Former colleagues of a $167,000-a-year college professor of American Indian studies have said they feel betrayed after admitting she had no proof of Native American ancestry.
Margaret Noodin, 58, was called a “con artist” after she left her job as director of the Electa Quinney Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee last year amid growing suspicion over her claims of Native identity.
The linguist posted a “positionality statement” in which she insisted that her family told her that she had Native American relatives as a child.
But fellow academic Doug Kiel of Oneida Nation in Wisconsin pulled her entries from an exhibit of native art in Chicago when he read it and denounced her as a fraud.
“It was really a lot of extended chatter about, ‘I know this person and I was at a ceremony,’” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ‘And it’s like: no, no, no, no, this is not how this works at all.’
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has launched an investigation into Margaret Noodin, but she retains a job at the university where she teaches part-time
Electa Quinney Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Noodin taught, is a leading center for the study of Native American language and culture
Fellow academic Doug Kiel of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin pulled her entries from an exhibit of native art in Chicago and denounced her as a fraud
Noodin was working as an Ojibwe language instructor in Michigan when she was hired by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to teach at the institute in 2014.
Her origins were questioned in 2021 on a forum called New Age Fraud. The following year, Noodin brought the allegations to the government’s attention.
She had denied lying about her heritage, telling the Journal-Sentinel in 2021 that she grew up believing she was Indigenous because of what her family told her.
Noodin said she cannot pinpoint a tribal nation from which she is descended, but that she has spent years learning the Ojibwe language and making connections within the community.
Dean Scott Gronert apologized to her for “facing these challenges to your identity, which you have discussed so openly in your recent posts and throughout your time at UWM.”
That led to Noodin posting a ‘personality statement’ on a page – but it raised more questions as the name dropped many people she worked with, those she married and her birth name O’Donnell.
There was no discussion of her Ojibwe tribal relatives or her connections to the past.
“My understanding of my own race and ethnicity has evolved over time and there are many ancestors I would like to meet when I leave this world,” she wrote in the online post.
“I have been part of the sugar bush, traditional gardening, wiigwaas harvesting, berry processing and wild rice farming.
“I am a former bowhunter and have caught and cleaned many fish and muskrats,” she continued.
“I have dedicated my time on earth to learning and teaching the language of my ancestors.”
Noodin has secured a new post in Minnesota as director of a tribal nation’s Head Start program
University of Michigan instructor Howard Kimewon said Noodin was a “con artist” who took advantage of him and exploited his knowledge of Ojibwe to further her own career
The confession came as a bombshell for former students and colleagues, who were convinced they had been duped.
“I felt betrayed,” said Antonio Doxtator, a citizen of the Oneida Nation. “I would never have taken her classes if I had known she wasn’t Native.”
University of Michigan lecturer Howard Kimewon said Noodin was a “con artist” who took advantage of him and exploited his knowledge of Ojibwe to further her own career.
“She’s done enough damage to me,” he told the Sentinal. “I can’t forget it.”
Noonan told her readers that “racial change, fraud, and indigeneity are important topics that are being closely examined today.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has begun an investigation into Noodin, but she retains a job at the university teaching online part-time. She left her $167,000-a-year job at the university amid the scandal.
In the meantime, she has secured a new post in Minnesota as director of a tribal nation’s Head Start program.
“Throughout my life, I have sought to continually expand my knowledge of my own family and the communities in which I have been welcomed and involved,” she said in a statement.
“Throughout my life, I have listened to family members, friends and elders who asked that I use my gifts and creativity to honor all my ancestors without denying or erasing family oral history.”
But Assistant Professor Kiel told her she had lost her credibility.
“No matter how you look at it, you have made very big, unforgivable mistakes that rightly raise questions about whether you can be trusted to work with Indigenous people and communities,” he wrote her in an email.
“You still have years to make it right.”
Raquel Saraswati’s (left-wing) identity was first questioned in 2015, when a cultural commentator called her “the ‘Raquel Dolezal’ of the Muslim community.” In 2019, Kay LeClaire (right) of Sussex, Wisconsin, resigned from the Native artist collective she founded when it was revealed that she was a white college student who passed off Native American art purchased on Etsy as her own.
She isn’t the only person who has come under fire in recent years over accusations of misleading others about their background.
Earlier this year, the Chief Inclusion Officer of a Philadelphia-based Quaker group was “exposed” by her mother, who said she had no idea why her daughter claimed to be of Latin, South Asian and Arab descent.
Colleagues of Raquel Saraswati at the American Friends Service Committee said they felt “ripped off” after mother Carol Perone revealed her daughter was “white as snow.”
In 2019, Kay LeClaire of Sussex, Wisconsin, resigned from the Indigenous artist collective she founded when it was revealed that she was a white college student who passed off the Native American art she bought on Etsy as her own.
Perhaps the most famous “race faker” of them all is Rachel Dolezal, who posed as a black woman for a decade before coming out in 2015.
Dolezal, 45, was chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Spokane, Washington, as well as a lecturer in Africana studies at East Washington University.
