Subject: Dr. Brian Klopotek
Title: Associate Professor, University of Oregon
Indigenous Identities falsely claimed: Choctaw
Determination: Zero American Indian ancestry
Date: March 2025
For years, actual American Indians have seen proverbial red flags in Dr. Brian Klopotek’s presentations of himself as Choctaw. Eventually these Indians reached out to TAAF for assistance. Specifically, they asked TAAF to conduct genealogical research to either confirm or refute Klopotek’s claims. It is nothing less than anti-Indian hate speech to claim an Indian identity without actually being an Indian. In an effort to stop such hate speech and other anti- Indian behavior, TAAF has joined and is helping lead the Indian-led movement to end the theft of our Indian identities.
Toward this goal, TAAF thoroughly researched Klopotek’s genealogy. TAAF’s lead genealogist, who is a member of both the Mississippi Historical Society and the Oklahoma Historical Society, led the investigation of this case with their team of genealogists. This team researched, reviewed, and evaluated hundreds of Klopotek’s relatives and meticulously consulted numerous rolls and records, both tribal and non-tribal. The team used multiple search databases, including Family Search and Ancestry dot com. As part of its comprehensive genealogical methodology and other research protocols, TAAF consulted, among other records, death certificates, military records, federal records, state records, county records, and city records.
The TAAF genealogy team found that Klopotek has zero American Indian ancestry. Based on public records, Klopotek’s genealogical tree, which is available on TAAF’s website, identifies more than 90 of Klopotek’s direct lineal ancestors by name with TAAF’s findings that all of Klopotek’s direct lineal ancestors are non-Indian. It should be noted that the tree posted on TAAF’s website does not include the hundreds of Klopotek’s lateral kin whom TAAF also investigated. Like his direct lineal kin, none of Klopotek’s lateral kin are Indian. Moreover, none of his kin are anything other than people of only European ancestry.
Upon completing their investigation, and prior to the posting on the TAAF website their press release and report, TAAF approached Klopotek, privately and respectfully. Specifically, TAAF asked Klopotek to document his claim to being Choctaw or to simply identify who he believes is his ancestor who is Choctaw. Klopotek chose not to respond at all to TAAF's queries.
Despite having zero Indian ancestry--a genealogical fact that Klopotek's lack of response to TAAF suggests that he is aware of, Klopotek has been brazen in his claims to being Choctaw. For example, in a youtube video interview of Klopotek that was created in the mid-2010s, entitled “UO Today with Brian Klopotek,” Klopotek asserts, “I am a Choctaw” (24:55). Also in this interview, several times he refers to Indians with the pronouns “we” and “us” while asserting, “We are also Indigenous peoples” (26:02). In one of his scholarly articles, Klopotek writes, “each time I heard Indian stereotypes,” “I remember feeling distinctly snubbed” (2022,
71). In nearly all of his scholarship and in other public presentations of himself, Klopotek identifies as Choctaw.
Klopotek’s Ancestry
In “generation 7” of Klopotek’s tree, which consists mostly of people born in the 1700s, only two of the sixty-four of his ancestors in that generation lived anywhere near the Choctaws (see Klopotek’s “Ahnentafel” on the TAAF website, which includes places of births and deaths). These two individuals—Klopotek’s great-great-great-great grandparents—are William Isaac Self, Jr. and Virginia Jane Walker. All records consulted by the genealogy team exposed both of these individuals as non-Indians, as was the case for all sixty-two of the other individuals of this generation and other generations of Klopotek’s tree. Mr. William Self died in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, the next U.S. state over from the Choctaws’ homeland in Mississippi where the Choctaws lived before they were removed to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, on the Trail of Tears. Mr. Self was thirty-four years old at the time of the Choctaws’ expulsion, but he was not deported because he was not Choctaw. Virginia Jane Walker Self was also not deported because she, too, was not Choctaw. As part of its inspection of the records of Mr. and Mrs. Self and their descendants, TAAF checked the records of all five of the Five Tribes: the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, the Muscogee Nation, the Cherokee Nation, and the Seminole Nation. None of the records of any these tribes revealed any names or other identifying information that could possibly be Klopotek’s ancestors. It goes without saying that Klopotek’s ancestors are not on the Dawes Rolls of the Choctaw Nation or any of the Five Tribes as tribal members.
In sum, there is no evidence that Klopotek has even the most distant of kin relations to Choctaws. Tellingly, he has never provided any evidence that he has actual kinship connections to Choctaw people. Anyone who claims an American Indian identity has a responsibility to factually substantiate that claim. Moreover, discussions of genealogical descent obfuscate the fact that citizenship in a sovereign American Indian tribal nation is core to American Indian identity. Klopotek acknowledges that he is not enrolled in any American Indian Tribe.
