Her name is Elizabeth Hoover and she was apparently raised in the belief that she had Native ancestry on both her father and mother’s side of the family. But Hoover would eventually make her way to some of America’s top schools where she studied anthropology and did work on identifying Native Americans. During this time she presented herself as Native which made her more attractive to college administrators looking for an authentic voice to teach ethnic studies.
And then last year Hoover announced that she was actually white and had no Native ancestry that she or anyone else could confirm. She was a Pretendian, the name given to people who fake native ancestry. Karen wrote about her announcement last May when it happened.
Monday the New Yorker published the results of a 9-month investigation by Jay Caspian Kang. What Kang found is evidence that Hoover’s story about her ancestry had…
