The Damage Perpetuated by Pretendians
Due to the flat-out stealing because I have no soul Margaret Seltzer’s memoir fakeoir, I am getting pretty steamed at the we-sha-sha Pretendian crowd. Oh, and we cannot forget Mrs. Cassie Edwards and her Cheyenne grandmother whom she cites as inspiration for her “Indian Romances” like Savage Honor [review forthcoming].
But, okay we got some white women playing at being Indian, ain’t nothing new there, that shit’s as old as the work day is long; I’ve done wrote parody on that shit. It’s a fab combination of the new White Man’s Burden (all the Indians are dead so we need to take up the knowledge and safekeep it for our white children), guilt over living on stolen land and the need to make a legitimate claim on said land (my granddad was 1/24th Chickasaw so we’ve been here a LONG time), and the noble savages being somehow different or better than other People of Color (their governments and schools were so good/they’re so spiritual/they’re so polite/clean/articulate/almost white). And since most white folks think all Indians are dead or if they do know one of us we’re not “real” because we’re light skinned, Black, Hawaiian, Rican, wear blue jeans, have short hair, use pronouns and do not speak in the third person; we’re written off right quick in order to save their fantasy that real Indians are stoic, hard-bodied warriors or demure maidens - think Dances with Wolves, everyone else seems to, right?
So what’s the big deal, it’s irritating but no real harm done, right? WRONG. Here’s my reasoning on why Pretendians are dangerous as all hell and need to be called out, revealed, drug out from behind the curtain and all that shit.
