Times really have changed. Back before the days of the Internet, Elizabeth Warren was able to fake her Native American heritage and there was really no easy way to call her out on it. It was just harder back then.
It's a bit easier now, which is why we seem to see these stories on like an hourly basis these days:
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.
Uh huh. "Incorrectly identified." Like it was just a clerical mistake — she checked the wrong box on the census form.
"Incorrectly identifying" your own Native American background is one thing. But holy cow, does everyone else have to believe it? I mean, I'm not trying to be nasty here, but, well, here's Ms. Hoover, pictured on the right while standing next to a woman with actual Native American ancestry:
I'm just saying. This isn't hard to spot. You can see this trickery from a mile away.
Though I'll admit, if a lady does her dark hair in a long braid, wears some sort of vaguely indigenous symbols on her hoodie, and hops on a horse, even she can kinda, sorta look like an Indian. A little.
One former colleague, meanwhile — who is also an actual Native American — said that Ms. Hoover's claims were not all that hard to disprove:
"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[.]"
