WASHINGTON —
In June 2021, an anonymous report began circulating in Canadian academic circles. It listed six faculty and staff members at Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario.
"Queen's College is currently overrun with white Canadians making false claims to Indigenous — especially Algonquin — identity," it read. "We are confident that our thorough research has focused on six of the most prominent and harmful cases."
The college rejected the allegations, prompting a written protest signed by more than 100 Indigenous scholars, condemning "white faculty claiming Indigeneity on the basis of family lore or one Indigenous ancestor from hundreds of years ago … claiming both trauma and healing that never belonged to them as they enact what scholars and advocates recognize as the final … stage of settler colonization: 'settler self-indigenization.'"
In response, Queen's College promised to review its hiring policies.
Native Americans complain that problem is widespread in U.S. colleges and universities.
Dartmouth University in 2015 withdrew Susan Taffee Reed as Native American program director after learning that her "tribe" was a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization, some of whose members have no Native ancestors at all. Dartmouth shifted her to another position.
As The New York Times reported in 2021, University of California, Riverside, scholar and activist Andrea Smith falsely claimed Cherokee identity for years and received fellowship awards meant for underrepresented groups...
Turkish base fake news in Armenia For several days, a video has been circulating on social media claiming that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan allegedly signed a “secret agreement” with EU ...