Talk:Pretendian

A paragraph about Ian Ousley was added to the article a couple of weeks ago by an IP editor using an address with little edit history. Apparently, Ousley is a member of an unrecognized tribe, i.e., the Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky, but is not a member of a federally recognized tribe. It does not seem clear to me that this rises to the level of Ousley being asserted to be a "Pretendian", and the cited article does not use that term. Should this paragraph remain in the article? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:27, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I looked for a reliable source which included the term 'pretendian', but couldn't find any. I have removed this paragraph - as it stands, it's a clear WP:LABEL violation. Thanks for flagging. Whynotlolol (talk) 11:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry to drag up something that I can see has been hotly contested earlier, but I've been adding some missing URLs to the page and would like to double check the sources for Dolezal. Obviously, her racial fraud as an African American is well documented, but the sources used here to illustrate her Pretendian status aren't currently suitable under Wikipedia's guide for Biographies of a Living Person. According to the guidelines: 'Wikipedia's sourcing policy, Verifiability, says that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation; material not meeting this standard may be removed. This policy extends that principle, adding that contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion. This applies whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable and whether it is in a biography or in some other article. The material should not be added to an article when the only sources are tabloid journalism. When material is both verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in more reliable sources.' The sources that are currently included to justify Dolezal's presence on the list are the following: source 1 and source 2. Source 1 appears to be a comedy article in The Indian Country written by a famous Native writer, Tiffany Midge, whose role at this particular publication was 'humor columnist'.

Some choice quotes: "Faith Eagle Nebula [Dolezal] was adorned in her pretendian regalia just as she described, her peasant skirt pooling onto the floor and dragging behind her like a bridal train. “I’m Faith.” She said, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks rosy as a postcard sunset. She smelled strongly of spices and wind chimes tinkling in the breeze, that is if wind chimes even had a particular smell. Very strange. She led me to a cozy nest of pillows and we laid down to begin the interview. From my lounging position I scanned the ceiling, taking note that it was plastered with figures from the Zodiac. Faith offered to massage my back, but I managed to politely decline." "She responded by gesturing dramatically, and then said that her name came to her in a dream. Elaborating further, she said that like many other pretendians she’d carried other names throughout her life too. Her first pretendian name was “Roadkill Squirrel,” a name which she said she couldn’t talk about, because it was too upsetting. Other pretendian names she’d carried in previous lifetimes included “Dances Thru Meadows Womyn,” “Frolics on Freeways,” “Laughs With Salad,” and “Stands With Handcuffs”—the last one, she explained, was given to her during her political activism years. She asked me my own pretendian name, and I humored her and said it was “Dances Through Drive-thrus.” She nodded and mumbled "Aho." I think we can agree that this is not a legitimate news article, and therefore is not a legitimate source for the purposes of the article.

Source 2 is a brief opinion piece by a contributor to the same website, which states: "She was consistent at least—when she said that she was Native American, she said that she was also the Nativest of the Natives. She was born in a tipi and hunted with bows and arrows." However, there is no primary source provided in which Dolezal actually says this. Dolezal did say in a 2015 interview that she was born in a tipi, but has since stated that this isn't true, and doesn't appear to have said that she was Native in the context of the tipi, but rather that her parents were nomadic; she also falsely claimed that they had lived in South Africa.

I cannot find a source in which Dolezal herself claims a Native identity or heritage. This appears to be in violation of Wiki's own guidelines, which state 'Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion as they may misquote or quote out of context. In such cases, look for neutral corroboration from another source.' I have tried to find some sources to back this up (I've even had the misfortune of reading her book, which doesn't mention it) but I've not had any luck yet. Is anyone able to find a source that better fits Wiki's guidelines? I haven't removed Dolezal yet (even though Wiki's guidelines say: Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that: is unsourced or poorly sourced; [...] or relies on sources that fail in some other way to meet verifiability standards.) as I can see this caused a ruckus previously, but I do feel that this requires some attention, and possibly a source audit, although I've not spotted any other sources in question as I'm going through and adding URLs where necessary. Thanks! And sorry for this huge paragraph - I thought that the quotes from the Midge article were necessary to indicate the extent of the problem, but I'm aware that they're difficult to wade through. Whynotlolol (talk) 23:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

"Dolezal has identified herself in application materials as white, black and Native American." Washington Times Yuchitown (talk) 02:28, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Dolezal's own parents say that she has 'a smattering of Native American heritage', and I can't find anywhere that corroborates the current Wiki article's statement that she 'began her career claiming to be Native American', or which links the debunked tipi story to this claim, rather than her other claims of living nomadically as a child. I also can't find anything which refutes her parents' claim to Native American ancestry, although the claim does sound like typical spurious white family lore. I'm fine leaving her on here and using the Washington Times source, but in that case I feel that her entry will need rephrasing to clarify that the claim is that she used Native American as an identifier in her application materials. As it stands, the Wiki article is claiming something that is not backed up by the sources used, and I think it needs rewording and re-sourcing to make it fit the guidelines.

