Did you know that pretendianism (existing in the world as a fake “Indian”) is a multimillion dollar industry of lies, deception and continued genocide of the ACTUAL Native peoples of Southern CA?!?!
They have bamboozled and exploited many friends of mine (some fairly prominent ones) and it’s enraging to see these really good people not knowing they are being used to assist the objectively genocidal practices of identity thieves. I need to let them know the truth but have to present the facts so they can decide for themselves. I’m the only one currently embarrassed for them because I’m one of the few non-Gabrieleños that knows the truth. Definitely one of the only Asian Americans in Southern CA that knows except some of my Asian friends that I’ve told, who aren’t part of the complicit superstructure and culture of it all…
The truth is that the brown haired, brown skinned, brown-eyed, sometimes chin striped performers that have been given “cultural representation” platform aren’t who they say they are when they claim to be local Native/Indigenous. You probably won’t learn the truth about this unless you happen to meet the right people, meaning actual descendants of Gabrieleño vilages. I have been fortunate to have had that opportunity and learn the truth about what is going on. Knowing this, I am obligated to practice solidarity with them versus the ones that have lineage to Mexico far south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Non-profits, their funders, the academic institutions, the native plant horticulture industry, performing arts, local newspapers, museums, the Democratic Party and all-levels of CA government, archeology corporations, Land Conservancies and Community Land Trusts are complicit. The grifting opportunists take “identity” politics to an entire new level, flipping national oppression in a way to co-opt the facade of its victims for entirely personal gain. It has nothing to do with liberation or decolonization processes. It is the actual anthesis of these things.
In Southern CA, it’s really a Chicano epidemic (in other parts of the U.S. and Canada, it’s mostly white people engaged in the con game). I get why this happened-it’s because people are trying to claim the Native-side of their “mestizo” identity. This is a positive thing. However, the problem is that if this is not grounded in lineage and genealogical investigation of actual family history, and only the lazy, romanticized fictional path is pursued (“we are all descendants of the Great Aztec Empire”) you can fall prey to opportunism and a sort of adolescent “new-ageism”. This has been going on for far too long and it needs to stop.