For years, Heather Rae Bybee was considered to be one of Hollywood’s most prominent Native American directors. She described her mother as Cherokee, sported a tattoo of a Cherokee goddess, told the stories of Native characters in her award-winning films, and was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Indigenous Alliance.
But the film industry was left in shock earlier this year when Rae was accused of being just 1/2048th Cherokee at most, prompting her to publicly acknowledge that she is not, in fact, Indigenous.
“I’m still in that process [of looking into my family history],” she admitted to The Hollywood Reporter, “so for several years I have identified as an ally.”
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Behind that bombshell accusation was a little-known group of loose acquaintances who have teamed up to create a whistleblower organization dedicated to outing what they call redface posers who “are actively contributing to [Indigenous] erasure/genocide.”
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) has only been around a year, but it’s made waves addressing alleged race-fakers who the organization say co-opt Native American cultures and stereotypes for monetary and professional gain.
“This is the last nail in the coffin of our genocide because these pretendians are—literally—erasing us by replacing us,” TAAF’s director, Lianna Costantino, said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
Costantino, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said she and a few others formed an unofficial hub for Native Americans when they noticed they had hundreds or thousands of mutual friends on social media. For years, they provided tribal resources for Native Americans, educational tools for Native history and genealogy, and promoted Native Americans making headway within their professional endeavors. However, in May 2022, the group took it a step further and founded TAAF to address posers within their communities.
“We were immediately inundated with people telling us their stories, sending us impact statements, asking for help in real-life situations where they were actively being harmed by pretendians and suffering consequences of the bad behaviors of these pretendians,” Costantino, a chaplain and educator, said, referring in particular to race-fakers who claim to be spiritual doctors and medicine people who can ended up committing serious harm.
Heather Rae Bybee.
Arturo Holmes/GettyAccording to TAAF’s website, the group—made up of American Indian and ally researchers, law enforcement officers, scholars, and over 50 members from across the nation—exposes “ethnic frauds pretending to be American Indian people or ‘tribes’ when they are not.”
TAAF says it isn’t concerned with people who believe they have American Indian ancestry based on “unfounded family lore” but, rather, “individuals, groups, and [corporations] who falsely represent American Indian cultures, histories, and spiritual practices and/or falsely claim American Indian identity as individuals for profit or fame.”
The group maintains a healthy list of alleged “pretendians” along with genealogical reports compiled by their members, as well as organizations that allegedly support Native race-fakers.
“Representation matters because it shapes how the wider public views the world,” says the TAAF website. “American Indians have long been under-represented in American culture, and much of what Americans know about American Indians is based on monolithic stereotypes and lies. Allowing non-American Indians to market themselves as having an American Indian identity continues that harm by perpetuating stereotypes and silencing actual American Indian voices.”
The work of proving someone is a race-faker is intensive. TAAF’s investigations include compiling full “fan charts” of the alleged perpetrator’s genealogy, which pinpoint the person’s ancestry back to the country origin or far enough back to discredit their claim of a specific tribe. They also seek letters from tribal offices noting that the person, or a family member the person claims has American Indian ancestry, is not listed in their database.
For the sake of other members’ safety, Costantino acts as the sole face of TAAF.
“There’s really nothing anybody can do to hurt me,” said Costantino, who said she felt a moral responsibility to expose race-fakers, especially since Native populations have waned. “The trolls just want to doxx all of us and harass all of us and bully us and give us a hard time. They’re irrelevant. They’re mosquitoes buzzing in our ears. We don’t care. We swat them and move on.”
TAAF founder Lianna Costantino.
Courtesy Lianna CostantinoA professional genealogist who works with TAAF, and who wished to remain anonymous due to security concerns and fears of being doxxed, told The Daily Beast that the process of looking into a “pretendian” requires an “all-hands-on-board group effort.”
The genealogist, who has knowledge in First Nations history and is a member of several historical societies, said that when the group starts an ancestral tree, they structure the research to determine if the person has Native American ancestry “beyond reasonable doubt.”
