Indian Frauds

Indian Frauds: Alternet on “Love and Consequences”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Alternet:

Last month, it was revealed that the New York Times and Manhattan publishing world were deceived by Love and Consequences, a faked memoir by a white girl who claimed to live the life you only hear about in Dr. Dre songs. The damage control was so good, the book never saw daylight, and we never knew how big of an embarrassment this cartoonishly racist gangster fantasy should have been. But last week a copy arrived at my doorstep.

Supposedly written by gangsta moll Margaret B. Jones, Love and Consequences turned out to be the work of middle-class liar Margaret Seltzer. She had invented the tale behind a laptop at Starbucks, tricking not only her publisher, but also her fans at the Times, which graced the memoir with repeated coverage.

After it was revealed her work was a forgery, the damage control was swift and successful. On March 5, with the book just out the door, the New York Times revealed the hoax, if not just how bad it was. Her agent, Faye Bender, told the paper, reassuringly, that “there was no reason to doubt her, ever.” And that set the tone for the coverage. Love & Consequences, wrote the L.A. Times, must have seemed “edgy, sexy, cinematic.”

Continue reading →

Indian Frauds: US v Refert — Impersonating an Indian

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here are the materials in US v. Refert, an Eighth Circuit case affirming the conviction of a woman convicted of impersonating an Indian for purposes of receiving health care.

CA8 Opinion

Appellant Brief

Appellee Brief

Indian Literary Frauds: David Treuer on “Going Native”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher5 Comments

From Slate:

In 1930, shortly after the studio release of his movie The Silent Enemy, Buffalo Child Long Lance’s Indian identity began to crumble. He was a celebrity by that time, having boxed Dempsey and dated movie stars, but he was not, it turned out, a full-blooded Blackfeet Indian who had been raised on the plains, as he had claimed. He had not hunted buffalo from horseback as the prairie winds blew through his hair. And his name was not actually Buffalo Child Long Lance. His real name was Sylvester Long. He was from Winston-Salem, N.C. He was African-American. And his father was not a chief but, rather, a janitor.

Margaret B. Jones, the author of Love and Consequences, is hardly the first person to have invented an Indian self and a past. Her memoir tells of her upbringing as a half-white, half-Indian foster child by a black family in South Central L.A. In fact, Jones’ real name is Margaret Seltzer, she did not grow up in South Central, she’s never been a foster child, and she’s no more a Native American than Sylvester Long was.

Continue reading →

Literary Fraud: “Love and Consequences”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the NYTs:

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Continue reading →

Indian Frauds: “Wampanoa[g] Nation, Tribe of Grayhead, Wolf Band”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

The District of Utah has a few of these cases involving people claiming to be members of the “Wampanoag Nation, Tribe of Grayhead, Wolf Band,” trying to hide behind federal Indian law in order to avoid federal and state regulation. This one is called Burbank v. United States District Court of Utah. It involves a guy who claims to be a member of an Indian tribe, a tribe that even has a tribal cop, named “Spirit Walker.”

Here are some of the materials:

Continue reading →

Article on Academic Frauds

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Ethnic Fraud?
Tribal scholars say some faculty are falsely claiming American Indian heritage to boost their job prospects.

By Mary Annette Pember

From Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

For American Indian scholars, securing a job in higher education can sometimes be as simple as checking a box. Most of the country’s colleges and universities do not require proof of tribal enrollment from faculty or staff who identify themselves as American Indians. Students looking to receive financial aid, however, must submit proof that they are members of federally recognized tribes. The question of American Indian identity can be an incendiary one.

Continue reading →

Indian Frauds: “The Education of Little Tree” and Oprah’s Book Club

Matthew L.M. Fletcher18 Comments

From reznet:

The Education of Oprah Winfrey

By Hillel Italie

NEW YORK (AP) — Oprah Winfrey has pulled a discredited children’s book, Forrest Carter’s “The Education of Little Tree,” from a list of recommended titles on her Web site, blaming an archival “error” for including a work considered the literary hoax of a white supremacist.

“The archived listing was posted in error and has been removed,” Winfrey spokeswoman Angela DePaul told the Associated Press, adding that she did not know long “Little Tree” had been on the site.

The AP had inquired about “The Education of Little Tree,” which was featured on the “Oprah’s Favorite Books” page her Web site, with “The Color Purple,” “The Grapes of Wrath” and other “guaranteed page-turners from Oprah’s personal collection.” The list can also be linked to in-store computer searches at Barnes & Noble.

