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Citation: Haley, Brian D. 2024. In
Cahoots with Neo-Indigenism.
Genealogy 8: 99. https://doi.org/
10.3390/genealogy8030099
Received: 7 June 2024
Revised: 31 July 2024
Accepted: 3 August 2024
Published: 6 August 2024
Copyright: © 2024 by the author.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
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genealogy
Article
In Cahoots with Neo-Indigenism
Brian D. Haley
Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13820, USA;
brian.haley@oneonta.edu
Abstract: Academia’s support for neo-indigenes is a significant component of their professional
success. I describe how this support operates, drawing a model of cahooting from Edward Dolnick’s
analysis of art forgery in The Forger’s Spell. Cahooting reflects the importance of social relationships
to the construction of perceived truth and virtue. It corrupts academia at multiple levels through
these relationships, undermining the pursuit of truth and goals of equity and inclusion.
Keywords: identity; neo-indigenism; ethics in the academy; neo-Chumash; equity and inclusion
1. Introduction
In this article, I revisit the issue that drove me to wade into the murky pool of neo-
indigenous identity in the 1990s: the involvement of scholars in the creation and promotion
of neo-indigenes. Neo-indigenism is a global social phenomenon that has arisen over the
past half-century. It features assertions of indigenous identity by persons lacking indige-
nous ancestries, histories, or social ties. In the Western hemisphere, it is neo-Indianism,
with variants asserting specific identities (see, e.g., Galinier and Molinié2013;Junka-Aikio
2016;Watt and Kowal 2018). I explore a specific neo-Indian case in this article, but the
analysis may apply to neo-indigenism broadly.
My focus here is on the academic allies of people, kindreds, and communities in
California’s central coast region, which I have called neo-Chumash (Haley and Wilcoxon
2005). These people began identifying as Chumash in the late 1960s yet lack the Chumash
ancestry and affiliation they claim as the basis for this identity, claims that are rejected by
actual Chumash communities. By affiliation, I am referring to the suite of social ties, culture,
and experience shared within autochthonous communities and kin groups and demanded
by their members as the sole basis for public and professional claims of Native American
identity (see, e.g., Mihesuah 1998;TallBear 2021;Henry 2022). Scholars supporting neo-
Chumash claims argue that colonial period Catholic mission priests must have mis-recorded
one or more Chumash ancestors of my neo-Chumash as gente de razón, an identity the
Spanish-speaking Californio colonists used to unify and distinguish themselves from
Natives. However, the ancestry of neo-Chumash is documented in parish, military, and
civil sources with multiple records for every person (see, e.g., Haley and Wilcoxon 2005;
Haley 2005). For such a rich set of records to all be wrong, as these scholars insist, a
far-reaching, inexplicable, and improbable conspiracy would have been necessary. Thus, as
I demonstrate below, their argument is pseudoscience and propaganda, not scholarship.
Neo-Chumash identity blossomed in the late 1960s and 1970s among descendants of
Spain’s California colonists through a confluence of California Indian land claims resolution,
working-class alienation, new religious movements, and the pursuit of relief in identity
and tradition (O’Meara 1981;O’Connor 1989;Haley and Wilcoxon 1997,2005). Processes of
globalization and multiculturalism lie behind these (Haley 2009,2024). Early neo-Chumash
were drawn to a new “traditionalism” taught by Semu Huaute. They based their new
identities on family stories and the belief that the power of their experiences with the
new “traditions” proved their claims of Chumash ancestry. Only a few neo-Chumash
have Chumash ancestry, which routinely is someone six or more generations in the past
Genealogy 2024,8, 99. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8030099 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 2 of 14
who assimilated into colonial Californio society, losing ties to their Native community.
Significantly, but for a few individuals lured by the new “traditions”, existing Chumash
communities at Santa Ynez (federally recognized), Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis
Obispo rejected neo-Chumash claims of identity, maintaining a strong social boundary
excluding neo-Chumash based on ancestry, family ties, and culture. Neo-Chumash formed,
and continue to form, their own organizations, which they now call “tribes”. Early on, neo-
Chumash sought opportunities to display their new identity publicly, earning themselves
significant outside support from academics, environmental activists, and government
officials, and putting actual Chumash at a disadvantage in the public arena. Outside
institutional support for neo-Chumash is one of the greatest threats to Chumash autonomy
and representation today. One thing neo-Chumash identity is not: it is not the white race
shifting that characterizes other cases of neo-Indianism (see, e.g., Sturm 2011;Leroux 2019).
Neo-Chumash family histories are characterized by racial ambiguity spanning several
centuries (Haley and Wilcoxon 2005;Haley 2005).
2. Cahooting and the Academy
Cahooting is a modest neologism for an ingredient neo-indigenism requires if it is to be
used successfully for anything more than reconfiguring how one sees oneself. Cahooting
comprises the actions or processes associated with conducting a partnership built on a
deception. The deception may be intentional or a product of naïveté, thus partners in
cahoots may all be deceitful, all naïve, or a mix of the two. I have described elsewhere how
North America’s neo-Indians participate in a larger social field whose members have varied
identities yet share symbols, roles, goals, and expectations (Haley 2024). A broad set of
useful relationships are sought and nurtured by neo-Indians, including scholars and their
institutions. Cahooting gives a name to this relationship. It is inspired by Edward Dolnick’s
The Forger’s Spell, which explores the reasons behind the great success of the Vermeer forger,
Henricus Antonius “Han” van Meegeren (1889–1947), who famously duped Hermann
Göring into buying a fake Vermeer during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Dolnick
characterizes forgers, dealers, and collectors of fine art as being in cahoots because they
all need the forgery to be perceived as real, albeit for differing reasons. Van Meegeren’s
success depended upon those relationships. As Dolnick notes, “The greatest asset a forgery
can have is an authority’s endorsement” (Dolnick 2008, p. 120). Van Meegeren duped
influential middlemen who in turn duped buyers. They were in cahoots, with a varied mix
of deviousness and naïvetéfrom one middleman to the next. Dolnick’s characterization of
the world of art forgery aligns neatly with scholarship on artworlds (Price 2001) and the
artistic field (Bourdieu 1993). In short, Dolnick is on firm anthropological and sociological
ground.
