A California professor who claimed she was Native American for her entire life has revealed she is white, apologizing for breaking the trust of the Native communities she lived alongside.
Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor in the environmental science and policy management department at UC Berkeley, said she “incorrectly identified” herself based on “incomplete information,” according to a statement posted to her personal website on Monday.
“In uncritically living an identity based on family stories without seeking out a documented connection to these communities, I caused harm,” Hoover said.
Hoover, who has published books and articles about Native American food sovereignty and other issues, said she never had proper documentation to confirm or dispute her claims of being Native American.
“Growing up I did not question who I was told I was, or how I identified,” Hoover said. “But as an adult, as an academic, I should have done my due diligence to confirm that my ancestors were who I was told they were.”
Hoover’s Twitter account, which hasn’t been tweeted from since 2020, features multiple Native American protests the professor was a part of and the many food summits she attended.
Identifying as Native American, she revealed she had access to resources she wouldn’t have if she only identified as a white person.
“Before taking part in programs or funding opportunities that were identity-related or geared towards under-represented people I should have ensured that I was claimed in return by the communities I was claiming,” Hoover added.
Hoover claimed to be of Mohawk and Mi’kmaq descent, whose tribes were native to the northeastern part of the US and Canada.
Hoover had also said she always identified herself as “someone of mixed Mohawk, Mi’kmaq, French, English, Irish, and German descent and identity.”
In the initial statement, Hoover detailed how she grew up with the belief her great-grandmother was a Mohawk woman and was brought to “pow-wows, ceremonies, and food summits” to feel connected to her mother’s family background.
Hoover said she faced many accusations regarding her heritage throughout her career as a professor at Elizabethtown College, St. Olaf College and Brown University.
Following the apology, Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor at Brown University and a Cherokee Nation citizen, who says she used to be friends with Hoover, wrote a letter on her own blog saying Hoover’s story quickly fell apart when Keene first started looking into it over a year ago.
“I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge — her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation,” Keene wrote.
A petition demanding Hoover’s resignation received over 350 signatures last November, according to the Daily Californian.
Hoover went on to say her false claims didn’t just hurt the Native communities she claimed to be a part of, but also the students she taught while she researched her specializations of “Native American food systems, Native American environmental health movements and Indigenous uses of fire.”
Hoover acknowledged that her apology was long overdue and wouldn’t accomplish much, but she was adamant that it can be a steppingstone for change and help her make amends.
“I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms,” she said. “This hurt has also interrupted student and faculty life and careers. I acknowledge that I could have prevented all of this hurt by investigating and confirming my family stories sooner. For this, I am deeply sorry.”
