The Native Scholar Who Wasnât
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/cherokee-native-american-andrea-smith.html
Andrea SmithCredit.Photo illustration by Joan Wong. Source photograph by Tom Zasadzinski/Cal Poly Pomona; Alamy.
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The Native Scholar Who Wasnât
More than a decade ago, a prominent academic was exposed for having faked her Cherokee ancestry. Why has her career continued to thrive?
Andrea SmithCredit.Photo illustration by Joan Wong. Source photograph by Tom Zasadzinski/Cal Poly Pomona; Alamy.
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It was a Thursday morning last September, and J. Kehaulani Kauanui had just woken up. She was reading a story on her phone in bed, a confession written by a woman named Jessica Krug, when, quite suddenly, it yanked her into the past.
Family of professor who claimed to be Cherokee says she is NOT Native American and STILL has a job at U. of California 14 years after her race faking was first uncovered
Andrea Smith had told friends her mother and grandparents were Oklahoma Cherokee and her dad was Ojibwe; doubts over these claims were raised in 2007
Cherokee academic Steve Russell then questioned her claims again in 2008
Later that year Smith got a new job at at the University of California as an assistant professor; she no longer identified as Cherokee in her official bios
But she used the identity in interviews and lectures, according to reports
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