With neo-indigenism, cahooting becomes necessary when the neo-indigenous self-
identity is deployed to pursue a goal that can only be achieved by persuading others
that the identity accurately reflects ancestry and affiliation. The strategy demands that
persons of influence consecrate (to use Bourdieu’s term) claims of indigeneity as authentic
(Bourdieu 1993). This authority must not be too aware of the dangers of accepting identity
claims at face value, although this does not matter if they are willing to fabricate or falsify
evidence. After consecrating the neo-indigene’s identity claims, one of the authority’s roles
is to beat back damaging revelations that crop up. This requires verbal performances that
rely on misdirection, appeals to personal prestige, and peer-pressure to compensate for a
lack of evidence. In most cases, the ideal authority is an anthropologist or someone else
engaged in indigenous studies.
The art forgery model of cahooting applies with disturbing precision to academia’s
relationship with neo-indigenism. We can see this most clearly in the neo-Indian problem in
North American academia, where there has been a growing number of exposés, including
Ward Churchill (Flynn 2005), Susan Taffe Reed (Keeler 2015), Elizabeth Warren (Astor 2018),
Andrea Smith (Viren 2021), Carrie Bourassa (Vescera 2021), and Elizabeth Hoover (Vives
2023). Academics and their institutions have emerged as key allies of neo-Indians. In 1998,
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 3 of 14
Larry Wilcoxon and I observed that “scholars rarely concern themselves with how their
own practices construct a modern slot for colonialism’s historical victims or how this slot
may be co-opted” by neo-Indians (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 502). Mvskoke tribal cultural
preservation specialist, Larry D. Haikey calls scholars who consecrate self-identified Indians
“hired hands”, who have forged symbiotic relationships with neo-Indians that strip them
of professional objectivity: “The groups need anthropologists to legitimize their claim to
‘Indian’ status since anthropologists study Indian cultures (i.e., ‘We have an anthropologist
studying us, therefore we are Indian’). At the same time, the anthropologists need the
groups in order to practice their craft” (Haikey 2001, p. 230). Though Haikey singles
out anthropology, his critique applies to other fields and the institutions that house them.
The “craft” that brings scholars, institutions, and neo-Indians together includes research,
teaching, service, collaboration, diversity programs, financial support, recruitment, and
more. The academic institution allows “the charade to continue, because often it has much
invested in the fraud and exposure would put the institution in jeopardy” (Pewewardy
2004, p. 202).
The academy inadvertently plays an outsized role in the consecration of neo-indigenous
identity. Its institutions produce and disseminate new knowledge, including identifying
and helping to correct prejudice and discrimination that has harmed segments of society.
None of us in the academy will apologize for these goals—they are exactly what we ought
to be pursuing. Yet, the rise of neo-indigenism reveals that reliance on racial or ethnic
self-identification as (1) a proxy for life experience and community of origin and affiliation,
and (2) a measure of institutional progress toward goals of equity and inclusion poses a
grave threat to their achievement (Pewewardy 2004;Haley and Wilcoxon 2005, p. 434).
North American scholars and institutions who consecrate neo-Indians as authen-
tic indigenes, whether naïvely or duplicitously, reap professional rewards (Haley and
Wilcoxon 1997;Pewewardy 2004). Publicly visible Natives—whether as students, hires, or
collaborators—are valued as symbols of individual, disciplinary, and institutional virtue.
Indeed, a college diversity officer told me that the gold standard of diversity hiring is
a Native American faculty member or administrator. Abandoning support for already
consecrated neo-Indians is difficult because it risks potentially severe professional embar-
rassment plus the fracturing of significant relationships (Viren 2021). Compounding the
difficulty, those professional social relationships can influence scholars’ notions of truth
(Latour and Woolgar 1979;Barnes 1985, pp. 49–58, 82–83). In many disciplines, relation-
ships that shape truth and virtue include collaborators outside the academy with whom a
politics of obligation and shared understandings of truth and virtue often develop. When
those truths and virtues rest on nothing but the relationship, they can only be defended
with counterfactual rhetoric, evasion, claims of unique expertise, or ad hominem attacks.
3. The Forger’s Dupes
As Dolnick (2008, p. 286) observes, “The forger’s dupes immediately become his
greatest allies”. Duped scholars began naïvely consecrating neo-Chumash in the late 1960s.
Historians at the University of California, Santa Barbara sparked the creation of the Quabajai
Chumash Indian Association, which devolved into an organization neo-Chumash used
to dominate the emerging cultural resource management sector beginning at Hammond’s
Meadow in the early 1970s (O’Connor 1989;Haley and Wilcoxon 1997;Ranch 2012). In 1976
Travis Hudson of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History recruited ten young men
from Quabajai who he assumed were “of Chumash descent” to recreate a Chumash tomol
plank canoe (Hudson 1977, p. 60). Neo-Chumash gained national attention in 1977–1978 for
protesting against a proposed liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal near Point Conception
(O’Connor 1989;Haley and Wilcoxon 1997), supported by archaeologists who produced
a report falsely asserting that Chumash had conducted traditional rituals at the Point in
the early 20th century. The report helped solidify the public’s perception of neo-Chumash
as “traditional” Chumash (Haley and Wilcoxon 1997). Peter Nabokov (1980) and Gregory
Schaaf (1981) naïvely supported neo-Chumash origin claims, with Schaaf writing that neo-
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 4 of 14
Chumash had “suppressed their Chumash identity publicly, taking the more acceptable role
of a person of Mexican descent, while their cultural traditions were preserved within a close
circle of related people” (Schaaf 1981, p. 63). In short order, members of the Franco, Hames,
Guevara, Gutierrez, Romero, and Lopez families and the Quabajai Chumash Association,
Brotherhood of the Tomol, Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, and others were falsely
promoted by scholars as Chumash. They have since recruited others into today’s larger
neo-Chumash community.
