Kim TallBear

Not an Indigenous Identity Problem: Pretendianism, Whiteness, and Genocide
2024-05-17 10:30 - 11:30 UTC | UCR Arts, 3824 Main Street, Riverside, 92501, United States
Kim TallBear rejects the idea that self-indigenization, also sometimes referred to as “pretendianism,” is a problem of “Indigenous identity.
In this talk, Kim TallBear rejects the idea that self-indigenization, also sometimes referred to as “pretendianism,” is a problem of “Indigenous identity.” Instead, Dr. TallBear turns her critical gaze onto settler-colonial society. What is their problem? Why do so many people insist on self-identifying as Indigenous without corresponding Indigenous community recognition of their belonging? Drawing on Critical Indigenous Studies, anthropology of whiteness, and critical race theory, Dr. TallBear discusses pretendianism as a problem of whiteness and its unrelenting claims over centuries to Indigenous property. She also analyzes self-indigenization as a technique of Indigenous genocide.

Truth First: Identity Fraud & Cultural Exploitation in the Age of Reconciliation
2024-09-26 10:00 - 12:00 UTC | Paul Byrne Hall, MacEwan University, 11110 104 Avenue Northwest, Edmonton, Alberta, T5K1M9, Canada
Join us for a thought-provoking event at the MacEwan University Feigel Conference Centre where we will delve into the complexities of identity fraud and cultural exploitation in today’s world. Through insightful discussions, we aim to shed light on these pressing issues and explore ways to address them in the age of reconciliation. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a meaningful conversation!
The event will feature distinguished speakers, including Dr. Kim TallBear, Dr. Darryl Leroux, Dr. Celeste Pedri-Spade, and Nadia Bourque. The moderators for the event will be the creators and hosts of 2 Crees in a Pod: Terri Cardinal & Amber Dion.
BIOS
Kim TallBear (she/her) is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a Dakota nation in present-day South Dakota. She is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Dr. TallBear is the co-founder of the Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous governance and to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly Indigenous current affairs podcast, Media Indigena. She is also a regular media commentator in outlets such as CBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, the LA Times, APTN, and the BBC on topics pertaining to Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; the politics of self-indigenization; and Indigenous sexualities. She is a board member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers’ Society, a tribal writers’ society for Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota writers. You can follow Dr. TallBear’s monthly posts on her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization.
Darryl Leroux (French Canadian) is an associate professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. For over a decade, he has been studying transformations in white identities, particularly as they pertain to false claims to Indigenous identity. In 2019, he published Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity, which explored the role that genealogical research plays in the self-indigenization movement. He has spoken widely about the topic, including at nearly fifty universities in Canada, the United States, Norway, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the United Nations. His work has been published in aboriginal policy studies, American Indian Culture & Research Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Interventions, Memory Studies, and Social Studies of Science, among others. His current research explores the creation and circulation of family lore in white settler families through an analysis of the public statements released by high-profile individuals exposed by the media for making false claims to an Indigenous identity.
Celeste Pedri-Spade, PhD, is an Ojibwe Anishinaabekwe and member citizen of Nezaadiikaang (Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation) located in Treaty 3 territory. In 2022, Celeste became McGill University’s first Associate Provost of Indigenous Initiatives and in this role, she oversees the University’s ongoing response to the 52 Calls to Action articulated by the Provost’s Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education. Before arriving at McGill, she was the Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Studies at Queen’s University. Celeste began her academic career at Laurentian University where she served as an associate professor and the inaugural director of the Maamwizing Indigenous Research Institute. Her current research interests include Anishinaabe kendasaawin, critical pedagogies, Indigenous governance, settler colonialism, and Indigenous visual/material culture. As a research-based artist, she has led several Tri-Council-funded research projects related to reclaiming Indigenous women’s visual histories, and the role of Indigenous art in Indigenous sovereignty. Apart from her research within a traditional academic setting, Celeste carries out research for Indigenous political/territorial organizations related to Indigenous governance, Indigenous education, issues of membership/citizenship, and Indigenous education. As a practicing artist and advocate for forms of public scholarship and research creation, she has also exhibited her work in national and international galleries. Celeste received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Victoria.
Nadia Bourque is a proud member of the Metis Nation of Alberta (also known as the Otipemisiwiak Metis Government which translates to ‘the people who own themselves’) and is aslo a member and resident of the Kikino Metis Settlement in northeastern Alberta. Born to a Metis family and community in Lac La Biche, Alberta, Nadia was raised by a large family of grandparents and parents who were actively involved in the Metis political realm within Alberta whom she credits as instrumental in instilling a strong sense of Metis identity, culture, and values from a very young age. Nadia’s father, Gary Bourque, is a former leader with the Metis Nation of Alberta and she is also the sister of NHL former ice hockey player and Olympian, Rene Bourque. Nadia graduated with a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Calgary in 2010 and has been a provincial and more recently, a federal public servant within the Social Services and Child and Family Services sectors for over 17 years. She is passionate about the ethnogenesis of Metis peoples in Canada and the beauty and strength of Metis identity and culture. She shares insights and speaks to Metis issues drawing on her own experiences of Metis family and community as the foundation of her expertise. Nadia is married to Jarrod White from Kikino Metis Settlement and has one daughter, Mila, who is an avid athlete in the Alberta Youth Soccer League.

