'My dad is a fake Native American'
Business owner landed $12.5M in financial gains thanks to 'Native' claim
A Michigan business owner who portrayed himself as a survivor of the “American holocaust” in a documentary funded by a Native public media outlet was outed in February 2022 as a fraud.
But it wasn’t a news inquiry, or a slip-up in self-identification, or an increase in social media followers, that tripped up this once brave warrior.
It was the man’s own daughter!
Through a series of videos on TikTok, @velour_round aka Breezee Gonzales exposed the man who was featured in Our Fires Still Burn, a documentary released by Vision Maker Media. She started in early February 2022, revealing her father as a “Pretendian” who has claimed to be from from the Winnebago Tribe for decades.
“As you can tell, I’m very much a White lady,” Breezee said in introducing her saga on February 3, 2022. “I came from two very, very White parents.”
“Well, one of them — my dad — decided one day, ‘Hey I’m Native American. I’m gonna roll with it,’” she continued in a video with “White Guy Fakes Native Culture” written on it.
“He immersed himself into Native culture and befriended some folks,” she added. “It went so far that he is a subject in a documentary called Our Fires Still Burn.”
The fake Native grift worked so perfectly, in fact, that a man identified as Scott Badenoch is the VERY FIRST PERSON whose voice appears in Our Fires Still Burn, according to a transcript of the documentary. His voice is even the first one heard in the trailer for the 2013 production.
“When the people came from Europe, there were a hundred million Native Americans and today, there’s a handful,” Badenoch says in setting the stage for the entire film, which otherwise includes numerous, and legitimate, tribal voices.
“I mean it was an American holocaust,” Badenoch says, according to the transcript in which he is repeatedly labeled as “Ho-Chunk.”
But as Breezee shows in her series of videos, through independent documents and even her own DNA test, it’s all been a front. And even though her father has been confronted with the information, he has continued to defend his Pretendian story, according to the TikToks.
He even gave her some some self-produced papers — one titled “Preponderance of Evidence Supporting Native American Status for Scott Badenoch” and another called “Partial Family Tree for Scott Badenoch Indicating Native American Heritage” — that he uses to support his claim of being a “direct descendant of the children taken from the Winnebago tribe and sent to the Carlisle Indian School.” She promptly posted both on TikTok.
Here’s where the story turns more exploitative. Not only did Badenoch portray himself as a survivor of the “American holocaust” committed against Native peoples, he’s asserting to be a “direct descendant” of the genocidal Indian boarding school era.
Badenoch alluded to his alleged resilience in the Our Fires Still Burn — telling the filmmakers that his maternal grandfather and his maternal great-grandfather had been “picked up” by the federal government” and taken to the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The “Kill the Indian … save the man” mission of the infamous boarding school serves as a running theme throughout the documentary.
Because of this terribly traumatic past, Badenoch says he was taught survival skills and how to hide his “Native” heritage.
“We always have a plan, we always know where we would go if we were removed, how we’d go away,” Badenoch says in the documentary. ‘We’re taught at an early age how to take public transit and, you know, how to operate.”
“So the way I grew up was, was to not proclaim being a Native American,” he says.
Never mind that Badenoch was raised in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago, Illinois, a place he mentions in the film. Red flag, anyone?
And forget the fact that Badenoch told Our Fires Still Burn that he spent repeated summers, as a young boy, on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in neighboring Wisconsin, more than 350 miles from Chicago.
A mean “uncle” who suffered from substance abuse (another exploitative reference, of course) supposedly lived on the reservation, which is not home to the Winnebago or Ho-Chunk people, by the way. He also repeatedly used Ojibwe language words and phrases — but not Ho-Chunk words — in the documentary. Even more overlooked red flags?
Now Pretendian Country Today isn’t aware of a public transit route, historic or contemporary, that runs from Chicago to Waaswaagani-zaaga'igan, the Ojibwe place that is home to the very real Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
But by all means, if someone out there knows how Badenoch (or anyone for that matter) would have utilized those survival skills to escape being “picked up” by the feds on these trips, please share in the comments. No need to “proclaim” whether you are Native, or not!
In all seriousness, as his daughter’s revelations show, Badenoch is outright appropriating the history of real children from the Winnebago Tribe who were taken from their homes on the reservation in Nebraska and sent to a boarding school some 1,200 miles from their families. Legitimate documentation of these Nash children can be found on the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, a project of Dickinson College.
Still, it goes without saying that none of the Nash students who went to Carlisle are ancestors of Scott Badenoch, Sr., as he claims. The self-produced papers he provided to his daughter are directly and firmly contradicted by birth records, government documents, genealogy research and yes, even genetic data.
In even more seriousness, Breezee rightfully brings up the financial resources her father has secured, or has attempted to secure, based on a flimsy claim of Native heritage. According to a database of government contractors, Badenoch self-declared his for-profit businesses as “Native American Owned” and “American Indian Owned.” Another database shows Badenoch LLC was once certified under the 8(a) program as a “Small Disadvantaged Business” that was“Native American” and “Other Minority Owned.”
For those who aren’t aware, 8(a) certification as a “Native” business opens doors to landing government contracts and sub-contracts. An investigation by The Los Angeles Times shows how a large web of companies have landed $300 million in these kinds of monetary opportunities by claiming to be “Cherokee” owned.
Badenoch has even used social media to assert his space in the Native business world. Activity on his LinkedIn profile indicates efforts to place himself in proximity to legitimate tribal economic development figures in Indian Country.
And here is where the story is to be continued. On February 14, 2022, Breeze indicated she had previously reached out the Small Business Administration about a Paycheck Protection Program loan that her father received during the COVID-19 pandemic through his “Native” business. She said the SBA contacted her to follow up.
“Truth came to light and now he has to deal,” she says in the caption.
Now the PPP loan appears to have been for a seemingly minor amount of $41,000. Sounds like a payment for a single employee’s salary, maybe?
According to opengovus.com, an independent database, the loan went to BEARS LLC, which Badenoch has claimed is “American Indian Owned.” The PPP dollar figure can also be found on a database posted by The Port Huron Times Herald in Michigan, whose entry describes this particular business as “White” owned.
But Badenoch LLC appears to have raked in more dollars by claiming to be a “Native” business. The official SBA reports of the 8(a) Business Development Program for minority and disadvantaged businesses show some more staggering amounts for the years in which Badenoch’s firm was a participant.
2009 Report: $4,032,532
2010 Report: $4,890,451
2011 Report: $842,270.96
2012 Report: $722,300.22, plus a 7(a) loan to an 8(a) business of $350,000
2013 Report: $645,770.32
2014 Report: $1,082,330
Total: $12,565,654.50 (Contracts and Loans)
So there you have it folks. More than $12.5 million in financial gains, all from Badenoch LLC being a “NA” or “Native American” business.
Not bad for someone who was supposedly taught to “not proclaim being a Native American.”
OUR FIRES STILL BURN: vimeo.com/103901657
This story is remarkable...