I missed this bit of Flight From White news in the Guardian last May:

US professor apologizes after wrongly claiming to be Native American

Calls mount for Elizabeth Hoover, anthropologist at UC Berkeley who said she had Indigenous heritage, to resign

Edwin Rios
@edwin_d_rios
Fri 5 May 2023 11.00 EDT

A University of California at Berkeley anthropologist known for her work on food justice in Native American communities is under fire after she long claimed she was Indigenous and has conceded that she is in fact white – fueling calls for her resignation.

Elizabeth Hoover, who was hired as an associate professor in 2000 researching Native American food sovereignty, published a letter of apology on her personal website earlier this week.

She noted that she had claimed her Native American heritage her “whole life” and benefited from her self-identified Indigenous background in the forms of “academic fellowships, opportunities, and material benefits that I may not have received had I not been perceived as a Native scholar”.

Hoover stopped identifying as a person of Mohawk and Mi’kmaq descent last year following inquiries into her background, the Los Angeles Times reported. She had conducted research into her ancestry but found no records verifying that her family members had tribal ancestry.

“I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life, based on incomplete information,” Hoover wrote.

“In uncritically living an identity based on family stories without seeking out a documented connection to these communities, I caused harm. I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms.”

Keep in mind that white Americans have found a little bit of Indian blood to be glamorous for a long time, such as descent from Pocahontas. People have a hard time remembering that because it doesn’t fit into the contemporary assumptions about racism.

[Comment at Unz.com]