Compared to earlier generations, there has been a noticeable uptake of people in recent years identifying as indigenous, both here in Aotearoa New Zealand and in other countries around the world.
While this has been something to celebrate, in some indigenous communities, it’s been cause for concern.
According to Anishinaabe man Drew Hayden Taylor, an award-winning playwright, author, columnist, filmmaker and lecturer, the past 10 years in Canada have seen a flood of white people being outed as ‘pretendians’ (pretend Indians) after claiming to be native when they’re not.
[…] Hayden Taylor says the issue of pretendians has led to a larger, more complicated conversation among native Canadians about how to authenticate someone as indigenous moving forward.
“In the last 10 years, it was Joseph Boyden who really kicked this off, who was a very popular author who kept claiming to come from several different nations.”
[…] Since then, Hayden-Taylor says there’s been a flood of people from within the arts, including filmmaker Michelle Latimer, academia and educational institutions, as well as the legal fraternity, of white people seeking “the prestige, and perceived financial and spiritual benefits, of being indigenous”.
[…] Speaking on the podcast, Professor Margaret Mutu said she believed while the issue of pretendians was unlikely to have the same impact here in Aotearoa, she had seen the odd person attempt to claim to be Maori to benefit financially.
“In this country it was shameful to be Maori, so why would anyone want to be Maori when they were not?” Mutu said.
A bald-faced lie.
“It was only when they started to impose the Treaty land claims some years ago that I thought the issue of pretendians could become a problem here too.
“I haven’t seen a large number of people, but I have seen a few examples, and it was deliberately out of the Treaty claim settlement process where these people thought they were going to get something out of it.”
So Whitey wanting a piece of that sweet Treaty moola.
She shared one anecdote of a former student of her Maori studies classes who “really hated the fact she was Pakeha”, but then turned up at other courses and other areas claiming to be Maori, which she heard second-hand from other people.
NZ Herald
The big question is why do people with far more white in them than Maori want to claim to be Maori when supposedly you have more privilege if you’re white?
The answer in my opinion is nothing to do with money or getting in the front of line. The answer is psychological. Remember these people genuinely believe that Maori are disadvantaged. The answer is hatred of one’s own race and the fetish worship of another – in this case Maori, where everything Maori is seen to be superior.
This of course fits perfectly in with the former student’s anecdote above.