Impostor
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Impostor
An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise. Their objective is usually to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but also often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement. Notable impostors False nationality claims * Princess Caraboo (1791–1864), Englishwoman who pretended to be a princess from a fictional island * Korla Pandit (1921–1998), African-American pianist/organist who pretended to be from India * George Psalmanazar (1679–1763), who claimed to be from Formosa False minority national identity claims * Joseph Boyden (born 1966) Canadian writer who falsely claimed First Nations ancestry * H. G. Carrillo (1960–2020), American writer and assistant professor of English at George Washington University who claimed to be a Cuban immigrant despite having been born in Detroit to American parents. * Asa Earl Carter (1925–1979), who under the alias of supposedly Ch ...
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George Psalmanazar
George Psalmanazar ( 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years he convinced many in Britain, but he was eventually revealed to be of European origins. He subsequently became a theological essayist, and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and other noted figures in 18th-century literary London. Early life Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, it is believed that he was born in southern France, perhaps in Languedoc or Provence, to Catholic parents, some time between 1679 and 1684.George Psalmanazar: the Celebrated Native of Formosa
by the Special Collections Department of University of Delaware Library. Last modified 3 November 2003. Accessed 3 November 2003 ...
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Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance
Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long; December 1, 1890 – March 20, 1932) was a journalist, writer and film actor who, for a time, became internationally prominent as a spokesman for Native Americans in the United States, Native American causes. He published an autobiography, purportedly based on his experience as the son of a Blackfoot Confederacy, Blackfoot chief. He was the first presumed Native Americans in the United States, Native American admitted to the Explorers Club in New York City, and held a racial mixed heritage that one Professor describes as "inbetween...—Native, White, and Black." In an article for the academic Journal of Canadian Studies, Professor Vernon at the University of Toronto explains that the accusations of Long Lance being an imposter are false. The Professor writes "Long's mother was recognized as having both White and Lumbee Indian ancestry" and "Sally Long identified herself as part "Croatan," or "Croatoan," the names by which ...
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Helen Darville
Helen Dale (born Helen Darville; 1972) is an Australian writer and lawyer. She is best known for writing ''The Hand that Signed the Paper'', a novel about a Ukrainian family who collaborated with the Nazis in The Holocaust, under the pseudonym Helen Demidenko. A daughter of British immigrants, Darville was educated at Redeemer Lutheran College in Rochedale, a suburb of Brisbane. While studying English literature at the University of Queensland, she wrote ''The Hand that Signed the Paper''. In 1993, the novel won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Dale published her book in 1994 and won the Miles Franklin Award, becoming the award's youngest winner. The following year, she was the subject of a major Australian literary controversy because she had falsely claimed Ukrainian ancestry as part of the basis of the book (and her pseudonym). The misrepresentation has been described as a "literary hoax" in ''The Sydney Morning Herald.'' The novel was subs ...
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Jamake Highwater
Jamake Highwater (born Jackie Marks, also known as Jay or J Marks; 14 February 1931 – June 3, 2001) was an American writer and journalist of Eastern European Jewish ancestry who mispresented himself as Cherokee. In the late 1960s, Marks assumed a pretendian identity, claiming to be Cherokee, and used the name "Jamake Highwater" for his writings. As Highwater, he wrote and published more than 30 fiction and non-fiction books of music, art, poetry and history. His children's novel ''Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey'' (1973) received a Newbery Honor. His book ''The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian America'' (1981) was the basis of a PBS film documentary about Native American culture. Marks was exposed as an imposter in 1984 by activist Hank Adams (Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, Assiniboine) and reporter Jack Anderson (columnist), Jack Anderson in separate publications. Despite this, Marks continued to be widely perceived by the general public as Native American. Early l ...
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Espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangible benefit. A person who commits espionage is called an ''espionage agent'' or ''spy''. Any individual or spy ring (a cooperating group of spies), in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term tends to be associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage. One of the most effective ways to gath ...
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Princess Caraboo
Mary Baker (née Willcocks; 11 November 1792 (alleged), Witheridge, Devonshire, England – 24 December 1864, Bristol, England) was an English impostor. Posing as the fictional Princess Caraboo, Baker pretended to come from a far-off island kingdom and fooled a British town for some months. Biography On 3 April 1817, a cobbler in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England, met an apparently disoriented young woman wearing exotic clothes who was speaking an incomprehensible language. The cobbler's wife took this stranger to the Overseer of the Poor, who placed her in the hands of the local county magistrate, Samuel Worrall, who lived in Knole Park on the estate where Tower House is located. Worrall and his American-born wife Elizabeth could not understand her either; what they did determine was that she called herself Caraboo and that she was interested in Chinese imagery. They sent her to the local inn, where she identified a drawing of a pineapple with the word 'nanas', meaning ...
