Race hoaxers have a fairly discernible pattern: They are mostly left-wing women from academia or at least a college town who want to be activists and like to play dress up, such as this latest case.
From Madison365:
Madison Indigenous arts leader, activist revealed as white
By Robert Chappell – Jan 3, 2023Early in 2020, an Indigenous artist urged the owners of a new music venue in town to change its name.
It was called The Winnebago, after the street on which it stands. Many Indigenous people and allies let the owners know that wasn’t the best name for a white-owned music venue. One of them was nibiiwakamigkwe, also known as Kay LeClaire, a founding member and co-owner of the queer Indigenous artists’ collective giige, and budding leader of Madison’s Indigenous arts community.
It took several months, but the venue eventually relented and rebranded as The Burr Oak. …
One problem with that narrative: LeClaire wasn’t Indigenous, and was, in fact, profiting from the identities of Indigenous peoples.
Since at least 2017, Kay LeClaire has claimed Métis, Oneida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cuban and Jewish heritage. Additionally, they identify as “two-spirit,” a term many Indigenous people use to describe a non-binary gender identity. In addition to becoming a member and co-owner of giige, LeClaire earned several artists’ stipends, a paid residency at the University of Wisconsin, a place on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force and many speaking gigs and art exhibitions, not to mention a platform and trust of a community – all based on an ethnic identity that appears to have been fully fabricated. …
Goforth said the white community in Madison is especially vulnerable to this kind of deception.
“There’s this appetite in Madison to just really want (diversity) and want to believe it so badly,” she said. “It’s like a craving for it. We’re craving culture here. And so then when someone like Kay comes forward, dressed as she did, and, you know, really being a loud voice for Native issues, it was fully consumed.”
“We’re craving culture here.” Is this a thing now, where they use “culture” to mean nonwhite culture on the grounds that whites don’t have any culture? Fifty years ago, “We’re craving culture here” meant there was a demand for more opera and art galleries: i.e., European high culture. But I don’t hear that much anymore.
LeClaire graduated from Hamilton High School in Sussex, Wisconsin, where they were known as Katie Le Claire, in 2012 (despite later telling a Capital Times reporting intern that they were raised in Northern Wisconsin). They apparently attended the University of Wisconsin and in the summer of 2018 married fellow Hamilton alum Adam Pagenkopf, a research specialist at UW.
In a post on their now-deleted Facebook account during the wedding planning, LeClaire referred to themself as “a 20-something white woman.”
Despite all the 2-spirit nonsense and “they” pronoun, this lady seems really girly and into dress-up and arts and crafts. Apparently, you can make more money selling your crafts online if you claim you are an Indian and thus they are authentic Indian knick-knacks with "culture."
LeClaire also purchased birch baskets from a crafter who is not Indigenous, then apparently scratched that person’s name off and replaced it with their own, according to photos provided by Landsem. Landsem said LeClaire gifted some of these baskets to friends; if they sold any, it could be a violation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.
… AdvancedSmite, the New Age Fraud Forum user who uncovered the deception, said the appropriation of Native identity is a larger issue than any one person.
:They noted that the self-identified Native American population grew by 85% between the 2010 and 2020 census, from just over five million to well over nine million.
“That’s not population growth,” they said. “It’s a major issue. The government needs to ask if you are an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe.
