Indigenous identity fraud in Canada and the United States


Indigenous identity fraud is the practice of non-Indigenous people incorrectly claiming Indigenous identity. The Indigenous Chamber of Commerces states, "For Indigenous peoples, identity is not a self-declared label but is instead grounded in ancestry, kinship, community recognition, and lived experience, among other things." Indigenous identity fraud also refers to an individual who make such incorrect claims.
Individuals who practice Indigenous identity fraud are often called "pretendians", a pejorative portmanteau of "pretend" and "Indian". Philip Deloria called the practice "playing Indian," and anthropologist Circe Sturm coined the term "race shifting". Indigenous identity fraud is considered an extreme form of cultural misappropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate.
Early false claims to Native identity dates back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party. Fraud in Native American art was so common that the U.S. federal government had to pass the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1935, which created a $2,000 fine or six months in prison for selling goods falsely claimed to be American Indian-made. States and tribes later passed their own Indian [arts and crafts laws]. Indigenous identity fraud increased after the 1960s for several reasons, such as the reestablishment of tribal sovereignty following the era of Indian termination policy, the media coverage of the Occupation of Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Occupation, and the formation of Native American studies as a distinct form of area studies which led to the establishment of publishing programs and university departments specifically for or about Native American culture. At the same time, hippie and New Age subcultures 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". By 1990, many years of pushback by Native Americans against Indigenous identity fraud resulted in the successful passage of the Indian [Arts and Crafts Act of 1990] a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States. Indian arts and crafts laws have also been enacted by some states and tribes.
While Native 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 more recent decades. 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.

History of false claims to Indigenous identity

Early claims

Historian Philip J. Deloria has noted that European Americans "playing Indian" is a phenomenon that stretches back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party.
In his 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. Early examples of white people playing Indian include, according to Deloria, the Improved Order of Red Men, Tammany Hall, and scouting societies like the Order of the Arrow.
Individuals who made careers out of pretending an Indigenous identity include James Beckwourth, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, and Grey Owl.
The academic Joel W. Martin noted that "an astonishing number of southerners assert they have a grandmother or great-grandmother who was some kind of Cherokee, often a princess", and that such myths serve settler purposes in aligning American frontier romance with southern regionalism and pride.

Post-1960s: Rise of Indigenous identity fraud in academia, arts, and political positions

Several factors influenced the rise of Indigenous identity fraud after the 1960s. The reestablishment and exercise of tribal sovereignty among tribal nations 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 wrote of the influence of Indigenous identity frauds in American academia and political positions:
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 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.

Contemporary controversies: 21st century

writes:
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. 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.
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 Indigenous identity fraud in the world at large.
In April 2018, APTN National News in Canada investigated how Indigenous identity fraudsin the film industry and in real lifepromote "Stereotypes of [Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States|stereotypes], typecasting, and even, what is known as 'redface'." Rebecca Nagle voiced a similar position in 2019, writing for High Country News that:

Controversies in media

On September 13, 2021, the CBC News reported on their ongoing investigation into a "mysterious letter", dated 1845 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". 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. 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.
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:
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.jpg|thumb|Sacheen Littlefeather 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 Indigenous identity frauds, especially by those who manage to fool so many people that they become iconic:

Motivating factors

There are several possible explanations for why non-Indigenous people adopt false Indigenous 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." 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 oppressionto identify with those they see as victims rather than the perpetrators.
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. 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".
Academics Kim TallBear, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Rowland Robinson, as well as journalist Jacqueline Keeler and attorney Jean Teillet also name white supremacy, in addition to ongoing settler colonialism, as core factors in the phenomenon. In Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts"Community, Pretendians, & Heartbreak", Robinson posits that:
In October 2022, Teillet published the report, Indigenous Identity Fraud, for the University of Saskatchewan. Discussing her research, she wrote for the Globe and Mail:

Laws and consequences

Indigenous identity fraud has been such a problem in Native American arts that the US Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1935 outlawed the sale of arts and crafts not made by American Indians or Alaska Natives as "Indian products or Indian products of a particular Indian tribe or group, resident within the United States or the Territory of Alaska". Penalities included imprisonment and criminal fines. Thirteen states and several Native American tribes passed their own Indian arts and crafts laws.
Activism by Native American artists and policymakers resulted in the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 made the fraudulent sale of non-Native arts and crafts a felony, with criminal fines up to $250,000 for individuals and prison sentences up to five-years.
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. 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 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.
In Canada in 2024, the government funding Tri-agency announced an 8-month pilot project to ensure that grants, awards, and jobs intended for Indigenous people go to those that are genuinely Indigenous.

