It turned out that Forrest Carter was Asa Carter, a former white supremacist with a vivid imagination. A recent edition of "Little Tree" explains that it is "autobiographical if not all factually accurate. For instance, Granma is based on family memories of Carter's great-great-great grandmother, who was a full Cherokee, combined with the author's own mother, who read Shakespeare to him when he was a child." Got that?
Carter was in the same tradition as Iron Eyes Cody, the "Indian" actor who made the Keep America Beautiful TV ads so memorable in the 1970s. He had more than a hundred movie roles as an Indian, even though his real name was Espera DeCorti.
Falsified Native American ancestry and experiences are most readily rewarded by those who worship multiculturalism and conceive of Indians as near-mystical beings. Carlos Castaneda tapped into this audience with his New Age classic "The Teachings of Don Juan," a book based on his dubious meetings in the desert with a Yaqui sorcerer who taught him (conveniently for the college market) the marvels of mind-altering drugs. In response to Castaneda and his many imitators, the National Congress of American Indians has denounced "non-Indian 'wannabes' and self-styled New Age shamans."
Indian fakery is reprehensible not just because it is based on lies, but because it falsifies and cheapens the Native American experience to which it is supposed to pay tribute. Miller quotes a writer who calls this "cultural genocide," scoring the fakers for their "misrepresentation and appropriation of indigenous spirituality." The author of those words was Ward Churchill. Who knew? He is not just an apologist for mass murder, but -- on his own terms -- a practitioner of cultural genocide.