More accurate scholarship revealed that older members of these families had no prior
knowledge of their alleged Chumash ancestry before the Indian land claims process began
(O’Meara 1981, pp. 7, 25) and that the name Quabajai had been applied to the Chumash
in an error the new organization was perpetuating (Hudson 1982). While working with
records in the Santa Barbara Mission Archives, John Johnson began discovering neo-
Chumash families’ lack of Chumash ancestry and affiliation (O’Connor 1989;Haley and
Wilcoxon 1997,2005;Ranch 2012). Nothing changed for several years because knowledge
of the finding was privileged. But in 1987, Native American scholar Johnny Flynn leaked
Johnson’s findings to the press, threatening the livelihood of families active in cultural
resource management. Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, and Ventura Chumash groups began
asserting themselves more forcefully, though neo-Chumash were seldom sidelined, and
still received repatriated Chumash remains for reburial (O’Connor 1989, pp. 14, 16; Ranch
2012, pp. 139–49). Santa Barbara’s neo-Chumash subjected Johnson to endless ad hominem
attacks. Suggesting a conspiracy to conceal their ancestry, one told me, “Someone got to
him [Johnson]”. The professional community split over support of the neo-Chumash, but
none bothered to examine the evidence until Larry Wilcoxon confirmed Johnson’s findings.
Project managers buried the evidence behind the fiction of an underground Traditionalism,
allowing neo-Chumash to carry on as before and even recruit new members (Haley and
Wilcoxon 1997). Mary O’Connor (1989) published the first academic article stating explicitly
that neo-Chumash families lacked Chumash ancestry and affiliation. But she published
where locals would not find it, thereby depriving Chumash communities of a tool they
might have used to challenge the appropriation of their identity.
In 1997, Larry Wilcoxon and I examined the roles of scholars in the creation and
consecration of neo-Chumash identity in “Anthropology and the Making of Chumash Tra-
dition” (Haley and Wilcoxon 1997). The article explored how the mutability of identity and
tradition collides with popular and legalistic expectations that they rigidly mirror ancestry.
We reported that Point Conception was not a part of neo-Chumash ancestral history, yet it
held cultural importance for them because anthropological and media reporting of their
1978–1979 LNG resistance consecrated their identity claims.
4. Cahooting in Eugene
Less than a year after “Anthropology and the Making of Chumash Tradition”, a set
of commentaries on it was published. One commentary was favorable, but the rest were
not. Several of the latter were by scholars who had consecrated neo-Chumash identity
(Erlandson et al. 1998). The critics’ commentaries were plagued by mis-readings, false
assumptions, and myopic posturing as enlightened defenders of (to them) indigenous
persistence. Though they claimed we were wrong, they provided no evidence to support
this. The lead response by archaeologist Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon in
Eugene has given neo-Chumash and those in cahoots with them a false sense that an
authority has disproven our arguments. It is worth re-examining to illustrate how cahooting
with neo-indigenes operates. As Dolnick (2008) demonstrates, the forger Van Meegeren
showed that duping a single well-placed art connoisseur into consecrating a forgery could
have far-reaching effects, making new forgeries easier to sell. Erlandson is that naïvely
cahooting scholar whose perceived expertise is a crucial asset. He is an important authority
on the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Pacific Coast of North America, having garnered
well-earned respect and accolades over the course of a stellar career. His effectiveness as a
cahooter rests on this respect, not on any expertise.
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 5 of 14
Neveling and Klein (2010, p. 17) characterize Erlandson’s essay as “abound[ing] in
clichés of a kind that one would rather expect from the post-Hippie faction among the
[neo-]Chumash than from academics living on state salaries”. It reads as neo-Chumash
because Erlandson has had a close relationship with them since 1977 when we were both
undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara. All of us there at the time
were seeking greater Native collaboration. None of us realized initially that our intentions
were being undercut by neo-indigenism. Some of us figured this out by the early 1980s, but
not Erlandson. He became quick to assert his professional status on their behalf. For over
forty years, Erlandson never familiarized himself with the evidence of the actual family
histories of his neo-Chumash friends. Doing so would have put those friendships at risk or
made him conscious of his cahooting.
Erlandson’s response to our article is certainly confused. Since he specializes in pre-
Columbian ecological adaptations, our topics of identity and tradition were well outside
his wheelhouse. The distinction specialists commonly draw between identity, ancestry,
affiliation, and culture causes him to howl in anger when we apply it to neo-Chumash.
Equally unaware that people’s sense of the authenticity of a tradition reflects present
circumstances and not just historical persistence, he mistakes our description of how
neo-Chumash traditions came about to be a demand that we alone ought to determine
authenticity. These gaps in his expertise combine in an accusation that we had created a
false dichotomy between traditional and non-traditional Chumash. Not so: the contrast
originated among neo-Chumash Traditionalists themselves.
Erlandson’s main objection concerns our statements on neo-Chumash origins since
that reflects poorly on his career-spanning collaboration with them. He complains that
their documented history implies his friends are “ethnic chameleons” (Erlandson et al.
