great-grandfather was Ojibwe chief Wabanquot (1830–1898), a signer of the 1867 federal treaty with the Chippewa of the Mississippi. She has shown no evidence supporting any of these claims. She claims to be only a descendant, not an enrolled tribal member, so she and her gallery have so far successfully evaded the US Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.
• Jimmie Durham (1940–2021){{cite news |author1=Cara Cowan Watts |author2=Luzene Hill |display-authors=etal |title=Dear Unsuspecting Public, Jimmie Durham Is a TricksterL Jimmie Durham's Indigenous identity has always been a fabrication and remains one| url=https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/dear-unsuspecting-public-jimmie-durham-trickster/|access-date=July 21, 2017|publisher=Indian Country Media Network|date=June 26, 2017|quote=Durham is neither enrolled nor eligible for citizenship in any of the three federally-recognized and historical Cherokee Tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722090529/https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/dear-unsuspecting-public-jimmie-durham-trickster/|archive-date=July 22, 2017|url-status=dead}}{{snd}} An artist and activist who claimed one-quarter Cherokee descent by blood and to have grown up in a Cherokee-speaking community, Durham exhibited his work in the U.S. as Native American art until the 1990 passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (which prohibits false claims of Native production of arts and crafts that are offered for sale). He subsequently left the United States and continued to falsely claim Cherokee status in European exhibitions. He had formerly been an organizer and central committee member for the American Indian Movement, and worked as the chief administrator for the International Indian Treaty Council. He was found to have "no known ties to any Cherokee community" and to be "neither enrolled nor eligible for citizenship" in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes.
• Yeffe Kimball (1906–1978)Anthes, Bill. "Becoming Indian: The Self-Invention of Yeffe Kimball". Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006: 117–141. {{ISBN|0-8223-3866-1}}.{{snd}} An artist who claimed to be Osage. Born Effie Goodman, under her assumed identity she made art that she misrepresented as Native American, and also engaged in Native American political activism.
• Cheyanne Turions{{cite web | title=Vancouver curator's Indigenous ancestry claims panned as 'pretendian' | website=Vancouver Sun | date=March 24, 2021 | url=https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-arts-curators-indigenous-ancestry-claims-panned-as-pretendian | access-date=June 8, 2021 | archive-date=June 16, 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210616043612/https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-arts-curators-indigenous-ancestry-claims-panned-as-pretendian | url-status=live }}{{cite web | last=Fung | first=Amy | title=Who Bears the Steep Costs of Ethnic Fraud? | website=Hyperallergic | date=June 2, 2021 | url=https://hyperallergic.com/650522/who-bears-the-steep-costs-of-ethnic-fraud/ | access-date=June 8, 2021 | archive-date=June 4, 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210604150416/https://hyperallergic.com/650522/who-bears-the-steep-costs-of-ethnic-fraud/ | url-status=live }}{{disputed-inline|date=February 2025}}{{snd}} An artist and art curator who claimed an Indigenous Canadian identity for grant applications until "outed" in 2021, Turions later stated that she had investigated her family's history and that as a result "I changed my self-identification to settler," and resigned from her position as a curator.{{cite web |url=https://cheyanneturions.wordpress.com/ |date=April 19, 2021 |website=CHEYANNE TURIONS – Dialogue around curatorial practice |title=Uncategorized |first=cheyanne |last=turions |author-link=cheyanne turions |access-date=November 9, 2021 |archive-date=November 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211108092341/https://cheyanneturions.wordpress.com/ |url-status=live }}

• Edgar Laplante (1888-1944), an American-born French-Canadian con man and actor known for his confidence tricks.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}}

• 1896 Applications for Enrollment, Five Tribes (Overturned)
• Australian Aboriginal identity
• Cherokee descent
• Cherokee Nation Truth in Advertising for Native Art, a law passed by the Cherokee Nation about marketing products as Indian-made
• Eatock v Bolt, an Australian case involving writings that suggested false claims of Aboriginal descent
• Eastern Métis
• Guion Miller Roll
• Federal Law for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities
• Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990
• Indian arts and crafts laws
• Índia pega no laço
• List of organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes
• Native American identity in the United States
• Native Americans in German popular culture
• Passing (racial identity)
• Plastic shaman
• Racial misrepresentation
• :Category:People who self-identify as being of Indigenous descent
• Reel Injun{{snd}} A 2009 Canadian documentary film about the portrayal of Native Americans in Hollywood films
• Qalipu First Nation
• The Pretendians, a Canadian television documentary film

