In a column in the Daily Telegraph Andrew Bolt used the word ‘pretendian’. I conducted a careful search, and so far, cannot locate this word in any of the major dictionaries. However, it does appear in the hyper-hip online Urban Dictionary where ‘pretendian’ is defined as ‘a white American who claims to be at least part Native American’ (a ‘pretend Indian’ – the source of the word.) The most famous case in the US is probably Senator Elizabeth Warren. She claimed to be partly Cherokee, a claim disputed by commentators. So, she took a DNA test, which showed that, yes, she did have a small amount of Native American DNA, going back possibly six or more likely ten generations – but it was not Cherokee. She later apologised to the Cherokee people. Then there was Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, an Englishman who migrated to Canada, changed his appearance, and claimed to be an Indian man named Grey Owl. He wrote books, went on well-paying lecture tours and was only exposed after he died in 1938. He was definitely a ‘pretendian’. Then there’s the case of Thomas King, a Canadian writer and broadcaster who claimed to be at least part Cherokee. However, in 2025, he accepted genealogists’ findings that he has no Indigenous ancestry. Another ‘pretendian’. Andrew Bolt also writes about Bruce Pascoe, author of the bestselling Dark Emu, who claims Aboriginal ancestry. A website has been set up to debunk his claims – darkemuexposed.org – on which genealogists claim that his ancestry is 100-per-cent British. These are people who own the newish expression ‘pretendian’. There have been earlier labels. At one point, they were called ‘race switchers’ – people who grew up as white Australians and later announced that they had Aboriginal blood and identified as Aboriginal. This label became ‘box ticker’ – because on many official forms, no evidence is required of Aboriginality, all you have to do is tick the ‘Indigenous’ box and whatever benefits go with that label are yours. In those cases, where ticking such a box is unjustified, perhaps this new word of ‘pretendian’ applies. The Urban Dictionary has traced the origin of ‘pretendian’ back to 2007.