1998, p. 483). Then, he turns around and endorses an equally chameleonic origin myth in
which unknown Chumash ancestors of neo-Chumash families escaped missionization by
passing as gente de razón, preserving their identities and traditions for generations while
masquerading as Californios (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 478). He offers no evidence to
support this scenario.
Erlandson faced a predicament in writing his response: how to counter a well-
supported reconstruction of history when he does not know the evidence or have data of
his own. His approach is scattershot. First, he claims that proofs of neo-Chumash origins
rest on a flawed source. Then he simply decrees people to be Chumash. Lastly, he resorts
to rhetoric by posing as a champion of decolonization. To bolster his arguments, Erlandson
cites his expertise as a Chumash scholar, a sleight of hand to misdirect away from what
is actually needed: expertise in Californio history. This lack of relevant expertise causes
him to bungle his argument so badly that he exposes the lack of Chumash ancestry in one
neo-Chumash family and several neo-Chumash organizations.
Erlandson begins by falsely asserting that the reconstruction of neo-Chumash origins
rests on only one source. Genealogists helping to compile the California Judgment Roll,
created to resolve California Indian land claims, had raised hopes that California’s Catholic
mission baptismal, confirmation, marriage, and death records would identify Chumash
ancestry among Californios. When neo-Chumash did not get that result, their frustration
was directed at the records and researchers who use them, such as Johnson. However,
records in the mission archives were never the sole source of neo-Chumash history. Blind
to this, Erlandson argues that the records contain “only what Chumash people told the
Franciscan fathers, what the fathers thought they said in the translation from Chumash
to Spanish, or what the Franciscan fathers wrote down. In fact, the biological heritage
of virtually any individual descended from those who lived and died at the California
missions 150 to 200 years ago cannot be verified or authenticated with certainty” (Erlandson
et al. 1998, p. 482). Lacking experience with these records himself, Erlandson relies upon
Johnson’s description of neophyte records as proof of their limitations, even though Johnson
has repeatedly done exactly what Erlandson claims is impossible (see, e.g., McLendon and
Johnson 1999;Johnson 2020). This hardly matters, however, because Erlandson has laid
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 6 of 14
a false trail. The neophyte records are irrelevant to neo-Chumash history. Their family
histories appear instead in the gente de razónrecords of Mexican sending communities,
colonial expeditions, presidios, pueblos, and churches, which share none of the limitations
Erlandson raises. His unfamiliarity with the sources has led to this grave error.
Next, Erlandson decrees who is Chumash based on his “personal knowledge or
experience”. He simply declares it false that “Family A and many Traditionalists are
unrelated to the indigenous people of the area” (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 480). Family
A was Mary O’Connor’s (1989) designation for a prominent, neo-Chumash kindred that
abandoned Spanish, white, Mexican, and Chicano identities in the late 1960s. Erlandson
equates the late Madeline Guevara Hall’s family with Family A, then declares it has
documented Chumash ancestry, only to acknowledge that he was mistaken about that in a
footnote added shortly before publication (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 482n3). He stumbles
on, associating three organizations with Family A: the Brotherhood of the Tomol, United
Chumash Council, and Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation. He avoids their history
before the 1970s because he does not know it, but makes it clear that he has had a close
relationship with them since 1977 (Erlandson et al. 1998, pp. 480–81, 504).
Erlandson then unwittingly exposes Family A’s lack of Chumash ancestry by recount-
ing the one time he saw genealogical evidence compiled by Johnson on the sole ancestor
who had not previously been identified as a colonist. The ancestor was from Baja California
and was not Chumash. After presenting this, Erlandson almost seems to grasp that he has
left Madeline Hall’s family without Chumash ancestry. He suggests that one or two other
ancestors six generations ago could be Chumash since their birthplaces were not stated
in a genealogy Wilcoxon had shared. These, however, were documented colonists with
published histories (Bancroft 1964;Northrop 1984,1986). Likely grasping that “could be”
was not adequate, Erlandson decrees yet another ancestor to be Chumash, a fabrication all
his own which was contradicted by Wilcoxon’s genealogy (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 482).
Erlandson’s attempt to rebut proofs of Family A’s colonial origins and affiliation
thus amounts to a lesson in logical inconsistency. First, he claims that records cannot
prove Chumash ancestry for anyone, then claims they did prove it for Family A before
conceding they did not, and, finally, he resorts to inventing possible Chumash ancestors
whose colonial ancestry and affiliation are already documented and published. Throughout
this embarrassing display, Erlandson concedes no limits to his own expertise, though he
briefly comes close. “I did not choose an anthropological career to become a judge of the
cultural or biological authenticity of indigenous peoples”, he writes (Erlandson et al. 1998,
p. 484). If only he had weighed this more carefully! Besides his ignorance of colonial
records, the limits of his expertise are evident when he equates identity with biology, an
untenable notion long abandoned by anthropologists (Erlandson et al. 1998, pp. 480, 482;
cf. Barth 1969;Jenkins 2008;Eriksen 2010).
As a final step, Erlandson admonishes that “anthropologists should not act as the
sole arbiters of truth and justice, the diviners of who is or is not Indian, or the creators
of simplistic stereotypes that exacerbate factionalism within Indian tribes or interfere in
tribal self-determination” (Erlandson et al. 1998, p. 484). This sounds good, but it is
purely rhetorical. Erlandson has just spent the previous pages arbitrating truth and justice,
divining who is Indian, and exacerbating factionalism by ignoring decades-old complaints
from Chumash communities about neo-Chumash “wannabes”. This is precisely the sort
of “hired gun” performance that Haikey described. Erlandson’s symbiotic relationship
with neo-Chumash enabling them both to “cash in” on archaeology is plainly revealed
(Neveling and Klein 2010, p. 20).