First published in 1976, “The Education of Little Tree” was supposedly the real-life story of an orphaned boy raised by his Cherokee grandparents; the book became a million seller and sentimental favorite. In 1991, the American Booksellers Association gave “Little Tree” its first-ever ABBY award, established “to honor the ‘hidden treasures’ that ABA bookstore members most enjoyed recommending.”

But suspicions about Carter, who died in 1979, began in his lifetime and were raised significantly in the early 1990s, not long after the book won the ABBY. Carter was identified as Asa Earl Carter, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and speechwriter for former Alabama governor George Wallace who wrote Wallace’s infamous vow: “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

“‘Little Tree’ is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist,” says author Sherman Alexie, whose books include “Ten Little Indians” and the young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which won a National Book Award for young people’s literature Nov. 14.

“I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it,” says Lorene Roy, president of the American Library Association. “Besides the questions about the author’s identity, the book is known for a simplistic plot that used a lot of stereotypical imagery.”

Winfrey had long been aware of the book’s background and has acknowledged she once was a fan. She discussed “Little Tree” on her TV show in 1994, recalling a “loving story about a boy growing up with his grandfather and learning about nature and speaking to the trees. And it’s very spiritual.”

When Winfrey learned the truth about Carter, she felt she “had to take the book off my shelf.”

“I no longer — even though I had been moved by the story — felt the same about this book,” she said in 1994. “There’s a part of me that said, ‘Well, OK, if a person has two sides of them and can write this wonderful story and also write the segregation forever speech, maybe that’s OK.’ But I couldn’t — I couldn’t live with that.”

According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, “Little Tree” has sold about 11,000 copies in 2007. It was originally released by the Delacorte Press, then reissued a decade later by the University of New Mexico Press, which still publishes the book.

Winfrey has endorsed at least one other work that was eventually disputed: James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” a memoir of addiction and recovery that she chose for her book club in 2005. After learning the book contained extensive fabrications, Winfrey chewed out the author on her show, but never withdrew her pick. “A Million Little Pieces” is still listed on her Web site.

Indian Frauds: “Kaweah Indian Nation”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Lincoln Journal Star:

A Texas judge issued a permanent injunction Monday prohibiting an unrecognized American Indian tribe and its self-proclaimed chief from selling tribal memberships in an alleged scam to defraud illegal immigrants by falsely claiming the documents would provide protection from deportation.

District Judge Noe Gonzalez ruled that Malcolm Webber and his Wichita-based Kaweah Indian Nation by default admitted the allegations in a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Gonzalez issued the ruling because the tribe and Webber failed to answer the lawsuit filed in August alleging they violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The lawsuit contended that the tribe sold memberships for up to $400 per person to immigrants by saying that members could get a Social Security number. The lawsuit also alleged that immigrants were told they would be entitled to receive U.S. citizenship once the tribe was federally recognized.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs ruled in 1984 that the Kaweah group had no historical link to American Indian tribes and that Webber is not an Indian.

Here is a link to the BAR’s final notice of denial of Kaweah’s petition for federal recognition.

Indian Frauds in Court

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

A few years ago, I saw a presentation by an FBI agent based out of Bismarck, North Dakota in which he described how many of the survivalist, tax protester-type of virulent anti-government “citizens” had gone way underground after 9/11 and the USA Patriot Act. A couple years later, some of them reappeared as Indians and Indian tribes — the worst kind of Indian fraud imaginable. There have always been, I suspect, people trying to be pretend Indians in an attempt to garner something (money, rights, etc.) they otherwise would not be entitled to. Here, it appears, are whites trying to hide behind tribal sovereign immunity and tribal sovereignty in general.

I wrote about these guys first in 2006 at the For the Seventh Generation blog. And every few months since, another (usually unreported) state or federal court case comes up in which these people are trying to avoid taxes or conviction because of their “Indianness.” I think it’s worthwhile to keep track of these cases.

Here’s the most recent one (I think) — Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems v. Powell, a New Jersey court of appeals case. Here’s the unreported opinion: Opinion

Here’s the relevant language in the opinion (this one tried to avoid paying a debt):

Defendant nevertheless argues that she enjoys “sovereign immunity” both as a member of an Indian tribe because she is “Wanda Lee: Ben El Powell ™©, a Pre-Columbian Indigenous Sovereign Yamassee Muur/Moor,” and as “the secured Private Party, Holder in due Course, by the Commercial Remedy in Law, Filing the UCC1 … [and has] Regained [her] Divine Sovereign Human Rights.”