Presence is not Preservation

©  2026. Kimberly Toney. Posted with permission.

The views expressed here are my own. I write in my personal capacity as a Nipmuc person and NCLP member; This post is published by the Nipmuc Community Land Project as part of an effort to make visible the different positions held by Nipmuc people and NCLP members regarding public representation and organizational partnerships.

Nipmuc people do not all agree about where we should appear, whom we should work with, or what kinds of public engagement best protect our histories. That diversity of opinion is important and necessary for building spaces grounded in accountability and transparency. But invoking diversity does not somehow relieve us of our responsibility to examine the consequences of our choices—particularly when our participation lends legitimacy to organizations that platform contested or false claims to Indigenous identity.

My critiques of these choices and my concerns about certain organizations are not simply because some organization may partner with people I dislike or hold events that I would not personally attend. My concern is with organizations that repeatedly center and promote contested claims to Indigenous identity and peoplehood while treating serious questions of kinship, community accountability, and political authority as irrelevant to their programming. When serious questions are raised about whether claims to Indigenous identity are grounded in kinship, community relationship, and political accountability, organizations do not become neutral simply by declining to engage those questions.¹ 

“Pretendian” can be an uncomfortable word, and it can be used carelessly. I do not use it to punish people who are sincerely trying to understand their ancestry, to suggest that enrollment is the only possible measure of belonging, or to impose colonial ideas about blood quantum. Nor do I use it to deny the very real histories of displacement, racial reclassification, enslavement, detribalization and family separation that have disrupted Indigenous kinship for centuries - throughout the Northeast and beyond.

Pretendianism describes a larger pattern in which people claim Indigenous identities without meaningful kinship or community accountability and then acquire public authority, institutional recognition, money, or other opportunities through those claims. Organizations participate in that process when they repeatedly provide stages, titles, audiences, funding and credibility to those people or groups, while ignoring the objections from the Indigenous Nations whose identities, histories, and political authority are being claimed.²

Nipmuc participation in such organizational spaces is therefore not neutral.

I’ve heard this participation described as a way to ensure that Nipmuc histories are not erased from our homelands, and I understand the fear behind that argument. Nipmuc presence has been ignored, minimized, and overwritten for generations. But showing up within an organization’s existing framework that allows for a generalized “Native” story, does not necessarily correct that erasure. Instead, it can strengthen the framework responsible for that very erasure.

When Nipmuc people appear as speakers, performers, educators, or headliners at events that also legitimize groups whose claims to Indigenous identity have been rejected or challenged by the Nations whose identities they claim, our presence can function as evidence that the entire gathering is credible. We may be invited to share knowledge that is genuinely Nipmuc, yet our participation also supplies cultural authority to the organization hosting us and to the other claims the organization chooses to elevate. We become -  intentionally or not - part of the organization’s validation structure. In so doing, we also empower event attendees to make their own further assumptions about legitimacy, kinship, culture and sovereignty. Presence is not cultural preservation when our presence helps authenticate narratives that serve to undermine us.

This is why I reject the argument that we must work within such spaces or risk disappearing from our own homelands. Nipmuc people do not need another organization’s permission to hold a paddle, teach our histories, gather beside the river, or build relationships with the public. We can create our own paddles, educational programs, partnerships, and organizational structures—ones in which Nipmuc history is not inserted as one interchangeable element in a generalized or fabricated “Native” story.

Doing so indeed requires more work and may offer less immediate visibility, compensation, or applause. But cultural stewardship is not measured by how frequently we appear at a public-facing event. It is measured by the relationships we protect, the truths we refuse to compromise, and the structures we build for those will who come after us.

There is a difference between individual autonomy and collective responsibility. Nipmuc people are free to make their own decisions about where they work and appear. But when people hold leadership roles within a Nipmuc organization, their public affiliations can affect more than their personal reputations. They can create the appearance of organizational endorsement, complicate relationships with other Indigenous Nations, and weaken our ability to establish meaningful ethical boundaries. Being financially compensated for one’s engagement does not automatically make participation unethical, but payment does not make the political consequences disappear either.

Discernment is itself a form of cultural work. Refusal can be a form of stewardship. Choosing not to lend our names, knowledge, labor, and presence to an organization is not an act of disappearance. Sometimes it is how we insist that we will not be absorbed, flattened, assimilated, or used to legitimize the erasure of anyone else.

endnotes:

¹  I would prefer that people of other tribal nations be able to address questions of identity, kinship, and political belonging within their community/ies without Nipmuc people making ourselves the arbiters of their affairs. These are not my Nation’s political questions to resolve. But Nipmuc participation in organizations that platform contested claims pulls me into the issue, whether I wish to enter it or not. When people holding leadership roles within the Nipmuc Community Land Project repeatedly participate in these events, members of the public may reasonably assume that they speak for NCLP or that others within the organization share their position, for example. Silence may then be misread as tacit agreement. I am therefore compelled to state clearly that these collaborations do not represent me and that I do not understand them as advancing Nipmuc interests.This is not an attempt to prevent individual Nipmuc people from making their own decisions or expressing their own views. Those who believe these relationships are valuable are entitled to explain their reasoning. My reflections here ask community members to consider that individual autonomy does not eliminate collective or organizational consequences.

² Yellowhead Institute. Special Report Pretendians and Publications: The Problem and Solutions to Redface Research

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For further reading/works informing this essay:

• Barker, Joanne. Native Acts : Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity. Duke University Press, 2011.

• Sturm, Circe. Becoming Indian : The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century. 1st ed., School for Advanced Research Press, 2011.

• TallBear, Kimberly. Native American DNA : Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

• Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done : Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.