Despite the ease with which the flaws in Erlandson’s arguments can be identified,
the lesson of van Meegeren is that none of this matters if the consecrating authority’s
status as a connoisseur is widely accepted. Erlandson’s status within North American
archaeology is secure, so blindness to his failings on neo-Indianism can be expected. For
example, a reviewer of a major study by Erlandson and others gave the project’s archaeology
well-deserved praise, but naïvely extended praise to the project’s collaboration with local
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 7 of 14
Chumash, unaware that they were neo-Chumash (Lightfoot 2009). The project’s Native
collaboration was a chimera.
5. A Fantasy Heritage Charter
There is a more serious example of blind trust in a cahooting scholar’s claims of exper-
tise. In November 2009, I stumbled across the doctoral dissertation of Deana Dartt on the
University of Oregon’s website. As I skimmed its contents, my curiosity turned to concern.
Dartt had used the dissertation to promote her assertion of Chumash identity she claims
through a maternal great-grandmother, Felipa Maria Romero (1862–1949) of Santa Barbara
(Dartt-Newton 2009, p. 235). Romero had no Chumash ancestry or affiliation and publicly
identified as Spanish (Haley 2010). Dartt also extended the baseless, malicious attacks
on the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History made for decades by neo-Chumash of
Quabajai and the Coastal Band. I notified Johnson at the museum and resolved that I had to
share my concerns with Dartt’s dissertation committee. Johnson and others at the museum
reached a similar conclusion. The University of Oregon’s response to the complaints reveals
how a single committed cahooter in one’s institution corrupts at multiple levels.
Our experience contrasted with a similar incident reported by Patrick Lewis (2017),
who lodged a complaint with a university where a graduate student asserted an indigenous
identity but lacked the corresponding ancestry and affiliation. Lewis worried that the
student was using resources intended for indigenous students, including teaching positions,
supervision, funding, human resources support, and external funding. He cited the Native
American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Council which has declared that
“Falsifying one’s identity or relationship to particular Indigenous peoples is an act of
appropriation continuous with other forms of colonial violence” (NAISA Council 2015).
Lewis learned that the institution created a new policy requiring any university scholar
whose indigenous self-identity lacks documentation or indigenous community support
to acknowledge those gaps when stating an ethnic identity. Lewis was less than satisfied,
noting that the response had more to do with protecting the institution than with addressing
the root problem. Nevertheless, it was far better than the response from the University of
Oregon.
Ordinarily, one does not publish a critique of a doctoral dissertation. Before universi-
ties began publishing them online, dissertations were expected to contain errors that would
be fixed prior to publication. Occasionally, significant errors slip past a committee. Chances
for that increase if there is a mismatch between the dissertation topic and the committee’s
expertise, and Dartt’s committee had this flaw. Since the dissertation helped earn Dartt
prestigious positions intended for Native Americans and dragged others at Eugene into
cahoots with neo-Indianism, we must do the unusual and examine it.
Dartt was not unknown to me. Her mother ’s sister began claiming Chumash ancestry
and identity in the 1970s, so Dartt’s uncle paid for a professional genealogy which proved
there was no Chumash ancestry. Undeterred, Dartt’s mother raised Dartt to identify as
Chumash. They joined the Coastal Band, founded and run by neo-Chumash. Dartt was
recruited by Erlandson to Eugene’s anthropology graduate program where her self-identity
bolstered the program’s claims of service to indigenous communities. Dartt and Erlandson
collaborated in taking swipes at “Anthropology and the Making of Chumash Tradition”,
signaling a continuing urgency to counteract it (Erlandson and Dartt-Newton 2002, p. 30;
Dartt-Newton and Erlandson 2006, p. 417).
For her dissertation, Dartt ostensibly investigated how museums represent and interact
with Native peoples in California’s Chumash region. In fact, Dartt used the dissertation
to create a charter for her own identity claims, thus opening her fabricated ancestry and
social history to scholarly review. Dartt begins by using her fabricated ancestry to claim a
privileged point of view. She writes, “I am a descendant of the people historically identified
as coastal mainland Chumash and Californio and an active member (albeit currently in
absentia) of this community in Santa Barbara. This connection allows me an intimate
familiarity with, and knowledge of, how Indian views of life relate to the portrayal of
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 8 of 14
their lives” (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 16–17). This is brazen. Dartt’s own genealogical
investigation, publicly posted for a time on Ancestry.com, turned up no Native California
ancestry, confirming the genealogy done for the family decades earlier. The centerpiece
of her charter is the theme that Californios and Chumash comprise a unified “Native
community” that historians, museums, and “white” scholars have artificially separated
in a “fantasy heritage” (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 17–18). Her mission is to recast her own
Californio descendant community as being just as indigenous as the Chumash (Dartt-
Newton 2009, pp. 76, 97, 143, 205, 225, 226, 248).
What Dartt proposes is truly a fantasy heritage that she can only support by falsifying
data. To circumvent the evidence, Dartt searches for any sign of potential Native American
ancestry among the colonists or their descendants, ignoring how social boundaries and
identities were drawn by the people themselves. By repositioning neo-Chumash colonial
ancestry as Native Californian she can then accuse museums of colonialism if they refuse
to promote her fantasy history.
How did Dartt trick a committee of experienced scholars into believing that she had
made a fabulous discovery overlooked by generations of historians? However intentional
her method may or may not have been, Dartt replicates van Meegeren’s methods. Once the
great forger had duped connoisseurs into confusing his own painting style with Vermeer’s,
van Meegeren took shortcuts knowing that the tests which could reveal forgery were
unlikely to be conducted. Indeed, no one tested Van Meegeren’s paints, so his substitution
of the more modern cobalt blue for Vermeer’s favored ultramarine went unnoticed until
Van Meegeren revealed the fraud (Dolnick 2008, p. 318). Dartt follows a similar strategy.
