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Ken Berwitz
Elizabeth Warren. Ward Churchill. Andrea Smith. Jamake Highwater. And now Taffe Reed.
Wow, a few more and they can start their own tribe.
Excerpted from Blake Neff\’s article at dailycaller.com:
Dartmouth College announced Thursday that Susan Taffe Reed, who attracted scorn and ridicule for claiming membership in an Indian tribe regarded by other Indians as bogus, will no longer serve as the director of the school\’s Native American Program.
When Taffe Reed\’s appointment was announced last month, Dartmouth proudly noted her work as president of the “Eastern Delaware Nations” (EDN). But while that tribe name may sound legitimate, it turns out EDN is actually just a non-profit corporation, and it is not recognized as a legitimate tribe by the federal government, the state of Pennsylvania (where it is headquartered), or by most other Indian tribes.
Criticism (and mockery) of Taffe Reed escalated after a blog post on the website FakeIndians analyzed the genealogical records of Taffe Reed\’s ancestors, claiming it showed them to be of purely European extraction with no Indian admixture. Taffe Reed has argued that the blog post isn\’t entirely accurate, but also hasn\’t produced a detailed rebuttal to it.
Dartmouth\’s Indian students an alumni celebrated Taffe Reed\’s un-appointment on their Facebook page, though some said they wished she would leave the college entirely rather than simply being slotted into a separate job.
And in case you wonder why people would make this claim when they have no indian roots, read this excerpt from an article by Dr. Dean Chavers – himself a full-blooded Lumbee Indian – about his uncle, who worked at Martin Marietta:
But when the affirmative action thing came about in the late 1960s, somebody looked on his records and saw that he was Indian. He was immediately given the additional duty of identifying and working with other Indians at Martin. All of a sudden people who had never claimed to be Indian said they were. They thought it would help them with promotions, job opportunities, and advancement. Some of them were obviously not Indian.
In 1976, I met with the two gentlemen at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, who were in charge of affirmative action. I was working for the Indian Center of San Jose at the time, setting up an education program. During the meeting they told me Lockheed was the largest employer in the Bay Area. They proceeded to pull out this big computerized logbook (they were using the old IBM 360 in those days) of several hundred “Indians” who worked there.
I was amazed. As we went through their list, I recognized none of the people they had listed. By that time I had been in the Bay Area for eight years, and had met most of the urban Indian leaders in San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, and outlying cities. I had served a term on the board of the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, worked as the Mainland Coordinator for the Alcatraz occupation, taught for three years at Cal State Hayward, and worked at the Indian Center for several months. I still wonder about the real ethnicity of the people at Lockheed who were claiming to be Indian.
The affirmative action managers were happy. They had met their quota of Indians-exceeded it in fact. Meeting the quota was a federal requirement. Almost all their funds came from the federal government for defense contracts. However, to be a Lockheed Indian, all one had to do was check a box.
In other words, the reason was that, due to a well-meaning government policy (or one designed to sew up Black votes for Democrats – your call) they got something out of it. Period.
It reminds me of that funny – but apparently prophetic – scene in “Ghostbusters” where Winston Zeddemore, played by the excellent actor, Ernie Hudson, comes looking for a job. Janine, the secretary, played to the hilt by Annie Potts, asks him “Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis?” And Winston answers, “Uh, if there\’s a steady paycheck in it, I\’ll believe anything you say.”
Maybe someday there\’ll be an affirmative action program for Jewish people of Eastern European extraction. If that ever happens I\’ll be in great shape…unless a Taffe Reed or Elizabeth Warren suddenly discovers she came from the same shtetl, and takes my job away from me.
Or maybe Ward Churchill will suddenly discover his real name was Ward Synagoguehill.
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