College professor -“I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If gender is now accepted as fluid, why can't racial identity be similarly malleable?

+1 it’s what she identifies as that matters. This cal students are bigots

DP
I honestly can't figure out why identifying as a different gender is A-OK, but identifying as a different race is despicable. Is there any rhyme or reason to this madness?

The reason is, in academia, there’s a massive advantage to be had for certain minorities.

Native American identity specifically is not as visually apparent (many natives look white) and so so many white Americans have wrongfully claimed the identify in generations past, making it easy for young academics to opportunistically turn a blind eye to their ethnic reality.

[Anonymous]

She didn't identify as native her whole life and lived as such. She did it to grift opportunities:

Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.

“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.

[Anonymous]

If we don't get upset at a black guy passing as white in the 1950s to avoid being discriminated against, there's no reason to get all upset at her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: She didn't identify as native her whole life and lived as such. She did it to grift opportunities:

Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.

“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.

Actually, if you follow the link to Keene's letter, you'll see that Keene cites newspaper archives that show Hoover was claiming native identity in letters written to the editor when she was 17.

So she's been making this claim since her teenage years. Wild!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: She didn't identify as native her whole life and lived as such. She did it to grift opportunities:

Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.

“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.

Actually, if you follow the link to Keene's letter, you'll see that Keene cites newspaper archives that show Hoover was claiming native identity in letters written to the editor when she was 17.

So she's been making this claim since her teenage years. Wild!

Isn’t it very possible that she actually thought she was?

I grew up thinking I was like 25% irish and turns out I’m not at all but I only found this out after dna testing. For a long time people just believed what their parents told them who believed what their parents told them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: She didn't identify as native her whole life and lived as such. She did it to grift opportunities:

Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.

“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.

Actually, if you follow the link to Keene's letter, you'll see that Keene cites newspaper archives that show Hoover was claiming native identity in letters written to the editor when she was 17.

So she's been making this claim since her teenage years. Wild!

Isn’t it very possible that she actually thought she was?

I grew up thinking I was like 25% irish and turns out I’m not at all but I only found this out after dna testing. For a long time people just believed what their parents told them who believed what their parents told them

That would be a pretty nightmarish possibility -- she's raised with this story of how she's part native, is taken by her mom to pow wows and gets really involved with the community to the point where she builds her identity and profession around it, and realizes only once Ancestry.com and all the other databases really come into their golden age -- well after her career is underway -- that maybe the stories are false.

I can understand why she'd stick her head in the sand rather than own up. But I think she would have been far wiser to immediately address the issue, and maybe even pivot her scholarship to focus on the not-rare phenomenon of 100% European-descent people growing up with family tales of native ancestry.

[Anonymous]

[img]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: She didn't identify as native her whole life and lived as such. She did it to grift opportunities:

Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.

“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.

Actually, if you follow the link to Keene's letter, you'll see that Keene cites newspaper archives that show Hoover was claiming native identity in letters written to the editor when she was 17.

So she's been making this claim since her teenage years. Wild!

TBH I thought she did that too get into college

[Anonymous]

Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

[Anonymous]

In no way saying anyone should use it to advance their career, but it is true that a lot of white people got told they had a native great grandmother or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So disturbing to read about another white settler, Elizabeth Hoover (professor at UC Berkeley, attended Brown) who based on some family lore pretended to be indigenous, cosplays being indigenous, benefits academically being indigenous.

The Cal student paper published the story back in Nov but it is getting a lot of media coverage this week
https://dailycal.org/2022/11/01/campus-associate-professor-elizabeth-hoover-rescinds-claim-to-native-american-ancestry

Statement from former students
https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQBXq0rEI1qygmecbqjZtIBWORZc9ovd-Sl88SQcQ1OKyCXwOCkp18FVsO8MiGq3EstBSq1HN4YcKhN/pub?urp=gmail_link

Statement from former friend who realizes Hoover is a fraud
https://nativeappropriations.com/2023/05/a-letter-to-elizabeth-hoover.html

This family lore thing is incredibly common. We had it in my family — took a DNA test to disprove my mother’s insistence that there was Algonkian blood in our family.

What’s more surprising is the gullibility of someone who became a professor. But OTOH most of us grow up believing our family members to be truthful.

I am curious about the sociological reasons for this weirdly common family myth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If gender is now accepted as fluid, why can't racial identity be similarly malleable?

+1 it’s what she identifies as that matters. This cal students are bigots

DP
I honestly can't figure out why identifying as a different gender is A-OK, but identifying as a different race is despicable. Is there any rhyme or reason to this madness?

The reason is, in academia, there’s a massive advantage to be had for certain minorities.

Native American identity specifically is not as visually apparent (many natives look white) and so so many white Americans have wrongfully claimed the identify in generations past, making it easy for young academics to opportunistically turn a blind eye to their ethnic reality.

Pray, tell, what “massive advantage” is that? Enumerate, please.

[Anonymous]

But I hear all the time on here that being a POC is a huge disadvantage and white people have everything handed to them. I think we should applaud her for intentionally handicapping herself in her academic pursuits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She claims her mother misled her and brought her to tribal events (mother was likely also misled). I know MANY white people who were wrongly told they were native.

This knee jerk reaction seems wrong to me.

I agree that assuming guilt isn’t the way to go. If she was told this her whole life, that’s different than making up the situation from scratch.

I’m part Native American—and have features that people ask about. I didn’t grow up on a reservation, though, so I don’t claim anything.

If I had been taken to events and grown up among others in the culture, I’d probably identify that way.

[Anonymous]

I know people like this from my time teaching at a university. They feel so much white guilt that they fetishize minority groups to the point that it is easy to convince themselvds that they are a member of one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So disturbing to read about another white settler, Elizabeth Hoover (professor at UC Berkeley, attended Brown) who based on some family lore pretended to be indigenous, cosplays being indigenous, benefits academically being indigenous.

The Cal student paper published the story back in Nov but it is getting a lot of media coverage this week
https://dailycal.org/2022/11/01/campus-associate-professor-elizabeth-hoover-rescinds-claim-to-native-american-ancestry

Statement from former students
https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQBXq0rEI1qygmecbqjZtIBWORZc9ovd-Sl88SQcQ1OKyCXwOCkp18FVsO8MiGq3EstBSq1HN4YcKhN/pub?urp=gmail_link

Statement from former friend who realizes Hoover is a fraud
https://nativeappropriations.com/2023/05/a-letter-to-elizabeth-hoover.html

This family lore thing is incredibly common. We had it in my family — took a DNA test to disprove my mother’s insistence that there was Algonkian blood in our family.

What’s more surprising is the gullibility of someone who became a professor. But OTOH most of us grow up believing our family members to be truthful.

I am curious about the sociological reasons for this weirdly common family myth.

Right. I think this is what happened. It's so common as to be a joke among Native people. The issue is she didn't just say it, she used it to *become and speak as an expert in Native American studies and issues* at some of the top universities in the country.

Oddly enough, the people you'd read to understand this common family myth are generally...Native studies scholars. She would have learned enough about the history and ways belonging is actually defined to recognize and question this sometime before her second tenured position. I do think it's sad all around, for her as well.