To support her theme that Californios are indigenous, Dartt cites sources for her boldest
inventions to give the illusion of evidence. But these sources do not support her statements,
and just as in van Meegeren’s forgeries, no one bothered to check.
Dartt begins by manipulating sources on the early colonizing expeditions. She claims
“180 Cochimí” Indians from Baja California were part of the 1769 Portoláexpedition, but
the source states that 42 or 44 Cochimídeparted but only 20 or 30 reached Alta California,
and most of those returned to Baja (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 76–77; cf. Street 2004, pp. xv, 9,
12). Next, she claims that enlistment records show that “The majority of the people who
arrived in these first expeditions, were Indians from northern Mexico”, though her source
provides no such evidence and time-tested sources with actual evidence tell a different
story (Dartt-Newton 2009, p. 78; cf. Gonzales 1999, pp. 53–54; Crosby 2003). Then Dartt
states that one of her colonial ancestors, Luis Manuel Quintero, had a Mayo Indian mother,
but her source does not say this. In fact, Quintero was born in Guanajuato, Jalisco, far from
Mayo territory, was considered a mulato for most of his lifetime, and historians have not
identified his parents (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 94, 99; cf. Ríos-Bustamante 1992, p. 44;
Mason 1998). Later, she audaciously claims that a 1790 census of California proves that
most of its colonists “were primarily Cochimi and Mayo Indians and mixed heritage people
of Indian and African parentage” (Dartt-Newton 2009, p. 143). Her source says something
quite different (Mason 1998, pp. 47, 50, 61–62). With these four falsifications of data—and,
literally, no other evidence—Dartt concludes Spain’s colonists were “primarily” Cochimí,
Mayo, and Yaqui (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 13, 70, 76–77, 78, 80, 82, 94, 96, 99, 143, 248).
Dartt’s next task is to prove these allegedly Indian colonists were converted to gente de
razónonce they were in Alta California. Once again, her evidence collapses under scrutiny.
Dartt presents a list of Catholic confirmations of twelve colonists at San Gabriel mission,
claiming it records their transformation from sin razónto de razónstatus (Dartt-Newton 2009,
pp. 78–79). As any Catholic can attest, confirmation is a standard ritual of incorporation
into the Catholic church. It did not confer de razónstatus. Dartt neglects to report that
eleven were considered razónbefore the ritual, and the twelfth, an india child from Baja
California, retained her sin razónstatus afterwards (Hackel 2022). Dartt also alleges that
California’s colonists and natives were more intermarried and integrated than anyone
has realized. Not only do her sources not support this, but several do not even address
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 9 of 14
California (Dartt-Newton 2009, pp. 47, 55, 83–89; cf. Haas 1995, pp. 62–63; Mason 1998;
Hackel 2022).
One after another, every line of Dartt’s evidence in support of her thesis melts away
upon inspection. In the end, nothing supports her fantasy thesis that Californios are
indigenous Native Americans undifferentiated from the Chumash. Did some Chumash
marry Californios? Certainly, though none of these couples appear in Dartt’s dissertation,
an oversight that raises more doubt about Dartt’s research skills. In reputable primary
sources, their numbers are few, and they were assimilated into Californio society without
weakening the social boundary between Californios and indios (see, e.g., Mason 1998;
Hackel 2005, pp. 61–62). Had a historian of colonial California been on her dissertation
committee, these errors likely would have been challenged.
6. How Cahooting Entraps
On August 30, 2010, I wrote to members of her committee: “It is my feeling that
Dartt-Newton needs to be made aware of the vulnerability of her claims and urged to
bring her behavior into line with the standards of her profession. But I think you are
better positioned to do so than I” (Haley 2010). I enclosed a genealogy that the committee
members could easily verify and listed problems in the dissertation based on my familiarity
with the sources, which exceeded that of any member of her committee. I held off from
concluding Dartt had been intentionally deceptive. By late September, I had heard nothing
from Eugene, so it appeared that the committee might be content to bury my concerns.
But I had also sent copies to curator Johnson, director Karl Hutterer, and the California
Indian Advisory Committee at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Dartt’s
unfair treatment of the museum and its people raised concern she had crossed a line into
unethical conduct. In November, members of the museum’s California Indian Advisory
Committee began sending their own letters, and on December 10, Johnson sent his letter
to the dissertation committee, their dean, and the University’s human subjects research
review committee (Johnson 2010). He requested a review of the procedures that allowed
Dartt to engage in misconduct and asked for apologies to the museum and himself. He
enumerated 23 more flaws with Dartt’s dissertation, including misrepresentations of her
interactions with museum staff and Advisory Committee, misrepresentations of Johnson’s
scholarship, and misrepresentations of her ancestry. He reported that Dartt had admitted
knowing she was not of Chumash descent. He pointed out that Dartt and her committee
had ignored Dr. Hutterer’s request to correct her false ancestry statement on her survey
form. As Hutterer had predicted, the statement caused Chumash not to participate, while
encouraging neo-Chumash to do so.
These letters sparked action in Eugene. The Anthropology Department, ethical con-
duct, and human subjects research committees undertook reviews of the complaints. When
these were completed, the Dean of Arts and Letters wrote to Johnson declining to force
changes to a dissertation that had been approved by a faculty committee following standard
procedures (Coltrane 2011). The human subjects committee declared that the complaints
were solely disagreements between scholars and minor errors of citation, before concluding
tellingly that Dartt had not “purposefully or knowingly” violated rules of research conduct
(Schenkel and Booth 2011), phrasing that creates legal and ethical cover for all but the
most egregious misconduct. The human subjects reviewers did not acknowledge that the
“minor” citation errors collectively nullified Dartt’s central argument. The University of
Oregon defines falsification as “manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes,
or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented
in the research record” (Schenkel and Booth 2011). As I have documented above, elements
in Dartt’s dissertation fit this definition. The only unanswered question is did she falsify
intentionally or as a result of confirmation bias?
