Will 2025 Finally Bring the Long-Awaited Pretendian Reckoning?
Reflections on New Year's Eve of a 'Pretendian Hunter'
I've been quiet the past few weeks. I spent the past few weeks with my family. I did write a few things I meant to post but did not. I may still do so anyway. One was for the solstice, and the other was a memorial for the Dakota 38 + 2.
In 2022 and 2023, I broke significant stories regarding Pretendians, the late Sacheen Littlefeather (born Maria Cruz), and Buffy Ste. Marie (born Beverly Santamaria). My investigations of the genealogy of suspected professional ethnic frauds on the Alleged Pretendian list were also instrumental in outing many other con artists, including Erika Wurth, Liz Hoover, Merritt Johnson, and many more.
To share more of my findings from the 200 on the original Alleged Pretendian list, I will launch a Substack Newsletter called Last Real Pretendians in the New Year. The content will be free to paid subscribers of this newsletter and my Patreon supporters. I will post more about this tomorrow, New Year's Day 2025.
The past few weeks have not been uneventful. On December 12th, the New York Post covered NPR's poor reporting on my work and finally published the Pamunkey tribe's response to Kiros Auld's false claims to be a tribal member.
Auld’s credentials with the Pamunkey group were questioned by Robert Gray, the tribe’s chief until his retirement Nov. 30.
“He is not an enrolled citizen, and he’s never been a member,” Gray, 66, told The Post. “We are the tribe of Pocahontas and we get a lot of people who claim they are descended from her.”
Gray, who spent nine years as chief and 25 years on the group’s tribal council, said he was not contacted by NPR to check on Auld’s affiliation with the Pamunkey, who number just 500 and are based in King William County, Virginia.
Gray said that in in the 1980s the chief of the tribe, who was married to an amateur geneologist, handed out “paper cards” to Auld’s mother and grandmother.
“It happened at a time that we didn’t pay much attention,” he told The Post. “But when we went through federal recognition in 2016, we tightened down.
“We spent several years using exact criteria, and they didn’t meet it. Kiros’s family know they are not enrolled citizens of the tribe.”
You can read the article in full here: Activist who claims ties to Pocahontas is not part of her tribe, according to former chief.
There still has been no response from NPR Code Switch staff regarding the lack of fact-checking and defamatory attacks on my work. There has also been nothing from Canadaland. However, a Canadian First Nations academic told me that a First Nations staff member quit and said they would have more to say regarding their working conditions there in January. However, I have not been able to confirm this.
I also published an article (Some children didn’t survive the Carlisle Indian School, but my great-grandfather did. Here’s his story) in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 22nd about my great-grandfather, Fred Barbier, and his experience at Carlisle Indian Boarding School. The school, the first of its kind and a prototype of others that would provide education to Native youth, often accompanied by physical and even sexual violence, shame, and destruction of ties to traditional culture (language, etc.). As one of Biden's final acts in the White House, he designated it a National Monument.
My family did not pass down stories about my great-grandpa's time at Carlisle. I did not even know he had gone there until I saw his name in the Carlisle records on the school's website. He was listed as a runaway. So many stories these boarding school experiences hold have gone unspoken about. I thank Sec. Deb Haaland, thank you for all your work on recording survivors' stories.
I first saw his records flagged by Ancestry.com. My genealogical research has deepened my understanding of not only what Pretendians' ancestors did as they made their way across Turtle Island but also of my own family. The silence often holds trauma and insights even as strange as this letter from the federal government marking my great-grandfather as someone who should be excluded from any further access to education.
What do I hope 2025 holds? Indeed, a final reckoning of Pretendianism. When I decided to take this on in 2021, I did not conceive how complex the problem would be. What will it take? I always looked up to NPR. I grew up hearing it in the morning as my parents and siblings prepared for school. I've been a donor for years. The role of the station, funded also by tax dollars, in disparaging my work has been hard to understand. I also saw the New York Times and the BBC doing the same when covering my Sacheen Littlefeather revelations. What they don't do is verify the tribal claims of ethnic frauds. All the reporting and marketing is simply a retelling of tall tales and self-promotion. Is that all that it means to be American Indian to most of America and even the world? A form of Redface?
As we close out 2024, I have a humble request: I ask for your support in my work by purchasing my books and becoming a paid subscriber. The actions of Pretendians not only exploit our shared trauma for personal gain, but they also perpetuate the marginalization and impoverishment of actual Native people. Your support is a tangible way to express your disapproval of this and to stand with a Native voice sharing authentic Native experiences. This month, I shared the stories of my great-grandfather, his older brother, and the Episcopal priest at the Wounded Knee massacre, and I have many more stories to share.
Real experiences, real trauma, real accountability, and real amends. That's my New Year's wish.