[Ads-l] "Pretendians" is not a new word...

[dave@wilton.net]

I just wrote up "pretendian" for wordorigins.org the other day, but haven't published it yet. I've slated it for 17 April publication. I can send an advance copy to anyone who cares.
 
I wouldn't classify the word as a euphemism. It's a portmanteau that means exactly what it appears to mean.
 
The earliest use I've found is a Usenet post on alt.native from 2003:
 
Lancaster, Bob. Usenet: alt.native, 22 April 2003. [ https://groups.google.com/g/alt.native/c/GLPVZh3yxOw/m/B6YQc_C3Wf0J ]( https://groups.google.com/g/alt.native/c/GLPVZh3yxOw/m/B6YQc_C3Wf0J )
 
"No need to be so polite, BravesHeart, what do you *really* think? :-)
Don't you love it when some pretendian gets on the board, insults folks who have been here for years, and tries to tell us how we're *supposed* to think?"
 
The earliest print usage I've found is from Indian Country Today in 2010:
 
Woodard, Stephanie. “Playing Indian.” Indian Country Today (Oneida, New York), 4 August 2010, 6, 8. ProQuest Newspapers.
 
"Do 'pretendían' activities affect the wider public?"
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 11:44am
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] "Pretendians" is not a new word...



…and it’s one that likely figures among one of the recent ATNW compilations, but “self-indigenizer” is a new one on me. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/a-professor-claimed-to-be-native-american-did-she-know-she-wasnt

Kim TallBear, an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe and a professor of Native studies at the University of Alberta, guesses that a quarter of those who have checked the box for Native American in the academy are what she calls “self-Indigenizers,” people who either invent a Native heritage wholesale or play up a tenuous connection. “Most of the cases haven’t been made very public yet,” TallBear said.

Not exactly a euphemism, but not exactly not.

LH



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