Dartt’s dissertation committee began their response by arguing that they have neither
the obligation nor legal right to check the accuracy of Dartt’s ancestry (Stephen et al. 2011).
This common response to neo-Indianism confuses and conflates two different issues. The
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 10 of 14
issue is not identity per se, but rather intellectual integrity and academic honesty while
making scholarly empirical claims. If Dartt received resources or opportunities based on
false assertions, there is added ethical and legal justification for raising questions. In any
event, it is the empirical accuracy of claims of ancestry and affiliation—not self-identity—on
which the charges against Dartt rest. Dartt opened these claims to legitimate scrutiny by
using them (1) to represent herself and her research to human subjects, (2) as factual claims
to support her thesis, and (3) to claim a privileged point of view. By making her ancestry
and affiliation claims in the context of scholarship, Dartt made them as much a part of the
dissertation committee’s oversight responsibility as any other issue of scholarly conduct.
The committee’s response reveals inexperience with these nuances of neo-indigenous
identity in the academy and an unwillingness to reflect critically on their support of Dartt.
Rather than review the evidence, the committee rested its case on Erlandson’s claims
of expertise in Chumash history and identity politics. This was a classic category error.
Neo-Chumash history lies in the colonial population of California and not among Chu-
mash, so expertise in Chumash history is barely relevant. As it is, Erlandson’s expertise
is with pre-colonial ecological adaptations, not the colonial era or colonial documents.
As for Erlandson’s alleged expertise with Chumash identity politics, this consists of four
decades of vilifying the use of evidence, hardly a sign of expertise. Indeed, given how
unknowledgeable Erlandson is about neo-Chumash history and identity, his claim of ex-
pertise is as ethically troubling as Dartt’s behavior. Nevertheless, it is easy to appreciate
that committee members would trust a close colleague of Erlandson’s stature. Unfortu-
nately, this trust pre-determined the result of their review. Had that not been enough, the
presence of Roberta Reyes Cordero on the committee likely solidified their review’s out-
come. Cordero is a neo-Chumash attorney who falsely claims Chumash ancestry through
her late father, Santa Barbaran Robert Cordero (1919–1964), and paternal cousins with a
distant Chumash ancestor whom she does not share. Cordero’s involvement likely reflects
common membership with Dartt in the Coastal Band, a non-profit that mimics a tribe.
The committee dismissed the family history evidence by declaring that descriptions of
race, origin, and family relationships in historical documents are not completely reliable,
are subject to interpretation, and are fallible due to potential translation errors and false
paternity. These vague and unsubstantiated assertions are the committee’s only response to
the evidence of Dartt’s ancestry. They even ignored Dartt’s cousin, who had written to tell
them that the family knew for decades that they lacked Chumash ancestry. Although they
wrote that Chumash identity claims needed to be resolved by Chumash people rather than
museums or universities, by ignoring Dartt’s Salinan cousin and complaints submitted by
Chumash, the committee cast their lot with Erlandson, Dartt, and the neo-Chumash. They
chose to remain in cahoots. The committee members’ social relationships with Dartt and
one another determined their sense of the truth. They set aside their responsibilities as
scholars to maintain those relationships.
Defending the indefensible forces one into strange positions. By stating that historical
descriptions of race may not be “reliable”, the committee implies that reliable descriptions
of race are possible. This conflicts with anthropology’s position that race is a social construct
in which any racial description is an act of racialization and boundary drawing shaped by
the social circumstances in which it occurs. Changing circumstances can yield differing
racializations. When changes stick, ethnic change is afoot (see, e.g., Haley and Wilcoxon
2005;Voss 2008;French 2009). This is basic stuff that professors of anthropology and ethnic
studies should know, so their assertion is bizarre and a possible sign of desperation.
Equally awkward is their appeal to undiscovered false paternity. In effect, the com-
mittee holds that one’s ethnicity can be set in stone by a single biological ancestor no one
can identify. They would have us believe that the potential for such unknown ancestors
renders it impossible to trace identity through time. This is vulgar biological determinism.
As they would have it, Dartt must be considered just as Chumash as someone whose family
has been affiliated with a Chumash community throughout recorded history. Why? Just
because somewhere—anywhere!—in her family tree there might have been an unidentified
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 11 of 14
and unidentifiable Indian who waited for the man of the house to depart. With this argu-
ment, the committee consecrates Dartt’s chosen identity. Thus, the committee’s response
to Dartt’s documented family history is not merely poorly reasoned, it is offensively neo-
colonial. Nevertheless, there is a bright side. By resorting to undiscovered false paternity
for their proof, the committee tacitly reveals that they have no evidence to counter the
documentation I and the others provided. So much for Erlandson’s alleged expertise.
Having gone this far to defend Dartt’s identity, the committee had little choice but
to endorse her findings. They laud Dartt’s treatment of identity politics and “discovery”
of her mixed heritage (How, if there is false paternity?). The committee praises Dartt
for discovering a “fantasy heritage” artificially separating Chumash from Californios,
ignoring the work of California historians, among whom there is firm agreement of a social
boundary between gente de razónand gente sín razón(see, e.g., Miranda 1988;Sánchez
1995;Haas 1995;Hackel 2005;Voss 2008;Pubols 2009). Since all of Dartt’s proofs were
falsified, the committee implicitly endorses falsification by confirming its support. The
committee’s defense of Dartt’s findings reveals how ill prepared they were to supervise
this particular dissertation and how ill-advised a topic it was for Dartt to pursue in the
first place. Ironically, by rejecting historical records of race and insisting that potential false
paternity makes it impossible to trace identity, the committee has nullified all of the ethnic
identifications in Dartt’s dissertation, undermining it entirely.
