California professor confesses she is ‘a white person,’ not Native
Native Americans and non-Native allies are expressing outrage over a University of California Berkeley professor who has admitted she has no Mohawk or Mi’kmaq ancestry.
Associate professor Elizabeth Hoover posted a “Letter of Accountability and Apology” on her website Monday, admitting she is "a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native" her entire life.
She said she did not knowingly falsify her heritage but relied on family lore which she did not try to verify until 2022, when questions were raised about her identity.
“I have brought hurt, harm, and broken trust to the Native community at large, and to specific Native communities I have worked with and lived alongside, and for that, I am deeply sorry,” Hoover stated.
More than 380 students and educators have signed a statement calling for Hoover to resign from “all positions on boards and advisory committees and all grants, speaking engagements, and other paid opportunities she obtained with her false identity.”
UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore did not comment on what, if any, disciplinary action the university would take.
As VOA previously reported, Native and First Nations scholars say colleges and universities are “overrun” by academicians who falsely claim Indigenous identity. They not only rob legitimate Indigenous scholars of opportunities but inform public policy.
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Detail of handscroll by Xia Gui (active c. 1180-1224) from the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei
Study: Early humans in North America migrated from China
New research from China suggests that some ancient humans migrated to the Americas from northern coastal China in the region of the Bohai and Yellow seas.
Scientists examined modern and ancient mitochondrial DNA to trace a rare female lineage. They found 216 modern-day and 39 ancient individuals who share that prehistoric ancestry.
Map of Bohai and Yellow Sea region in northern coastal China.
“In addition to previously described ancestral sources in Siberia, Australo-Melanesia, and Southeast Asia, we show that northern coastal China also contributed to the gene pool of Native Americans,” Yu-Chin Li, a molecular anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.
The research published this week in Cell Reports shows two separate migrations between China, Japan and North America during and after the Ice Age. Researchers say this would explain similarities between prehistoric arrowheads and spearheads found in China, Japan and the Americas.
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Photo of uniformed Native American students, priest and nuns at St. Labre Indian school in Montana. Courtesy Montana Historical Society.
Catholic groups ran nearly 90 Indian boarding schools in US
An independent collaboration of native tribe and Catholic Church members, historians and archivists this week published a list of Indian boarding schools that were run by the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Native Boarding School Accountability and Healing Project published an online list showing that Catholic dioceses, parishes and religious orders established and operated schools across 22 states; the majority were run by Catholic sisters representing 53 religious orders.
“We are under no pretense that our list is complete,” the group said. “We have done our best to offer the most accurate information possible, but we also anticipate future revisions as additional information is obtained.”
The list expands and corrects a May 2022 U.S. Interior Department report that followed a nine-month probe into federal Indian boarding schools.
The federal government once regarded Christianization to be key to assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. The Catholic Church was one of more than 14 denominations of Christians that ran Indian boarding schools between the 1820s and 1970s.
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FILE - A woman walks in Toksook Bay, Alaska, a mostly Yup'ik village on the edge of the Bering Sea, Jan. 20, 2020. A judge ruled in favor of tribal nations in a bid to keep Alaska Native corporations from getting part of $8 billion in COVID relief funding
Alaska Federation of Native loses two of its largest members
The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) lost two members this week, sparking concerns about the future of an organization that represents the interests of more than 200 tribes and corporations in Alaska.
The Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the largest federally recognized tribe in the state, announced Monday it would withdraw from the federation and pursue its political interests independently.
“The truth of the matter is our Executive Council has diverse areas of expertise and this has been a true strength in the governance of our Tribe,” Tlingit and Haida President Richard Chalyee Eesh Peterson said in a written statement Monday.
Separately, the Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) also decided to quit the AFN.
“Over the past few years, over 40 resolutions were passed by the full board at AFN that support a subsistence way of life, but no significant action has been taken on those directives,” the group said on its website.
TCC represents 39 villages and 37 federally recognized tribes across more than 608,000 square kilometers (235,000 square miles).
Since 2019, five organizations have withdrawn their AFN memberships.
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