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Grey Owl
Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (; September 18, 1888 – April 13, 1938), commonly known as Grey Owl, was a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who disguised himself as a Native American man. While he achieved fame as a conservationist during his life, after his death, the revelation that he was not Indigenous, along with other autobiographical fabrications, negatively affected his reputation. Belaney rose to prominence as a notable author and lecturer, primarily on environmental issues. In working with the National Parks Branch, Grey Owl became the subject of many films, and was established as the "'caretaker of park animals' at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba" in 1931. Together with his numerous articles, books, films and lectures, his views on conservation reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada. His conservation views largely focused on humans' negative impact on nature through their commodification of nature's resources for profits, an ...
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Iron Eyes Cody
Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera Oscar de Corti, April 3, 1904 – January 4, 1999) was an American actor of Italian descent who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films, famously as ''Chief Iron Eyes'' in Bob Hope's '' The Paleface'' (1948). He also played a Native American shedding a tear about litter in one of the country's most well-known television public service announcements from the group Keep America Beautiful. Living in Hollywood, he began to insist, even in his private life, that he was Native American, over time claiming membership in several different tribes. In 1996, Cody's half-sister said that he was of Italian ancestry, but he denied it. After his death, it was revealed that he was of Sicilian parentage, and not Native American at all. Early life Cody was born Espera Oscar de Corti on April 3, 1904, in Kaplan in Vermilion Parish, in southwestern Louisiana, a second son of Francesca Salpietra from Sicily and her husband, Antonio de Corti from southern Italy. ...
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Rachel Dolezal
Nkechi Amare Diallo (; born Rachel Anne Dolezal, November 12, 1977) () is an American former college instructor and activist known for identifying as a transracial black woman. In addition to claiming black ancestry, she also claimed Native American descent. She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president. Dolezal was president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, from 2014 until June 2015, when she resigned in the midst of controversy over her racial identity. She was the subject of public scrutiny when her parents publicly stated that she was pretending to be black but was actually white. The statement by Dolezal's parents followed Dolezal's reports to police and local news media that she had been the victim of race-related hate crimes; a police investigation did not find support for her allegations. Dolezal had also claimed on an application form to be mixed-race and had falsely claimed that an African-American ...
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Keep America Beautiful
Keep America Beautiful is a nonprofit organization founded in 1953. It is the largest community improvement organization in the United States, with more than 700 state and community-based affiliate organizations and more than 1,000 partner organizations. Keep America Beautiful aims to end littering, to improve recycling, and to beautify American communities. The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling has been criticized as greenwashing in that it diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries. History Keep America Beautiful was founded in December 1953 by a group of American corporations (including companies such as the American Can Company, the Continental Can Company, and Owens-Illinois Glass Co.), nonprofit organizations (the Izaak Walton League, National Council of State Garden Clubs, and the U.S. Brewers Foundation), government agencies (Connecticut State Highway Dept., N.Y. State Department of Public Works), and individuals in reaction to the ...
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Public Service Announcement
A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, they are known as an announcement in the public interest (API). History The earliest public service announcements (in the form of moving pictures) were made before and during the Second World War years in both the UK and the US. In the UK, amateur actor Richard Massingham set up Public Relationship Films Ltd in 1938 as a specialist agency for producing short educational films for the public. In the films, he typically played a bumbling character who was slightly more stupid than average and often explained the message of the film by demonstrating the risks if it was ignored. The films covered topics such as how to cross the road, how to prevent the spread of diseases, how to swim, and how to drive without causing the road to be unsafe for ...
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Cree
The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. In Canada, over 350,000 people are Cree or have Cree ancestry. The major proportion of Cree in Canada live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. About 27,000 live in Quebec. In the United States, Cree people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana, where they share the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation with Ojibwe (Chippewa) people. The documented westward migration over time has been strongly associated with their roles as traders and hunters in the North American fur trade. Sub-groups / Geography The Cree are generally divided into eight groups based on dialect and region. These divisions do not necessarily r ...
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