The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t (Published 2021)
More than a decade ago, a prominent academic was exposed for having faked her Cherokee ancestry. Why has her career continued to thrive?
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/cherokee-native-american-andrea-smith.html
In Native Studies there’s a concept called “settler colonialism” that Smith has written about. It includes the conviction felt by non-Natives that the land, but also the knowledge, cultural heritage and identities of American Indians belong to the rest of us. In “Playing Indian,” the book by Deloria, he argues that white people in this country have been co-opting Native identities since the Boston Tea Party. “Playing Indian is a persistent tradition in American culture,” he writes, “stretching from the very instant of the national big bang into an ever-expanding present and future.”