Finally, the committee asserts that intermarriages blur the boundaries between Chu-
mash and neo-Chumash. The neo-Chumash community of Santa Barbara uses its few
intermarriages with Chumash to create a misleading gloss. Are a handful of marriages
determinative of identity in a neo-Chumash community estimated to number a thousand?
A cautionary example lies in front of everyone’s nose. The federally recognized Santa Ynez
Band does not turn non-Chumash spouses of its members into tribal citizens or empower
them to speak on the tribe’s behalf. Intermarriage does not negate that boundary for the
tribe, nor does it consistently demolish ethnic boundaries in other societies, as anthropolo-
gists have long known (Barth 1969). We can end this review by noting a glaring mistake by
Dartt’s committee. Where there is identity politics, there most certainly is a social boundary.
Dismissing one while acknowledging the other is an absurd contradiction.
7. Conclusions: Consequences Too Grim to Contemplate
In characterizing the trap that cahooting creates for the duped art expert, Dolnick
writes, “The experts have to believe because, if they dared admit the possibility of fraud,
the consequences would be too grim to contemplate” (Dolnick 2008, p. 288). So, it goes for
academics naïvely in cahoots with neo-indigenes. In this essay, I have described the roles
played by scholars and academic institutions in the neo-indigenous field in North America.
Even when they deny it, as they do loudly and often, they are crucial to neo-Indians
achieving a level of external approval that gives them access to resources and opportunities
set aside for indigenous peoples. Indeed, North American academic institutions themselves
provide many of those rewards. Because neo-Indians have non-indigenous origins, scholars,
and institutions must base their support on claims to authority outside normal academic
standards. Their investment in neo-Indian claims and the prestige it conveys within
a multicultural framework makes it very difficult to abandon support. So, it becomes
inevitable that those in cahoots fall back on a self-serving, cynical posturing as experts
and successful decolonizers. Their neo-Indians repeat the mantra, and it becomes another
fictitious layer of the neo-indigenous self-narrative.
After a few prominent exposés of false claims to Native American ancestry and
affiliation in American academia, Sarah Viren of Arizona State University wrote, “Academia
is an industry, like journalism, that defines itself in large part by its ethical standards;
we’re supposed to educate people and produce knowledge. So, what does it mean that
we’re also a haven for fakes?” (Viren 2021). Viren quotes one estimate that only about
one-third of the roughly 1500 Native American professors in the United States have the
ancestry and affiliations they claim they have. Add to this the presence of scholars who
Genealogy 2024,8, 99 12 of 14
are in cahoots with neo-Indians and whose teaching, scholarship, service, and letters of
recommendation distort the facts accordingly, and the problem quickly becomes enormous.
Academia is not just a haven for fakes, as Viren warns. It is also far down a path towards
being an institution of deception about Native Americans, aiding in depriving them of
the opportunities, services, and resources set aside for them. As crucial gateways for
social mobility, colleges and universities must take a leading role in promoting greater
equality. North American academia’s reliance on self-identification opens the door to naïve
neo-Indians and deceitful pretendians, and just as certainly rewards naïve or dishonest
cahooters who are just as essential to neo-indigenism’s success. Neo-indigenism taints or
corrupts all who it touches, especially the people and institutions responsible for pursuing
truth.
8. Coda: Finding a De Groot
At one point in The Forger’s Spell, Edward Dolnick tells the story of Dutch art historian,
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who had celebrated two paintings as authentic seventeenth-
century Frans Hals in 1924 (Dolnick 2008, pp. 113–21). Both later proved to be forgeries.
De Groot was taken to court for fraud after an array of conclusive scientific tests proved
the Merry Cavalier was a modern forgery. De Groot insisted it was not and voiced outrage
that anyone would question his expertise. Nevertheless, he settled out of court. Then he
wrote a booklet in which he rejected the science of testing for forgery, insisting that the eye
of the connoisseur was the only valid test of art. De Groot’s booklet, Dolnick observes, was
fabulous news for forgers and their collaborating dealers, because it signaled that all they
needed for success was to groom and dupe a single authority who commanded a following
among art collectors and who could be expected to ignore or dismiss firm evidence. De
Groot’s conceit in the infallibility of his eye was hardly unique in the art world, so the field
was ripe for the taking.
North America’s neo-Indians succeed by finding and nurturing their own De Groots.
They are abundant in academia, due to their leading role in promoting equity and inclusion.
Finding a De Groot requires face-to-face mentoring, sharing secrets, nurturing trust and
obligation, and setting mutual goals. The De Groots of the neo-Indian field are scholars
who are willing to believe they can know history without troubling themselves to study it.
Prone to confirmation bias, they trust the stories they are given and construct moralistic
arguments that it is improper to doubt them. Some may even have begun as forgers
themselves, in which case misrepresenting the identity and history of other neo-indigenes
is partly a self-serving act. Those De Groots frame their support as coming from a privileged
indigenous status. But De Groot arguments are always tautological: they assume a priori
that neo-Indians are who they claim to be, then base their verdict on that assumption.
In the end, the De Groots of the neo-Indian field have done exactly what they tell
others not to do: they decide who is Indian. Like the original, the modern De Groot’s
response to challenge is outrage: a posture that questioning their authority is tantamount to
challenging indigenous people themselves. It works because, as in the world of art forgery,
there are enough collectors who are so in awe of the connoisseur’s reputation that they
will accept the connoisseur’s eye as sufficient evidence. Sadly, academia has a surplus of
overconfident De Groots and unsuspecting collectors.
Funding: The APC was funded by United University Professions.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Data is contained within the article.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflicts of interest.
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