It's National Native American Heritage Month!
The Washington Post celebrates by promoting Pretendian narratives
It’s November 1, 2022. The start of National Native American Heritage Month.
Now we all know what to expect from the mainstream media — stories about powwows, stories about historical events that happened to Native people and stories about issues that generally go ignored the remaining 11 months of the year. And don’t forget all those “Thanksgiving” stories!
But The Washington Post is aiming for something different, so it seems. A story published on the morning of November 1, on the start of Native American Heritage Month, carries the provocative and timely headline: “Sacheen Littlefeather may have lied about her identity. Does that matter?”
Posted in the paper’s “Lifestyle” section, the answer to the question is rather simple. Sacheen Littlefeather, born as Marie Louise Cruz in California in 1946, lied about her identity. She has no connection to the White Mountain Apache Tribe, nor to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the two Native nations she claimed for decades.
All of this has been documented extensively by Native journalist Jacqueline Keeler. Dina Gilio-Whitaker, another Native journalist and professor, also has published some of her findings in connection with Sacheen/Marie Louise.
But The Washington Post doesn’t appear to want to answer its own question. Instead, the paper spends the morning of Native American Heritage Month promoting the Pretendian narratives that we see over and over again. That identifying as Native is “complex” or “complicated.” (Another favorite: “Nuanced.”) That identifying as Native is about believing family lore. And that “real” Native people don’t really care that much about fakes, frauds and liars.
Will a prominent Substack author, with tens of thousands of subscribers, steal this graphic too? Only time will tell! But read on for the Pretendian receipts…🦉