Daniel Greenfield January 04, 2022 @ Sultan Knish Blog
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.
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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and
the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center
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