"White people are weird." LOL, Andrew. You always make my day. Thanks. What I find weird is how nothing ever changes. This is your standard update on the "token cigar store Indian" phenomenon. We have become the little Indian pieces moved around for political purposes, and a heck of a lot of the time, it seems like NEITHER side cares, sincerely.
Natives have a term for the other thing you mention: "pretindians." As for me, I don't get it. As a little girl, when the other children were making fun of my "slanty" eyes, and funny skin color ("Jenny, Jenny, copper as a penny..."), and no doll in the
world looked like me...
I think it is mostly romanticism.
Roger, I thought that she had also made the claim that she's got photographic evidence of her Indian forebears. I thought I read in an interview, when the reporter asked her to see them, she answered, "They're not for your eyes," or something to that effect. I could be wrong, or that could have been "fake news," so don't quote me....
J