Ancestry.Con: College Professor’s Claims of Indian Heritage Debunked

A tenured California professor is the latest academic to be accused of re-writing their personal history when claiming Cherokee heritage.

Andrea Smith, an associate professor at the University of California Riverside and a noted scholar in Native American studies, has been called out by critics who say she, like former Harvard Law professor Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., and Ward Churchill, a former University of Colorado professor who infamously likened 9/11 victims to Nazis, used the phony claims to enhance her faculty pedigree.

“Wannabes like Andrea use the myths of Cherokees hiding in the hills, passing for white or being saved by righteous whites, to perpetuate their lies,” said David Cornsilk, a Cherokee genealogist who researched Smith’s lineage and found no evidence of Cherokee bloodlines.

Cornsilk, 56, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who has been employed as a tribal enrollment researcher, wrote in Indian Country Today that Cherokees are generally very well documented, and debunking bogus claims is easy. Although Cornsilk refused to speak to FoxNews.com, in his article, he lamented “two centuries of non-Cherokees trying to lay claim to our lands and treasury, if not by force, then by subterfuge.”

Smith, who did not return requests for comment, issued a statement saying her belief was based on “what I knew to be true, ” and that she has been “and will always be Cherokee,” although she seemed to base her claim to the heritage on her own work and perceptions, rather than her ancestry. (Read more from “Ancestry.Con: College Professor’s Claims of Indian Heritage Debunked” HERE)

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