After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, a tweet from John Martin, who goes by @LakotaMan1 on X, went viral. He suggested that abortion clinics be set up on “Indian reservations.” His rationale was that reservations are “sovereign nations.”
“Sovereign nations, Supreme Court decisions, like overturning Roe V Wade—DO NOT APPLY,” Martin tweeted. He got almost 230,000 likes, and his message was reposted more than 40,000 times.
On a dark day, Martin’s tweet was a shining light. Enthusiastic replies applauded Martin and spitballed about how putting abortion clinics on reservations would boost their economies and add infrastructure.
The only problem: Getting an abortion on a Native reservation was nearly impossible before the Dobbs decision. Healthcare on reservations is funded, in part, by the Indian Health Service, a federal body that is subject to the Hyde Amendment, a law that restricts the use of federal money for abortions.
In fact, just after Roe was overturned, Stacy Leeds, a former Cherokee Nation Supreme Court justice, told Axios that “it’s an overreach for people to assume, or presume that a tribe would want to in the first place.”
Leeds pointed out the Hyde Amendment’s restrictions on using federal funds for abortions and said of abortion clinics on reservations, “it would need to involve tribal citizens only.”
Who is John Martin, aka LakotaMan?
Martin has found fame and adoration on X, where he has over 515,000 followers, but he is infamous among Native and Indigenous communities that are active on the app. The term “indigenous” refers to “peoples with pre-existing sovereignty who were living together as a community prior to contact with settler populations.”
“Native” signifies people who are part of groups that are indigenous to what is now the United States.
Some Indigenous people say that Martin perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Native people, like calling himself a “savage” in multiple tweets. Some who have looked into his claims about his ancestry and tribal enrollment told the Daily Dot that they are skeptical about his lineage.
A few said they even think Martin is a “pretendian,” or someone pretending to have Native and/or Indigenous ancestry.
The Daily Dot looked into the controversies surrounding Martin and spoke with Indigenous people about the impact his online presence has had on the public’s perception of them.
Martin has insisted on multiple occasions that he is Native, but some Native people say that the way that Martin represents their community—which already struggles with visibility and representation—is damaging.
Plus, they say that a figure with questionable motives like Martin speaking for Native people with such a large platform combats the hard-won progress that Native activists and advocates have made in increasing wider understanding of modern Indigenous existence and struggles.
For this story, the Daily Dot investigated Martin’s claims about his ancestry and spoke with Indigenous people familiar with his online presence. Martin did not respond to multiple interview requests.
His content
Some replies to Martin’s tweet about abortion on Native reservations brought up the legal obstacles. According to the Indian Health Services (IHS), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, agency funds may only be used to provide for an abortion if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother or the fetus is a result of rape or incest.
Plus, under the Hyde Amendment, federal funding cannot be used to fund abortions, except in the cases mentioned above. Reservations receive federal funding.
Martin didn’t respond to anyone on X who brought up the roadblocks of the IHS funding restrictions and the Hyde Amendment. Nor did he delete the post after his statement about abortion clinics on reservations was widely debunked.
His critics in the Indigenous community say that by not doing so, he spread disinformation about how Native reservations function.
Through his X account, Martin offers perspective on current events with Native history in mind and posts about his Native heritage. Many of his viral tweets consist of him comparing modern-day politicians to revered Native American figures.
“These two men exude the warrior spirit of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud,” Martin tweeted on Feb. 20, alongside a photo of President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky. He also reportedly gave Zelensky a “Lakota name.”
It’s these sorts of posts that frustrate Twyla Baker, an Indigenous woman who grew up and lives on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and is enrolled in the three affiliated tribes of North Dakota: Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
As an advocate for Indigenous communities, Baker feels that Martin’s tweets are problematic and propagate stereotypes.
“The Native mystic handing out Indian names [to Zelensky] on [X] was just beyond the pale stupid to me,” Baker told the Daily Dot.
She described Martin as feeding non-Native—specifically white—people what they want to hear, which is “nonsense” that doesn’t challenge colonizer perspectives of Native and Indigenous people.
She noted that Martin tweets about the Lakota leader Sitting Bull every few months. Last December, he tweeted, “Jesus Christ didn’t die for me, Chief Sitting Bull did.” He also often contrasts Sitting Bull and former President Donald Trump.
According to Martin, unlike Trump, Sitting Bull “never praised a Russian dictator” and he “never stole $250 million dollars from his followers.” Sitting Bull’s residence “never got raided by the FBI.”
Baker said that Martin’s focus on famous, historical Native people rather than modern-day Native and indigenous communities contributes to “the invisibility of indigenous people.”
“It really furthers the idea of indigenous people as caricatures as if we aren’t actually still here,” Baker said. “We are very much so living, breathing, contributing members of this very modern society.”
She also explained that Martin’s tweets exhibit pan-Indianism, or the idea that all Native and Indigenous people are not only united but also culturally homogenous—which isn’t true. Native groups, peoples, and individuals all have different experiences, histories, traditions, lifestyles, and views.
“There’s so much stuff going on here. And so many things that we have to deal with on so many different fronts,” Baker said of Fort Berthold, a reservation in North Dakota that is home to three federally recognized indigenous groups. “The stuff that he does just trivializes that type of work, what we’re trying to do.”
