Pretendian

Um, many of them are white liberals.

Many of them are, are what have sometimes been called Pretendians, people claiming to be Indigenous, but not actually.

Um, that's one of the incentives in a system that rewards you, including financially, based on race.

It reminds me a little bit about that professor at Cambridge who was celebrated not for his scholarship, but for being the youngest Black professor at Cambridge.

Well, yeah.

Well, Canadaland has a whole series called Pretendians if any of your-

Right, right, right

... listeners are interested.

But at the time, in 1984, shortly after their formation, they were expelled from the movement.

Um, Ward Churchill and Glenn Morris, they were outed, uh, quite credibly as being Pretendians, as, uh, being, uh, people who are, you know, of European ancestry but claim to be Indigenous.

Neither one has, um, been able to prove, uh, you know, e- either to the Indigenous groups that they claim or to anyone else asking, um, their actual, uh, their actual ties to Indigenous groups.

Um, so Glenn Morris and, um, Ward Churchill kind of become a, a sort of pair that becomes associated with this, uh, anti-Marxist, anti-communist, um, bent, right? And- Some people, I haven't found the, the evidence, but I think, uh, we should also put this into the context that they were pushing, you know, they were allied with Russell Means, who was then going and meeting with Elliot Abrams, right? And, and trying to foment, uh, an armed uprising against actual, uh, uh, you know, uh, socialist government or socialist movement.

Instead of the inheritance of his declining native blood, he would have optimism and promise built on the solid rock of capitalism and progress.

Some called him an apple, others Pretendian, and other derivatives of these to infer a loss of his connection to his people, culture, and homeland.

That was not how he saw it.

His own father had been a highly regarded member within his tribe.