Investigative Report
Subject: Rose Wimbish Tompkins (Cirilo) Ph.D.
False Claims: American Indian
Date: 12/11/24
Rose Wimbish Tompkins (Cirilo) has ZERO American Indian ancestry and ZERO genealogical connections to any American Indian Tribes.
Rose Wimbish Tompkins (Cirilo), Ph.D., is a newly hired Assistant Professor in the Department of Nursing at the University of Texas at Arlington (hereafter UT, Arlington). She was recently a postdoctoral fellow (2021-2024) in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin (hereafter UT Austin), where she has repeatedly and falsely claimed to be an American Indian.
For many years, Dr. Wimbish Tompkins has been a mentee of Dr. John R. Lowe at UT Austin’s School of Nursing. Dr. Lowe has also misappropriated a false American Indian identity. TAAF proved his claims false through documentation. With Dr. Lowe’s support, she was able to acquire the postdoctoral fellowship position at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work with this claim as being one of approximately 35 doctoral-prepared American Indian nurses in the US. Additionally, under this false claim, she acquired a fellowship position with the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute affiliated with the University of Washington. Dr. Wimbish Tompkins has made these claims on NIH and foundation grant applications to advance her academic career, thereby depriving authentic American Indians of opportunities. Her claims are nothing more than opportunistic.
She has been using the false claim of being American Indian to legitimize her voice in academia. Recruited as part of Dr. Lowe’s “Indigenous research team” at UT, Austin, she has attempted to integrate herself as a voice of authority on American Indians within Native circles and with people within national circles of influence. By continuing to assert a false American Indian identity, she fosters a hostile environment for authentic American Indians, faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students and deceives all others in the academy.
When TAAF discovered Dr. Wimbish Tompkin’s false claim of American Indian identity, our professional genealogists researched her claim extensively. Their exhaustive research found that none of her ancestors were American Indian, and there is irrefutably no proof to support her claim.
Paternal Genealogy:
Dr. Wimbish Tompkins's paternal family members consistently identified as Black pre-1890. Additionally, they defined themselves as Black post-1900 on Federal, State, City, and County documents, birth, death certificates, and military records. No one on her paternal line ever defined themselves or were ever perceived as being American Indian, nor was a tribe listed. The Wimbish, Haley, Barbour, Jones, Miller, and McLaughlin families were primarily from the Pittsylvania, Virginia area. The Jones, Corn, Stovall, Banks, and Henry families were primarily of Patrick County and Halifax, Virginia.
Maternal Genealogy:
As with her paternal line, the maternal line consistently identified as Black pre-1890, and they identified themselves as Black post-1900. No Federal State, County, or City documents, birth, death certificates, or military records read American Indian, nor was a tribe listed. They were primarily from Iredell, North Carolina, including the Norman, Davidson, Sloan, Brown, and Bratton families. At the same time, other ancestors, such as the Jones, Lockhart, Lipscomb, Patterson, and Clagan families, were from Gaffney, South Carolina, with occasional births occurring in Union, South Carolina. No American Indian ancestry was found to support her claim.
On Sovereignty and Identity:
To paraphrase the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement on sovereignty and identity, Dr. Wimbish Tompkins, by falsely claiming an American Indian identity, has been engaging in academic dishonesty, falsification of material facts, and appropriation of Indigenous peoples’ resources and opportunities. TAAF calls on Dr. Wimbish Tompkins to tell the truth about her ancestry and to desist from claiming to be American Indian. Further, TAAF calls on UT, Austin, and if these same claims have been made to UT Arlington, to pursue disciplinary action against Dr. Wimbish Tomkins for engaging in fraudulent claims, academic dishonesty, and Indigenous identity theft.
TAAF found NO evidence that UT Austin or the UT system has any vetting process at all for determining whether those who claim an American Indian identity are, in fact, American Indian, instead relying on “self-identification” only. By enabling and abetting pretendian frauds, UT Austin has failed the American Indian people and American Indian Nations. By hiring Dr. Wimbish Tompkins and allowing her to falsely claim to be “American Indian” without vetting and by abetting her false claims, UT Austin did further damage to Native people and further eroded their relationships with American Indian people and sovereign nations. TAAF strongly recommends that UT Austin and the UT system take immediate action to build and repair their relationships with American Indian Nations rather than continue to perpetrate harm on American Indian people by legitimizing pretendian frauds such as Dr. Wimbish Tompkins.
Why this matters: Non-Indians who pretend to be Indians (pretendians) violate the sovereign right of American Indian Tribes to determine their citizenry, they misrepresent the American Indian experience by claiming to speak with an authentic American Indian voice, and they deprive American Indians of opportunities. Whenever the voice and the work of a pretendian is elevated, an authentic American Indian voice is silenced and ignored. Pretendians are not honoring American Indians. They are engaging in a fundamentally anti-Indian act and are explicitly engaging in the displacement and replacement of actual American Indians. Their actions further the settler colonial project of eliminating the American Indians from the North American continent. These genocidal acts must end.
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds is an intertribal anti-fraud non-profit whistleblower organization comprised of allies and citizens of Tribes whose sovereignty has been formally acknowledged.
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