“If we find a conflict or contradictory information we discuss as a group, define the conflict, analyze the conflict and resolve the issue,” the genealogist explained. “We will then consult directly the respective Sovereign Nations the person has claimed, providing them with [the] name or names of the person/people to check for… Being Sovereign Nations, they have the final word of who is or who is not an associate, Citizen or descendant of their People. They have the final word. Their word is the ultimate proof.”
The genealogist began their own ancestral digging about 13 years ago before starting on a volunteer basis with TAAF. “I found I had an aptitude for sleuthing, identifying and resolving genealogical questions, and general tree development,” they said. “Genealogy is my passion.”
They said a TAAF report on one person often takes anywhere from 30 to 50 hours, sometimes longer.
Drew Hayden Taylor, a First Nation Canadian writer who has worked with Costantino on The Pretendians documentary, called the group’s work “admirable.”
“An organization that has the research capabilities to look into those who are accused of being pretendians is necessary in these times,” Taylor told The Daily Beast.
The group has already made some eye-opening discoveries. In their most recent investigation, they alleged that James Russell “Owl Goingback” Heidbrink, a celebrated author, is an “ethnic fraud…of European ancestry” for allegedly claiming to be “‘half Cherokee and half Choctaw.’”
According to Goingback’s website, he has been a professional writer of novels and children’s books for over 30 years, with many of his books framed around Native American culture. He’s won multiple literary awards, including being a Lifetime Achievement winner at the Bram Stoker Awards, been featured as a “Powerful Voice in Fantasy and Horror” at the World Fantasy Convention, and had his works lauded on notorious literary podcast Book Riot. In June, he was featured as a guest of honor at StokerCon in Pittsburgh.
After noticing Goingback’s rising popularity, Costantino said TAAF contacted him to offer support and a chance to prove his identity. But when he ignored multiple requests, TAAF members decided to do some digging.
(Goingback told The Daily Beast that he did not respond to TAAF’s questions because the organization has “no actual authority to make such demands, and it is foolish to argue with internet trolls.”)
According to TAAF, Goingback legally changed his name from James Russell Heidbrink. The Daily Beast confirmed through online Seminole County court documents that it took place in 2000. TAAF also compiled a family tree that the group says showed the majority of his father’s family traces back to Europe, and his mother’s side were always labeled as “white” on U.S. census reports.
TAAF also included letters from both the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes that said neither Heidbrink nor his ancestors were descendants of enrolled members. Goingback maintained to The Daily Beast that his family is not currently enrolled because they do not “want to be considered wards of the federal government,” despite Indigenous nations being sovereign from the government.
Erika T. Wurth, a celebrated writer who describes herself as an “urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent” also “continues to fake a Native identity for personal gain,” TAAF has claimed.
Costantino told The Daily Beast that initial conversations with Wurth on social media were pleasant, but the chatter took a negative tone as soon as she wanted to cut to the chase and verify Wurth’s ancestry.
“In reality, Wurth’s family were white settlers from the Eastern United States, who settled into Texas in the 19th century. NONE were American Indians,” TAAF’s report alleged.
In a request for comment, Wurth’s literary agent did not address TAAF’s claims but said the group engaged in “tools of manipulation and unwarranted persecution of Native Americans.”
In its investigation on Rae, the film director, TAAF found that her ancestors married and lived on Indian Territory, but were not tribal members.
Even though Rae later acknowledged that she is not Indigenous and has been trying to “reframe” who she is, TAAF says she has yet to acknowledge the privileges that claiming Native American ancestry provided her.
“Simply erasing ‘Cherokee’...is not enough, because her ‘brand’ is that of a Cherokee woman,” TAAF’s report claimed, “built on years of work on American Indian related films.”
Besides writers, TAAF has conducted investigations on self-proclaimed tribal elders and educators, among others, and the group has plans to release more reports in the near future.
The goal, Costantino said, “is to end pretendian fraud and all of its forms.”
“The fact that we can’t turn in any direction without running into them making a mockery of us, taking up spaces meant for us, silencing us, replacing us, distorting our histories, languages, ceremonies, we are sick of it,” she said, taking the mission personally as an act of injustice. “At first they wanted to exterminate us. Now, they all want to be us. It’s a very odd turn of events.”