Self-Indigenization, Whiteness and Genocide with Kim TallBear
2024-10-17 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Mayer Family Community Hall, Lougheed Performing Arts Centre, Camrose, 4501 50 Street, Camrose, Alberta, Camrose AB T4V 5J1, Canada
Join Kim TallBear, PhD in person or online for this Indigenous Speaker Series presentation. Self-indigenization, also sometimes referred to as “pretendianism,” is often described as a problem of “Indigenous identity.” In this talk, Kim TallBear, PhD, rejects that characterization. Instead, she turns her gaze back onto settler-colonial society. What is their problem? Why do so many settler-state citizens insist on self-identifying as Indigenous without Indigenous nation recognition of their claims? Kim TallBear draws on Critical Indigenous Studies, anthropology of whiteness and critical race theory to analyze self-indigenization as a manifestation of whiteness and a late-colonial technique of Indigenous genocide.
Kim TallBear, PhD (she/her) is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a Dakota nation in present-day South Dakota. She is professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Kim TallBear is the co-founder of the Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada. She has advised the President of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) on issues related to genomics and Indigenous peoples. She has also advised museums on exhibits related to race and science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous governance and to Indigenous self-definitions, Kim TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly Indigenous current affairs podcast, Media Indigena. She is also a regular media commentator in outlets such as CBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, the LA Times, APTN, and the BBC on topics pertaining to Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; on the politics of self-indigenization; and on Indigenous sexualities. She is a former Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (PETF) Fellow (2018-2021). She is a board member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers’ Society, a tribal writers’ society for Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota writers. You can also follow her monthly posts on her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization.

Soverignty First - Tackling The White Possessive in an era of Collaboration
2024-10-24 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Vancouver) | MN
Euro-Western academia, politics, governance, science, art, literature, and law claim to be uplifting and celebrating Indigenous peoples and ideas more than ever, yet some reconciliatory and recognition-based frameworks still undermine Indigenous sovereignty and global Indigenous solidarities. This event will unpack this harmful contradiction, which Goenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls the ‘possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty’.
Drawing on their work, five dynamic panelists will explore ways to disrupt, dismantle, and transform the pervasive reach of this ‘white possessive’ as it cloaks itself in new robes to maintain its control over Indigenous lands, relations, and existence.
Panelists Include:
Jennifer Brown – University of Alaska Southeast
Jennifer Brown is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Alaska Native Studies at the University of Alaska-Southeast in Ketchikan, Alaska, and is pursuing her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. In the past, she worked as a tribal health researcher for Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska. She is a member of the Kaigani Haida and the Ketchikan Indian community in Ketchikan, Alaska. Her research draws on science and technology studies (STS), environmental studies, and indigenous critical theory to examine human responses to climate change in Southeast Alaska.
Candis Callison – The University of British Columbia
Candis Callison is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media, and public discourse and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, jointly appointed in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. She is the author of How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts  (Duke U Press, 2014) and the co-author of Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities  (Oxford U Press, 2020). Candis is currently working on a long-term research project about the role of journalism and media in Arctic and northern regions. She is a member of the Tahltan Nation and a regular contributor to the podcast, Media Indigena.
Noah Collins – Princeton University
Noah Collins (White Mountain Apache Tribe/Cherokee Nation) is a graduate student in Anthropology at Princeton University. His research interests broadly concern Indigenous health disparities. He has worked extensively in genomics, bioethics, and community based participatory research in multiple domestic and international Indigenous peoples groups. His most recent research has been to identify globally rare gene variants for use in creating therapeutics to treat areas of unmet medical need. Noah’s research Indigenizes western processes to empower Indigenous people to establish systems that uphold their individual belief systems. At Princeton, Noah wants to explore the natures of engagement and sovereignty in global Indigenous communities beginning their interactions with biomedical research
Kim TallBear – University of Alaska
Kim TallBear  (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the Media Indigena  podcast. She is also a regular media commentator on topics including Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; and Indigenous sexualities. You can also follow her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization.
Olga Ulturgasheva – The University of Manchester
Olga Ulturgasheva is an Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, UK. She is an Indigenous scholar and a member of the Siberian Eveny. Over the last fifteen years she has been engaged in a number of anthropological and cross-disciplinary studies exploring human and non-human personhood, Indigenous childhood and youth, climate change, resilience and adaptation patterns in Siberia and American Arctic. She is an author of Narrating the Future in Siberia: Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among the Eveny (Berghahn Books 2012) and co-editor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia  (Berghahn 2012). Her latest book is a co-edited volume Risky Futures: Climate, Geopolitics and Local Realities in the Uncertain Circumpolar North  (Berghahn Book 2022) focusing on the latest implications of climate change for our understanding of environmental risk, human-non-human adaptations, co-production of knowledge and collaboration. Currently, she serves as a Principal Investigator of a large international, collaborative research project funded the European Research Council (ERC).
Speakers Include:
Wenona Hall – Chair of the Indigenous Studies Department, SFU
Wenona Hall is a member of the Sq’ewqéyl First Nation and is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Indigenous Studies Department at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Hall is a mother to three young adults Jade, Justice and Alexis, and is the oldest grand-daughter of Gordon and Blossom Hall. Her parents are Bob Hall Sr. (Sq’ewqéyl) and Donna Kickbush (Settler). Dr. Hall will provide opening statements at this event.
Zoe Todd – Moderator
Zoe (Canada Research Chair, Tier 2, Indigenous Governance and Freshwater Fish Futures) is a Red River Métis fish philosopher, artist, and activist-scholar from Alberta working towards establishing better ways to honour collective human obligations to fish in the prairies.

