The Pretendian Problem

Abstract

Pretendianism is a problem in academia (and of whiteness). Its long-standing existence is well researched and analyzed in the academic record, and it has been brought to wider audiences through news and social media. In response, task forces, committees and advisory councils are being created in universities to determine stronger identity validation policies, with emphasis on engaging relationships with local Indigenous nations, communities, elders, and knowledge holders. Policy making, including processes and procedures of identity validation, will be a powerful apparatus going forward to administer indigeneity in universities. This approach will also lead to the intensification of Indigenous definition and regulation by predominantly non-Indigenous institutions. This article proposes a set of complementary extrapolicy practices addressing pretendianism worth exploring and that emerge from the everyday embodied vantage points of Indigenous academics. We must (continue to) name whiteness, model Indigenous relationality and learn from Indigenous women's leadership.

Sorry cites: The (necro) politics of citation in the anthropology of religion

“… 19. The case of Jessica Krug—but one example—is well known (Jackson, 2020). Numerous cases have recently come to light in the United States and Canada of people in academia and the arts (sometimes referred to as “pretendians”) falsely claiming to have indigenous ancestry for personal gain; see Kolopenuk, 2023. …”