Klopotek’s Appropriation of Resources and Opportunities
Given that the TAAF genealogy team found that all of Klopotek’s ancestors are non-Indians of only European ancestry, the big story in this case is the extent to which Klopotek has appropriated resources and opportunities meant for Indians and other minorities since his graduation from Yale with a B.A. in anthropology. TAAF was unable to assess the total amount of resources and opportunities Klopotek has acquired through his false claims to being Indian. However, the below list of awards, fellowships, and scholarships he has won—which, notably, does not even include his current academic job—indicates that this amount is in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Based on his false claims to being Indian, Klopotek has been awarded the Disadvantaged Minority Fellow to the MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program for International Peace and Cooperation, the Disadvantaged and Minority Fellow of the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota, the Native American Visiting Student Award at the Smithsonian Institution, the Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Katrin H. Lamon Fellowship (for Native Americans) at the School for Advanced Research, the UC Berkeley President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women and Minorities, the Proudly Recognizing Indigenous Devotion to Education Award from the Center for Multicultural Academic Excellence at the University of Oregon, and the Lynn Reyer Award in Tribal Community Development from the Society for the Preservation of American Indian Culture. TAAF knows of no real Indian who has won so many awards, scholarships, and fellowships earmarked for American Indians and other minorities.
In his scholarship, Klopotek hints at the conditions under which he has been able to claim these resources and opportunities that are set aside for Indians: “playing Indian,” Klopotek asserts, is widely perceived by scholars as only “a minor offense”—if, he adds, it is even seen as “an offense at all” (2022, 81). While this may be the case, and while this may have enabled Klopotek unethically to obtain awards, scholarships, and fellowships that are explicitly not meant for him, TAAF sees Klopotek’s choices to apply for and accept these funds and opportunities as theft. TAAF thus calls for Klopotek to return all of the above-referenced funds that he has received and to return these funds with interest. Furthermore, because Klopotek has engaged in research fraud and in violations of ethical research, TAAF calls for Klopotek to resign from his position as a professor at the University of Oregon.
Anti-Indianness in Klopotek’s Scholarship
In reviewing Klopotek’s publications, TAAF found several of his scholarly interventions to be bizarre and disturbing. For example, in his 2011 book, Klopotek introduces two pairs of terms for Indians in what is now the U.S.: “nonfederal Indian”/ “nonfederal tribe,” and “federal
Indian”/ “federal tribe.” A “nonfederal Indian,” he explains, is an Indian who is not a citizen of a federally recognized tribe (Klopotek places himself in that category), and a “nonfederal tribe” is an “Indian tribe” that is not federally recognized. He defines a “federal Indian,” in contrast, as a citizen of a federally recognized tribe and a “federal tribe” as a federally recognized tribe. While citing no genealogical evidence, in the course of this discussion he contends that “nonfederal Indians” are the “cousins” of Indians who are citizens of federally recognized tribes (Klopotek,
2011, 35). The terms “federal Indian”/ “federal tribe” are highly problematic, as they inaccurately suggest that federally recognized tribes and their citizens were created by the U.S. government and furthermore, that, together with our tribes, citizens of federally recognized tribes are lackeys of the federal government. On this point, Klopotek’s 2008 article is revealing: he disparages our tribal governments, individually, as each “a governmental unit in the federal matrix” (Klopotek, Lintinger, and Barbry, 2008, 67). Klopotek’s representation of our tribal governments as having been thoroughly absorbed into the U.S. state—so much so that these
tribal governments are now fully a part of the non-Indian government that colonized them—is
inaccurate and offensive.
It is telling that Klopotek’s book was published by a press that is known above nearly all other presses for publishing the works of pretendians, Duke University Press. Bizarrely, in his book with this press, Klopotek claims that U.S. “nonfederal tribes” include “tribes predominated by fullbloods with near universal [Native] language retention” (Klopotek, 2011, 35). Yet he fails to identify a single “nonfederal” group with these two characteristics (fullblood and "near universal" Native language speakers). His explanations for why “nonfederal tribes” are not federally recognized are likewise unsupported by any evidence and, in addition, are offensive. “Nonfederal tribes,” asserts Klopotek, “may have stayed away from reservations because they were more traditional in the first place” and/or they “did not feel they needed recognition to validate their identity” (ibid.). In these and other discussions, Klopotek positions himself, together with others who are not citizens of federally recognized tribes, as more authentically Indian than are Indians who are members of tribes whose sovereignty has been acknowledged by the U.S. government. At the same time, he suggests, erroneously, that Indian tribes had a choice to participate (or not) in federal Indian policies such as in our confinement to reservations. Klopotek thus weaponizes his scholarship against federally recognized tribes, problematically constructing our tribes as sellouts, as cultural assimilationists, and as so deeply insecure as to ask the federal government to affirm our Indianness.
It is also telling that known pretendian Circe Sturm (see TAAF website for information about this case) expresses nothing but praise for the work of her fellow pretendian Klopotek. In 2011, she crooned that Klopotek is “an emerging new star in the field of Native American Studies” (Sturm, 2011, 49). She added that his book is “a sophisticated piece of scholarship” and “is essential reading for scholars of Native North America and U.S. race relations” (Sturm, 2011,
51).
