Posted on 01/03/2022 7:43:15 AM PST by SJackson
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
It’s not just Elizabeth Warren.
America has a huge “Fake Indian” problem. It’s hard to know exactly how many people, often white leftists, falsely claim to be descended from the nation’s early Indian population, but census numbers show either a massive population boom or a sharp growth in fake Indians.
According to the 2010 census, there were 2.9 million American Indians and Alaskans, and another 2.3 million who claimed to be a combination of Indians and another race or races.
The 2020 census however shows that 3.7 million claimed to be American Indians or Alaskans, and another 5.9 million described themselves as part Indian.
5.2 million to 9.7 million is an 86.5% rise. And going from 4.1 million in 2000 to 5.2 million in 2010 and then almost 10 million suggests that what we’re seeing here is not a natural increase that happened through a baby boom.
“Why the jump in the Native American population may be one of the hardest to explain,” CNN shrugged.
But the Census Bureau provides a simple explanation, “The American Indian and Alaska Native alone population grew by 27.1%, and the American Indian and Alaska Native in combination population grew by 160% since 2010.”
The biggest growth happened when the 2.3 million people who claimed to be part Indian in 2010 jumped to 5.9 million in 2020. That 3.6 million increase is responsible for the staggering growth.
While identity politics activists have claimed that the Census Bureau was undercounting the American Indian population on reservations, that’s not where the real growth is coming from.
The question of who is an Indian when it comes to the tribes is a fraught issue. Some tribes have attempted to preserve their population integrity with blood quantum requirements and documented evidence of ancestry, while others have thrown open the door to everyone. There have also been legal battles over the dubious move to count the descendants of former black slaves who belonged to members of Indian tribes as being enrolled in those tribes.
Some tribes are legitimate peoples while others are little more than legal fictions with white leaders who act as fronts for international gaming interests and shadowy corporations.
The membership rolls of even most legitimate tribes can grow a lot when money is on the table.
The Navajos boasted that they had reached 400,000 members, but an Associated Press story noted that, "Navajos also saw an enrollment increase as the tribe offered hardship assistance payments from last year’s federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, boosting the tribe’s rolls from about 306,000 to nearly 400,000 citizens.”
The Cherokee Nation shot up from 360,589 in 2018 to an alleged 400,000 now. Even media accounts conceded that "there was a significant increase in applications after Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. announced $2,000 COVID-19 assistance payments to enrolled Cherokee citizens as well as people approved for citizenship in the tribal nation by June 2022."
But most of the growth in the American Indian population is not coming from the tribes.
Who are the "new" Indians?
The 2010 Census Bureau numbers showed that 63% of the mixed race population "identified as American Indian and Alaska Native and White." In other words, more Elizabeth Warrens.
A percentage of Americans, especially in states like Oklahoma, have rightly or wrongly claimed Indian ancestry, but the striking growth in recent years is not the natural result of old family legends, but wokeness and career development based around affirmative action.
White people face growing discrimination in applying for college or looking for work. And for the new generation there is much less shame and fewer taboos around lying about race. Anecdotally, the number of millennials and zoomers who falsely claim to be black, Latino, Jewish, or members of any other minority group, has exploded according to employers.
Elizabeth Warren may have been a pioneer, but the number of fake Indians is growing sharply.
One author, Circe Sturm, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, theorizes in her book, “Becoming Indian", that the explosive population growth among the American Indian population is actually driven by white people who are "fleeing whiteness".
But the fake Indians, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, aren't fleeing whiteness so much as they're exploiting a racist attack on white people that they've stirred up to profit from a minority identity.
And even setting up fake tribes.
Strum writes, "The number of these new self-identified tribes is startling. Over the course of my research, I discovered 253 groups scattered across the U.S. that identify as some sort of Cherokee tribe. This is a huge number considering that there are only 573 federally recognized tribes, three of which are Cherokee."
American Indian tribes have been fighting a rearguard campaign against fake Indians, but it’s one that they are likely to lose as the Left embraces fake Indian activists who are happy to put their fake identities at the service of their political causes.
The fake Indian problem is not unique to America.
The exposure of Carrie Bourassa in Canada, after she appeared in Indian garb and blamed systemic racism, was a major scandal in that country. Even more absurdly, Australia’s “white aborigines”, leftist academics, often blonde and blue-eyed, who claim special status and privileges because of their alleged aboriginal status, are a longstanding problem.
But the rapid growth of America’s fake Indian problem suggests we’re heading for a crisis.
Indian tribes enjoy a unique legal status that has conferred significant economic and political benefits. The replacement and displacement of the tribal populations by a new activist base entirely dedicated to radical leftist politics would be a new Trail of Tears, but also quite dangerous. And yet it’s a crisis that’s been coming since the American Indian Movement.
Between 2010 and 2020, the number of part Indians went from a minority to a majority of the American Indian population. If this trend continues, the vast number of people who build careers and public identities around being American Indians will be fake Indians.
America’s fake Indians already outnumber real Indians. And it’s only getting worse.
When Thomas Jefferson ordered the first Indian Catalogue (multi volumes, very hard to find), they concluded there were some 200 or so known tribes in the areas they could get to.
We now know there is huge ethnic diversity among Indians, from true “Red Men”, in the northeast, who when indoors for a while look European, but out in the Sun will quickly turn bright red; to the Pima Indians of the southwest, who look purplish-black, not brownish-black like Africans; to the Mexican Yucatan Indians, who often have olive skin and blue eyes, much like people in the Mediterranean.