Primarily, I'm asking if I'm permitted to remove the two Indian Country sources that I've described in the prior comment, as I can see from reading over the Talk page that it caused chaos and pandemonium the last time someone did so. Thanks. Whynotlolol (talk) 09:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Why not just add the WaPo cite? That’s the first one I found from a quick search. It’s probably not hard to find others. Yuchitown (talk) 05:24, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I will add that, but I also think the others should be removed as they're invalid sources and contribute nothing to the page. Whynotlolol (talk) 19:01, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

• It doesn't matter anyway; the sources don't use the term "Pretendian", which per WP:LABEL is a hard requirement for any BLP to be listed on this page. Anyone who doesn't have a source using that specific word for them needs to be removed immediately, since it's an emotive label that requires usage in at least one high-quality source before we can apply it to an individual. --Aquillion (talk) 16:16, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

  I concur with Anyone who doesn't have a source using that specific word for them needs to be removed immediately. Additionally, per WP:ONUS and WP:V, the burden of proof to include any BLP in the notable examples section is on those who favor inclusion to provide a high-quality published reliable source that verifies the derogatory term, and to also achieve consensus when the inclusion of the BLP has been disputed, due to being poorly sourced or unsourced. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:23, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

  Well, quite. I will remove as per these suggestions. Thanks for the input. There are probably a lot of people on the page who should be removed, in this case. Would anyone be up for helping with a source audit and checking which individuals should be taken off as per the BLP policy, if no valid source can be found? I've added sources previously where possible. Thanks! Whynotlolol (talk) 08:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  I've removed Rachel Dolezal as per the Wiki requirements. Whynotlolol (talk) 08:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

User:Middle 8 initiated a discussion about this article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Pretendian, so it seems like a notice should have been made here if anyone wants to contribute to the discussion. –Yuchitown (talk) 16:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Quite right Yuchitown, thanks for fixing that. --Middle 8 ^privacy • _(s)talk 22:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

There discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Pretendian about moving the list of individual examples to a more neutral article, such as List of people accused of Indigenous identity fraud or something similar. The main article Pretendian would stay exactly where it's at since the term is well-established in published literature. Seems like discussion about splitting the article should take place here. Yuchitown (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm all for it. This page is a plethora of BLP violations as it stands. Whynotlolol (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd be fine with splitting the article as long as there was a link to the list from this article.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 23:20, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Based on several discussions here, I finally moved the bulk of the article to Indigenous identity fraud, with Talk:Indigenous identity fraud. Yuchitown (talk) 16:28, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Well, theoretically (see below), this is supposedly the article about the people and that one theoretically about the practice.

Regardless of the phrasing, the discussion of the sneerquoted Pretendian List needs to be at the other article and—at minimum—the actual list of pretendians needs to be more clearly linked from a section header, if not returned here altogether. If that list isn't here, the proper scope of this article isn't the people but simply the term and should either be restricted to sourced discussion of that or entirely replaced by treatment at Wiktionary, like we do with most neologisms. — LlywelynII 11:39, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

This is the article about the pejorative slang term. The Alleged Pretendian List uses that term and is possibly the most notable popularization of term pretendian. It's not a people vs. practice split. The move almost 4 months ago, and both articles have been substantially edited since then. Yuchitown (talk) 15:29, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

This article was greatly improved by the removal of the list of examples of pretendians; however, it still needed a lot of work. I made a series of edits to it yesterday. Those edits included reorganization, adding information, removing redundancy, removing unsourced content, removing sources that failed verification, removing irrelevant content, copyedits, and more. Yuchitown made a blanket revert of every single one of my edits and commanded me to bring my desired changes to the talk page. So, here is a link to Yuchitown's blanket revert. The revision as of 8:54 on Sept. 17 (on the left side of the screen) includes and highlights all of the edits I made that have now been reverted. I would like to restore them. Thoughts? 172.100.117.24 (talk) 18:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

In the first sentence, 'pretendian is a person not the act of fraud. Previous authors wanted the etymology to be moved down. Adding years to statements made is fine. The singular they in English has been acceptable for years. The "see also" are fine (no one is saying they are the same; they are just topics of interest). This is highly controversial and yet rather obscure article, so an complete overhaul is not the best approach. Yuchitown (talk) 21:42, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like anyone else has any comments. Yuchitown, I have reinstated my edits while respecting your wishes on the use of the singular "they" (which seems very awkward) and on the items in the "see also" list. In the lead, I believe it is appropriate to explain that "pretendian" is a pejorative colloquial term. I hope that the rest of the changes are acceptable to you. Given the state of the article, an overhaul was needed. Thank you for removing the list of examples of pretendians; you improved the article tremendously. 172.100.117.24 (talk) 21:17, 20 September 2025 (UTC)