‘Fake Indian: Why America Bought a White Supremacist’s Native American Memoir’ will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 27, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at East Central University’s Raymond J. Estep Multimedia Center of the Bill S. Cole University Center.
The program features a screening of the 2010 documentary film The Reconstruction of Asa Carter which will take place from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., followed by an hour-long discussion, question-and-answer session with the film’s director Marco Ricci, producer Douglas Newman and executive producer Dr. Laura Browder, who is the Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond.
The Reconstruction of Asa Carter dramatizes the story of a white supremacist who wrote speeches for Alabama Governor George Wallace, including Wallace’s 1963 inaugural address, which included the infamous line “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”.
Thirteen years later, Carter used the pseudonym ‘Forrest Carter’ when he published a bestselling nonfiction memoir, The Education of Little Tree (1976). The book offers a tender remembrance of the emotional and spiritual journey of a young boy (presumably the author) who is raised by his beloved Cherokee grandparents. It won the 1991 American Booksellers Association Book of the Year award and was made into a feature film in 1997.
In 1991, an article in the New York Times drew attention to the fact that the memoir was a complete hoax and its author was none other than the late Asa Carter, who died in 1979.
This unique event is being supported by a wide range of organizations within ECU and the Ada community including ECU’s Native American Studies Program, the University Honors Program, the Political Science and Legal Studies Department and the Ada Multiculturalism Committee. It is funded by ECU’s Hayes Native American Center with support from the Oklahoma Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the ECU Foundation.
Both the screening and question-and-answer session are free and open to the public.