Notable examples

Individuals who have been accused of being Indigenous identity frauds include:

Academic

  • Ward Churchill – 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.
  • Qwo-Li Driskill – Former Associate Professor at Oregon State University claiming to be Cherokee, Lenape, Osage, Lumbee and African. Driskill resigned from their position in September 2024, after accusations of academic misconduct and misrepresentation of their ethnicity.
  • Nadya Gill and Amira Gill – 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. Before their deception was uncovered, the twins had been awarded over $158,000 in benefits. In February 2024, charges were dropped against the twins after their mother pled guilty to one count of fraud. In June 2024, the twins' mother was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
  • Elizabeth Hoover – 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.
  • 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.
  • Julie Nagam,a Curator and Art Historian claiming Metis blood while teaching at the University of Winnipeg, was revealed to have no Indigenous heritage in several exposures.,,,.
  • Susan Taffe ReedFormer 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".
  • Andrea Smith 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. 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".
  • Vianne Timmons, President of Memorial University of Newfoundland claimed membership in controversial Bras d'Or Mi'kmaq First Nation.
  • Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond 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.

Film, television, and music

File:Iron Eyes Cody-Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide.jpg|thumb|Iron Eyes Cody and Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide, 1950
  • "Iron Eyes" Cody 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 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, and is regarded as "a non-Indian" 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.
  • Michelle Latimer – Canadian actress and film director whose claims of Indigenous ancestry and tribal membership have been questioned by the CBC, the Globe and Mail and other media. 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. Latimer later produced genealogical records to bolster her claim that she was a 'non-status Algonquin'; these claims were rejected by tribal leaders. However, one genealogical researcher has found that Latimer had two Indigenous ancestors dating from 1644, 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." In 2020, Latimer apologized for having claimed historical roots to the Kitigan Zibi community.
  • Sacheen Littlefeather – 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. 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.
  • Heather Rae 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. 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. 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". 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, 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 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. 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".

Literary

  • Joseph Boyden 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. 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".
  • Asa Earl Carter 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 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.
  • Jamake Highwater 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.
  • Thomas King, writer, professor of Indigenous studies, revealed no Indigenous ancestry after claiming Cherokee roots for decades.
  • Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance The persona of the African-American journalist, writer, and film actor Sylvester Clark Long, who falsely claimed Blackfoot and Cherokee heritage.
  • Brooke Medicine Eagle the pseudonym of Brooke Edwards, an American author, singer-songwriter, and teacher specializing in a New Age interpretation of Native American religion.
  • Nasdijj 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 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, 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.
  • Margaret Seltzer 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 is an author of German ancestry variously claiming Cheyenne, Sioux, Crow, and Métis ancestry, but has not provided credible evidence for these claims. He is considered by many to be a plastic shaman, and actual Cheyenne consider his purporting to present Cheyenne religion in his works as blasphemous, exploitative, disrespectful, stereotypical, and racist. 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. He is known for inventing the medicine wheel symbol in his book Seven Arrows.
  • 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. Native American activists have alleged that Wurth is white and has no Native American ancestry.

Political

  • Kaya Jones A singer and model who joined the National Diversity Coalition for Trump as their "Native American Ambassador"; she falsely claimed to be Apache.
  • Kevin Klein – Manitoba politician whose ongoing claims of Métis ancestry were debunked in a July 31, 2023 piece by the CBC.
  • Sherri RollinsWinnipeg City Councillor whose ongoing claims of being "...a proud Huron-Wendat woman" were refuted in a CBC article. as well as on APTN News, both published on November 23, 2018.
  • 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.
  • Elizabeth Warren 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, which formally requires a documented lineage. Then-Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. 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". Warren was listed as a Native American minority in a faculty directory at Harvard and had been lauded as the first tenured professor with a minority background by The Crimson. She was also listed as a Native American in the faculty directory at the University of Pennsylvania. Warren eventually expressed regret and apologized for "claiming American Indian heritage".

Visual arts

  • Gina Adams A visual artist and assistant professor at Emily Carr University, 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 TurionsAn 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.

Other