This shit happens all the time up here, Indigenous studies is rife with this sort of fraud. If she's enough of an asset than they'll make a big show of how she's offered tribal membership and if not she'll quietly be shuffled off to the side.
The Piapot Family however said she was adopted into their family in the traditional way in a recent statement made to combat the allegations, which they called “hurtful, ignorant, colonial and racist.”
“We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight [and financial gain] than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could,” reads the Piapot family statement.
This shit happens all the time up here, Indigenous studies is rife with this sort of fraud. If she's enough of an asset than they'll make a big show of how she's offered tribal membership and if not she'll quietly be shuffled off to the side.
And there it is just like you said