Settler Love Is Breaking My Heart: Sex, Kin, and Country
2025-01-15 12:15 - 13:30 UTC | MN
Settler sexuality, family, and “love” are key to sustaining settler property relations in the US and Canada. In this in-process book chapter (a shorter version was previously published in a 2024 edited volume), I draw on the work of historians, anthropologists, and science and technology studies (STS) scholars who have investigated the history of state- sanctioned marriage and monogamy in the US, Hawai’i, Canada, and Europe. I also build on popular and academic polyamory literatures, Native American and Indigenous Studies and critical race theory. In addition, (auto)ethnographic examination of eco-erotic, polyamorous, and other more-than-monogamous relating inform alternative concepts of anticolonial relating after the unsettling of settler sex and family. Finally, I center the role of country—both music and place—to think through and beyond unsustainable settler- colonial practices of making relations with human loves and more-than-human loves. Decolonization is more sustainable with music.
UC Santa Cruz
Humanities 1, Room 210

Panel Discussion : Digital Public Scholarship – Benefits and Pitfalls
2025-01-28 14:30 - 16:00 UTC | MN
Speakers: Dr. Philip Chase, County College of Morris; Dr. Dorothy Kim, Brandeis University; Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta; Dr. Vanessa Warne, University of Manitoba; Dr. Erin Keating, University of Manitoba (moderator)
Tuesday, January 28
2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Contact for registration: umih@umanitoba.ca
Sponsors: University of Manitoba Strategic Initiatives Fund and UMIH

Holding Our Ground: Voices and Strategies Against Self-Indigenization
2026-03-18 08:00 - 2026-03-19 17:00 UTC | McNamara Alumni Center, 200 SE Oak St, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, United States
A Hybrid Symposium
Wed, Mar 18 – Thu, Mar 19, 2026 | All day
This two-day, hybrid symposium will convene leading experts, community members, and “first responders” to the global issue of self-Indigenization, particularly in the form of “Indigenous ethnic fraud,” or “pretendianism,” as it is referred to in North America.
The symposium will be held in Minneapolis, on the traditional homelands of the Dakota people, who were imprisoned and eventually exiled in 1863 to aid settler appropriation of “Minnesota,” a word also taken from the Dakota. On top of seizing land, US citizens have for centuries “played Indian” via sports mascots and appropriating Native nation names and iconography in scouting and in industries including the military. In the twenty-first century, we see ballooning numbers of US citizens make mythological claims to belong to Native lineages and nations. Some capitalize on those claims to appropriate Indigenous resources and opportunities, and to seize governance of institutions. We see an obviously violent example of self-Indigenization in the Department of “Homeland Security” whose agents seize governance of these lands, terrorize, imprison, and threaten to exile. As multiple forms of self-Indigenization converge, not all are grasped as violent, yet they combine to further colonial extraction.
Extractive self-Indigenization, including Indigenous ethnic fraud, not only targets American Indians, but also First Nations, Métis, and Inuit in Canada; and global Indigenous communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, and elsewhere. This symposium will bring participants together to engage in critical discussions, learn from one another, and discuss actionable strategies to disrupt this global problem.