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• Browder, Laura. [https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/70/ Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities]. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• Chavers, Dean. "[https://www.nativetimes.com/index.php/life/commentary/8323-around-the-campfire-fake-indians Around the Campfire: Fake Indians]". Native Times, 2013.
• Foster, John Wilson. "Pretendians and the Crisis of the Self". The Critic, June 4, 2023.
• Gaudry, Adam. "[https://muse.jhu.edu/article/693376 Communing with the Dead: The 'New Métis,' Métis Identity Appropriation, and the Displacement of Living Métis Culture.]". American Indian Quarterly, 42, no. 2 (2018): pp. 162–90
• Leroux, Darryl. [https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/distorted-descent Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity]. University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
• Leroux, Darryl. "[https://www.academia.edu/47792277/Bois_Br%C3%BBl%C3%A9s_Inventing_an_Indigenous_People_in_Algonquin_TerritoryBois-Brûlés: Inventing an Indigenous People in Algonquin Territory]". Canadian Journal of History, vol 56, pp. 71–72, 2021.
• Leroux, Darryl. "[https://maisonneuve.org/article/2018/11/1/self-made-metis/ Self-made Métis]". Maisonneuve, 2018.
• Reese, Debbie. [https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/p/native-or-not-resource-list.html Native? Or, not? A Resource List]. American Indians in Children's Literature, February 2021.
• Robinson, Rowland. [https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/15632/Robinson_Rowland.pdf Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts: An Autoethnographic Account of the Imaginarium of Late Capitalist/Colonialist Storytelling], "Chapter 4. Interlude: Community, Pretendians, & Heartbreak". [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1263615440 Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo], 2020.
• Sturm, Circe. [https://sarweb.org/becoming-indian/ Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century]. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 2010.
• TallBear, Kim. [https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/native-american-dna Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science]. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
• Tuck, Eve; Yang, K. Wayne. "[https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf Decolonization is not a metaphor]". Moves to Innocence I: Settler Nativism, pp. 10–13. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012.

{{Wiktionary}}

• [https://www.aptnnews.ca/investigates/cowboys-and-pretendians/ APTN Investigates: Cowboys and Pretendians] APTN National News television report featuring many of the examples in this article, notably those in film
• [https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/359-the-convenient-pretendian/ The Convenient "Pretendian"], Canada Land podcast
• [https://www.ghostwarriorsociety.com/ Ghost Warrior Society], an anti-Pretendian task force based in Canada
• [https://kimtallbear.substack.com/p/indigenous-race-shifting-red-flags "Indigenous 'Race Shifting' Red Flags: A Quick Primer for Reporters and Others"], by Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton)
• [https://www.npr.org/2022/01/19/1074258028/playing-pretendian "Playing Pretendian"], Code Switch, NPR
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GojYBpiMXdM Pretendians and Their Impact on Métis Identity in the Academy] - University of Saskatchewan panel discussion including Maria Campbell (Métis) - December 10, 2021
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFMJ86s2xlk&t=372s The Pretendian Problem] - Indian Country Today video report on pretendians and fake Métis - January 28, 2021
• [https://www.raceshifting.com/ Raceshifting], resource on Eastern Euro-Canadians and Euro-Americans posting as Indigenous peoples
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20220415092626/https://henryg.msu.domains/projects/unsettling-genealogies-conference/ Unsettling Genealogies Conference] - A Forum on Pseudo Indians, Race-Shifting, Pretendians, and Self-Indigenization in Media, Arts, Politics and the Academy - Series of eight panel presentations in Spring 2022, at Michigan State University.
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyY0egN0cd4 Unmasking Pseudo Indians]: Opening Remarks at by George Cornell (Ojibwe), Ben Barnes (Shawnee), Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton) - March 21, 2022
• [https://leadership.usask.ca/documents/about/reporting/jean-teillet-report.pdf Teillet Report on Indigenous Identity Fraud] - October 2022 report for the University of Saskatchewan
• [https://tribalallianceagainstfrauds.org/ Tribal Alliance Against Frauds], an intertribal anti-fraud task force

Category:Literary forgeries

Category:Racial impostors

Category:Multiracial affairs in the United States

Category:Native American-related controversies

Category:Indigenous cultural appropriation

Category:Native American cultural appropriation

Category:Race in Canada

Category:Genealogical fraud

Category:Ethnic and religious slurs