THE PRETENDIANS

FROM APACHE TO CREE TO MOHAWK, HERE ARE SOME GREAT PRETENDERS THAT NEVER WERE.

- HENRY C. PARKE

SACHEEN LITTLEFEATHER

In 1980, on a lunch break from our security guard gigs, I mentioned Iron Eyes Cody. “The crying Indian from the pollution commercial?” my Navajo lunch-mate asked, adding. “You know, he's not really Indian. All the Indians know he's Italian. But he represents us so well, with such dignity, that we won't give him away.” Oh, sure, I thought. When Cody died 20 years later, news reports screamed, “Incredibly, Cody was not an Indian!” and around the country, Indigenous people replied, “Yeah, we knew that. Good guy.”

For centuries, many tribes have judged belonging not just based on DNA—sorry, Sen. Elizabeth Warren—but welcoming those who've proved themselves worthy in some way; hence the A Man Called Horse sub-genre. But there are signs that their patience is at an end, especially in Canada. That's at least in part because thousands of Pretendians are trying to grab First Nation benefits like paying no gas sales-tax on the rez.

For her entire career, Oscar-winning singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has been known as a Saskatchewan-born Cree. But a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation located her Massachusetts birth certificate, and while she claims to have been adopted, and told that her biological parents were First Nation, she has been removed from the prestigious Order of Canada.