(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Not one, but three University of Kansas faculty members stand accused of allegedly falsely claiming Native American heritage.
One of them, Prof. Kent Blansett, who was apparently hired at KU through a minority scholar program, is considered to be an expert on indigenous history.
“Blansett is among three KU professors to have allegations publicly raised about their claimed lineage by Native American individuals and groups that frequently challenge people claiming Native identity. None of the men is enrolled in a tribe,” the Kansas City Star reported in a very detailed story.
The other two who are also suspected of allegedly being “pretendians” are Profs. Raymond Pierotti, a biologist, and Jay Johnson, a geographer.
Native American grassroots groups and researchers “say, based on independent research of the men’s family trees, that the professors are white, and white only, and that they’ve built careers and profits off of a lie,” the news outlet added.
Journalist and genealogical researcher Jaqueline Keeler, a member of the Navajo Nation, told the Star, in reference to the controversy, “They’re on the colonial party bus. Most of these folks are engaged in absolute fraud.”
“Imagine that someone has plagiarized your work. But more than plagiarized your work, they have stolen your ancestors. They’ve stolen your life story,” said Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe
Native groups accuse KU professors of being ‘pretendians’ https://t.co/TCnZrv7eFN
— Nick Estes (@nickwestes) July 25, 2023
Keeler “created a list of ‘alleged pretendians’ that has drawn both criticism and praise,” the Star noted.
In an interview with the College Fix website, Keeler declared that “Kent Blansett is an opportunist who counts on people not checking his claims. He fabricates information and he often changes and embellishes his story.”
“Keeler said Johnson and Pierotti also have been investigated and found to have falsified their family history,” the website added.
Keeler added that “During the Civil Rights movement, all we wanted was to be equal researchers instead of just a research subject. Now 60 years later, academia has responded by hiring pretendians who are white people [live-action role playing] as Natives.”
In an email to the College Fix, Lianna Constantino, co-founder of the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds organization, asserted that “Those KU professors you mentioned are indeed ethnic frauds pretending to be American Indians. They are not. Their genealogy is up on our website.”
A university spokesperson told the Star that “the identities of their faculty are not an institutional issue.”
The KU teacher trifecta would hardly be the first time that Caucasians on campus allegedly claimed to be somebody they’re not to perhaps fast-track their careers.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., the former Harvard Law School professor, is one of the more well-known examples of fake ancestry.
Back in May, a University of California Berkeley professor apologized for being a “white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life.”
In general, academia tends to be a diversity-celebrating bastion that laments the existence of white privilege and condemns what it deems systemic racism in the larger society.
According to Keeler, academia has, however, become “a pretendian factory.”
