Revealed: Co-founder of LGBTQ art collective posed as an indigenous woman

A woman who co-owned an LGBTQ indigenous artists' collective in Wisconsin was apparently revealed to be white, despite claiming Native American heritage.

Kay LeClaire, who identifies as non-binary and also goes by the name nibiiwakamigkwe, has claimed Métis, Oneida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cuban and Jewish heritage since at least 2017 and co-founded the giige art collective in Madison, but her background was exposed as a fraud by a user on the New Age Fraud message forum, reported Madison365.

A user called AdvancedSmite first became aware of LeClaire through a Facebook ad for an upcoming talk she was giving under the name nibiiwakamigkwe, which raised the forum user's suspicions because the single given Ojibwe name would typically be reserved for ceremonial use.

So AdvancedSmite, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from other so-called "pretendians," started googling and connected the Ojibwe name to LeClaire, which that person said was “a common Native American last name," and found other posts where she identified as Anishinaabe.

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“Our band names are so important, so I tend to be suspicious when someone just says Anishinaabe,” AdvancedSmite said.

The self-described “hobbyist genealogist" continued researching and found online records and other resources to determine LeClaire was actually from German, Swedish and French Canadian backgrounds, and eventually determined LeClaire had graduated in 2012 from a high school in Sussex, Wisconsin, attended University of Wisconsin and in 2018 married a research specialist there.

A since-deleted Facebook post by Katie Le Claire, as she was known then, described herself as “a 20-something white woman," but was identifying the following year as indigenous enough to co-found the giige collective.

“I was so relieved that someone else had called it out and I didn’t have to. I’ve had my suspicions, but I didn’t have anything confirmed,” said another co-founder Nipinet Landsem about the revelations. “At first, I was relieved, and then I moved into every human emotion known to man. I am horrified, I’m upset. We’ve already had so much taken away from us. American society is built off of things that have been stolen from Native and Black people. Stolen land, stolen resources, stolen labor, and white people think it’s okay to just continue stealing from us.”

LeClaire declined to be interviewed but issued a statement apologizing for the deception.

“I am sorry,” they wrote. “A lot of information has come to my attention since late December. I am still processing it all and do not yet know how to respond adequately. What I can do now is offer change. Moving forward, my efforts will be towards reducing harm by following the directions provided by Native community members and community-specified proxies. Currently, this means that I am not using the Ojibwe name given to me and am removing myself from all community spaces, positions, projects, and grants and will not seek new ones. Any culturally related items I hold are being redistributed back in community, either to the original makers and gift-givers when possible or elsewhere as determined by community members. Thank you.”