Indigenous identity fraud in Canada and the United States

Indigenous identity fraud is the practice of non-Indigenous people incorrectly claiming Indigenous identity. The Indigenous Chamber of Commerces states, "For Indigenous peoples, identity is not a self-declared label but is instead grounded in ancestry, kinship, community recognition, and lived experience, among other things." Indigenous identity fraud also refers to an individual who make such incorrect claims.

Individuals who practice Indigenous identity fraud are often called "pretendians", a pejorative portmanteau of "pretend" and "Indian". Philip Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux) called the practice "playing Indian," and anthropologist Circe Sturm coined the term "race shifting". Indigenous identity fraud is considered an extreme form of cultural misappropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate.

Early false claims to Native identity dates back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party. Fraud in Native American art was so common that the U.S. federal government had to pass the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1935, which created a $2,000 fine or six months in prison for selling goods falsely claimed to be American Indian-made. States and tribes later passed their own Indian arts and crafts laws. Indigenous identity fraud increased after the 1960s for several reasons, such as the reestablishment of tribal sovereignty following the era of Indian termination policy, the media coverage of the Occupation of Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Occupation, and the formation of Native American studies as a distinct form of area studies which led to the establishment of publishing programs and university departments specifically for or about Native American culture. At the same time, hippie and New Age subcultures marketed Native cultures as accessible, spiritual, and as a form of resistance to mainstream culture, leading to the rise of the plastic shaman or "culture vulture". By 1990, many years of pushback by Native Americans against Indigenous identity fraud resulted in the successful passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) – a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States. Indian arts and crafts laws have also been enacted by some states and tribes.

While Native communities have always self-policed and spread word of frauds, mainstream media and arts communities were often unaware, or did not act upon this information, until more recent decades. Since the 1990s and 2000s, a number of controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and received coverage in mainstream media, leading to a broader awareness of pretendians in the world at large.