There were several waves of Indian immigrants to the Americas. The later waves were the dominant warrior tribes when Europeans arrived. Often very cultured tribes lived next door to tribes that were still mostly stone age.
The 574 federally recognized tribes today, not counting indigenous peoples in Alaska, Hawaii, and US territories who were never given tribal status, have their own registries of members that are full blooded, mixed, and on/off their reservations. There is still much litigation about who are “real” Indians.
For example, a recent court case determined that tribes cannot be forced to recognize Africans that had been slaves to their tribes for generations.
Ah but many tribes like the Cherokee for example both intermarried AND adopted both Blacks and Whites. So people with 0% Cherokee DNA or only 50% Cherokee DNA were absolutely considered to be and considered themselves to be part of the tribe. How do you account for that?
Then there is the fact that in some cases it can be far enough back as to be very difficult to identify even in a DNA test. In my family lore, my Great Great Grandmothers’ family in the mid 19th century said that it was their Grandmother (or great grandmother) from back in North Carolina was Cherokee. That did not show up when my brother had a DNA test done but that could have been as far back as 7 generations ago. Even if its true that would make us 1/128th Cherokee. 1% of his DNA showed up as “indeterminate” so the family lore “could” be true according to the DNA test.
This is where the race hustlers are taking us. ie back to the 1 drop rule. How about we just be Americans and treat each other equally instead? (that means abolish all race based affirmative action).
It's probably true.
LOL Not only an Indian, but a pioneer on the Oregon Trail, too?
The problem with DNA is that the marker used for Amercan Indians is Asian. That’s why many Germans test 2% Indian, which has more to do with the Mongol invasion.
“ This is where the race hustlers are taking us. ie back to the 1 drop rule. How about we just be Americans and treat each other equally instead? (that means abolish all race based affirmative action).”
———————————————————————————————————————————-
So true.
My 7th Great Grandparents were Wampanoag.
It shows up in my DNA.
The real way to solve the issue at hand is stop being racist and giving certain races special treatment, loans, benefits.
I thought there were too many chiefs.
Im 3/64 American... or 1/16 depending on who’s counting ...
My Vermont born 3rd great grandmother married a 1/2 American 1/2 Canadian making my 2 GG father a 3/4 American and so on ...
Actually that 1/2 and half had American parents ... Loyalists who had fled to Canada ...so he was American born in Canada ...
All the ancestors on both sides for several generations were Americans ... back to the early 1600s ...
That 2 GG father left Canada for New Zealand ...
As children in New Zealand, we called ourselves Americans which impressed our school mates ...
:)
Our government’s creation of seperate societies with seperate “rights” are a major driver to all this...
Where’s my casino ?
It is the old libertarian rule—if your subsidize something you get more of it.
That includes fake Indians!
Yes, they probably do.
DH was doing genealogy way back, though, with real records. Not saying what he got was thorough, or even accurate, but it wasn’t a website.
And I miss Genealogy.com. THAT was great for forum and finding people of interest. I got a whole passel of info from a distant relative who answered my posting! Then Ancestry bought it. No more forum, no “free” info.
I’ve heard NPR interview this bird brain ‘geneticist’ that is a Navajo womaYn. Speaks with a liberal peppering of ‘like’, ‘um’, ‘really’, ‘yeah, um, like, litterally’...her thang is that you are a systemic racissss if you think people that claim to being INDIGENOUS, take a dna test before getting $$$$$, fake jobs, free housing, etc. What a coincidence!
And Lizzy Warren is still fake as they come.
Ping out to the Daniel Greenfield Ping! List.
As always, please FReepmail me if you want on or off the Daniel Greenfield ping list.
Those that sided with the British during the American Revolution - sent packing. Those that remained neutral or sided with the Colonists - welcome.
We recently got a “white guy” General Manager at my plant. White guy name, redneck blue collar Texas upbringing (he went to High school with one of my enginners). Also, he was TOTALLY under qualified for the position.
HR let it slip he was of “Portugese Descent” and therefore “Hispanic” on their Affirmative Action Chart.
The “Affirmative Action” scam is real.
That and her Indian was Squanto, and she also had white ancestors on the Mayflower.
(That’s for all the people who claim to be from the Mayflower or Ellis Island. Both of which are themselves steeped in nonsense myth making everyone want to claim it.)
I mean, there really is no evidence of just about any of them anywhere. I’ve been up and down the coast and nowhere, especially my own home, has much in the way of historic remains, much less PEOPLE.
I think we have had a fake Indian problem for a very long time. If I had a dollar for everyone who has told me that they are part Indian, I’d have several thousand dollars. I’ve read that the craze to identify as part Indian started in the late 1890s after Indians stopped being considered a threat and started being looked at as interesting or quaint. Now that minorities of all types are getting preferences more and more white people are identifying as minorities, a reverse of what used to be minorities claiming to be white.
I think that the DNA testing is one cause. My DNA test didn’t show any indigenous DNA but my family tree shows two sources - one is of course Cherokee, supposedly my ggg grandmother named Rachel. The other is simply listed as East Chesapeake bay shore Indian. No name. I’ve never tried to use these tenuous lines to get anything. Our granddaughter is however over one/third Native American through her birth father but its from South America. I did look into whether she can get a scholarship, we have an institution in our community that used to be called Haskell Indian Institute. Now its Haskell College I think. But you have to be registered with a tribe. Sounds racist to me.
Ever been to North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.