Professor admits no Native American tribal affiliation after decades of claiming otherwise
Due to 'new revelations,' one professor will no longer identify as having Mohawk/Mi'kmaq descent.
She has publicly claimed tribal affiliation since her early teen years.
Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), recently admitted that she has no tribal connections after decades of claiming otherwise.
Hoover is “one of 11 self-identified Native American/Alaska Native ladder-rank faculty members at Berkeley,” according to the Berkeley News.
For decades, Professor Hoover has attributed her Native American heritage to being part of both the Mohawk and Mi’kmaq Indian tribes.
Hoover released an official statement on the issue on Oct. 20 titled “Statement about Identity.” In it, she discussed the results of her investigation into whether she truly had Native American roots.
“Now, without any official documentation verifying the identity I was raised with, I do not think it is right for me to continue to claim to be a scholar of Mohawk/Mi’kmaq descent,” Hoover wrote.
“We have to date found no records of tribal citizenship for any of my family members in the tribal databases that were accessed.”
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She continued, saying that because of these “new revelations”, she will stop identifying as of Mohawk/Mi’kmag descent even though she has done this publicly since she was a teenager.
As early as 1996, Hoover, at 17-years-old, claimed in a newspaper that “Being of Native American descent I am annoyed at mascots such as ‘Indians’ or ‘Chiefs’” and that “for a school with all white students it is ludacris to have a mascot of a race that is not represented there.”
Hoover’s case is similar to that of Elizabeth Warren’s, who also alleged a connection to Native American tribes with little factual basis.
Campus Reform reached out for comment to Professor Hoover and the UC Berkeley media relations department and will update accordingly.