Implications of This Case
The implications of the results of the Klopotek investigation are serious. Among other things, they reveal that Klopotek’s teaching and scholarship are foundationally flawed. Klopotek purports to teach, speak, and write from a Choctaw perspective. The reality is that he has never had and will never have a Choctaw perspective. Disturbingly, he teaches courses in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Given the public nature of his false claims to being American Indian, it is almost certain that students are led to believe that he provides them with an American Indian perspective in the classroom.
In light of the results of this investigation, the practices and policies at the University of Oregon with respect to American Indians deserves scrutiny. TAAF endorses the Cherokee Scholars Statement’s position that “in the context of higher education, falsely claiming a Cherokee [or other legitimate Indian] identity is academic dishonesty, falsification of a material fact, and expropriation of Indigenous peoples’ resources and opportunities.” TAAF found zero evidence that the University of Oregon has any vetting process at all for determining whether those who claim that their scholarship is authored from an American Indian perspective are in fact American Indian. By enabling Klopotek’s false claims to being American Indian, the University of Oregon is failing to support American Indians, American Indian Nations, and non-Indians. In so doing, the University of Oregon has contributed to the erasure and replacement of actual American Indians, and the misrepresentation of American Indian experience and perspectives. We strongly recommend that the University of Oregon take immediate action to rebuild and repair its relationships with American Indians and American Indian Nations rather than continuing to perpetrate harm on Indian people by legitimizing Klopotek and other scholars at the University of Oregon who falsely claim to speak from an American Indian perspective.
TAAF would like to also censure other organizations for bolstering the false claims of pretendian Brian Klopotek. Duke University Press needs to cease the practice of awarding publishing contracts to pretendians. Funding agencies, too, need to make sure that their awardees are not lying on their applications when they claim to be Indian. This is especially true of the funding agencies that made substantial awards to Klopotek: the MacArthur Foundation, the University of Minnesota, the Smithsonian Institution, the Ford Foundation, the School for Advanced Research, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Oregon, Michigan State University, and the Society for the Preservation of American Indian Culture.
Many people now obviously consider Brian Klopotek to be an Indian man. Therefore, it is very important that he clearly correct this misinformation. Many pretendians never correct the record after their false claims have been revealed. They let people continue to assume that they are Indian. Hence, we request that Klopotek let the world know in writing that he is not, in fact, an American Indian. Additionally, Klopotek needs to apologize to American Indians and non- Indians at length, explain his past actions in full, acknowledge the harm he has done, and find ways to redress that harm.
Klopotek is clinging to the hope that he might appear innocent due to the fact that he has never claimed to be a Choctaw citizen. He should know better than that. The vast majority of the non- Indian public does not know the importance of tribal enrollment and federal recognition because they know so little about American Indian identity, let alone sovereignty, and they do not question these claims because they have little idea of how to properly vet such claims. This is why the onus is upon individuals like Klopotek to behave with integrity. As an educator, Klopotek should have known better. He should have taken his genealogy to Choctaw federally- recognized tribes and asked them to determine whether he has a blood-based kin connection to their tribes before he ever claimed to be Choctaw.
Our determination
Dr. Brian Klopotek has zero American Indian ancestry. It was his responsibility to verify his spurious family myth before making it part of his academic identity. It is worth reiterating that TAAF agrees with the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement that “in the context of higher education, falsely claiming a Cherokee [or other legitimate Indian] identity is academic dishonesty, [and] falsification of a material fact.” Based on this standard, Klopotek has engaged in academic dishonesty by misleading his colleagues and students into believing that he is Choctaw and implying that his scholarship is informed by an American Indian positionality.
The entire University of Oregon community needs to redress this situation. Among other things, the University of Oregon needs to institute policies that require scholars who claim or imply that their scholarship is informed by an American Indian positionality produce documentation that they are enrolled citizens of legitimate tribal nations. These policies will protect the scholarly community from academic misrepresentation of fact. By taking no action, the University of Oregon can expect to continue to enable pretendians who inflict harm and trauma on actual Native people, and undermine the academic mission of the university.
Falsely claiming an Indian identity is anti-Indian hate speech.
References Cited
Klopotek, Brian. Recognition Odysseys: Indigeneity, Race, and Federal Tribal Recognition
Policy in Three Louisiana Indian Communities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
----- “Still Not an Honor: Countering the Academic Narrative of Black Indian Play at Mardi
Gras.” American Indian Quarterly 46:1-2 (2022), 64-93.
Klopotek, Brian, Brenda Lintinger, and John Barbry. “Ordinary and Extraordinary Trauma: Race, Indigeneity, and Hurricane Katrina in Tunica-Biloxi History.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 32:2 (2008), 55-77.
Oregon Humanities Center, “UO Today with Brian Klopotek.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LMCRS09GP8. Note that if this youtube video is taken down upon the circulation of the results of the TAAF investigation into Klopotek's claims to being Choctaw, a copy of the video may be obtained from TAAF, who has downloaded a copy of the video and decoupled the video from its source on the web.
Sturm, Circe. “Book Review: Recognition Odysseys: Indigeneity, Race and Federal Tribal Recognition Policy in Three Louisiana Communities.” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 4:2 (2011), 49-51.