Though she has never had any direct contact with Martin, Baker said she has been blocked by him on X. She calls this “a badge of honor.”
“Some native people within Native Twitter are too real for him,” Baker said.
Martin had previously blocked multiple of the sources that the Daily Dot interviewed. These individuals have disputed his claims about his ancestry or have called him out for how he portrays the Native community.
Other Native sources that the Daily Dot spoke with for this story declined to speak about Martin on the record.
His ancestry
Martin blocked Ali Watson, a nonbinary Oglala Lakota person, last year after Watson tweeted at him that their mother attended an Indian Boarding School around the same time Martin says his parents did. Watson says they have done extensive research on Martin’s background, which has led them to believe that he either isn’t Lakota, as he insists, or isn’t Native American at all.
Watson told the Daily Dot that when they first encountered his tweets, it immediately became clear to them that Martin doesn’t know “anything about Lakota culture.”
“The stuff that he was posting were things that pretty much anybody can Google,” Watson said. “This guy is not legit and nobody’s paying attention.”
Watson said they grew even more suspicious when Martin began tweeting about his ancestral connections. Martin claims to have multiple notable great-grandparents and cousins.
In 2019, Martin stated that his “great-grandfather” was a descendant of White Eyes and that his paternal grandfather was a member of the White Eyes family. Martin also tweeted that his father was named “Melvin D. White Eyes.”
“White Eyes” was the English name of Koquethagechton, a historically significant Native leader of the Lenape people who lived during the mid 1700s in what is now Pennsylvania and Ohio. White Eyes was asked to represent the Lenape people in the Continental Congress in 1776 and received a special thanks from the U.S. Congress. He also served in the U.S. Army. Some descendants of White Eyes have “White Eyes” as their surname.
However the exact photo that Martin posted of his “great-grandfather, White Eyes (Ista Ska)” in June 2019 was posted before—in May 2019—in a Facebook group called “Finest Natives” with the caption “Wanted Poster From 1874.” A version of the photo was also posted on 9GAG in May 2019, and another version of it is available for purchase on Etsy.
In response to Martin’s claims of ancestry with White Eyes, Sidney Ann White Eyes, a member of the White Eyes family, tweeted that Martin is not a part of “the White Eyes family tree any way” he claims.
“Every White Eyes knows that you are not tiospaye,” Sidney Ann White Eyes tweeted. (Tiospaye means extended family.) “You’re getting caught in a web of lies and now you’re saying he’s your grandfather not father. Don’t claim to be part of a family when you are not.”
When he was challenged by Native individuals about his relation to White Eyes, Martin posted (and then deleted) a screenshot of a conversation between him and his brother, Melvin Martin Jr., in which Martin asks if they are really related to White Eyes.
“We are direct descendants of the warrior White Eyes,” Melvin replied. Melvin also said that “other White Eyes” family members recognized him in public because of his distinguishing White Eyes’ “high forehead.”
Martin no longer refers to his father as Melvin D. White Eyes; in posts from 2022, he identified him as Melvin Martin.
Martin also claims that Floyd Westerman, a famous Dakota (or Santee) musician, actor, and activist who died in 2007, was his cousin. Chante Westerman, Floyd Westerman’s daughter, told the Daily Dot that she doesn’t “recall [Martin’s] name off hand.”
“Me n my siblings do not recognize [Martin’s] name,” Westerman told the Daily Dot via Facebook message. “But many young men out of respect called [Westerman] uncle. Revered him as family. It’s not uncommon.”
Martin also claims that his “great grandmother played the piano at the 1905 World’s Fair in St. Louis.” (The St. Louis World’s Fair happened in 1904, an error he remedied in another tweet about the event.)
“Imagine the expressions on their faces as a Lakota ‘savage’ played Chopin,” Martin tweeted. “Imagine their personal epiphanies. ‘Why are we killing these beautiful people when we should be learning from them?’ Why indeed?”
He also attached a photo of a woman he identifies as his great grandmother in the tweet. After doing searches on multiple image search engines, the Daily Dot has not been able to disprove the photo isn’t unique to Martin; it hasn’t been posted elsewhere on the internet, nor did anyone post it before him.
That said, a photo of a Native woman playing piano is not included in the U.S. Library of Congress’s complete portfolio of the 1904 St. Louis World’s fair or in other publicly available photo collections of the event.
Regarding Martin’s identity as Lakota, Matt Britton, a Native person who said he is actually Martin’s distant cousin, looked into Martin’s claims about his lineage and said he concluded that Martin is Native—he’s just not Lakota.
After an investigation using publicly available information, Britton said Martin is Santee Sioux and Oneida. The Santee Sioux people—also known as Dakota—are related to the Lakota, as both are two of the largest subsets of the Great Sioux Nation located in what is now the midwest. The Oneida people’s homeland is in what is now central New York.
Using information shared on Facebook by Martin and his siblings, Britton found what he believes to be Martin’s real father’s grave. On it, “Santee Sioux” is engraved.
“He is a liar,” Britton wrote in a now-deleted blog post. “So—when you follow and praise him know that you’re praising dishonesty and ancestor stealing. He isn’t who he claims to be.”
Britton also said he’s debunked some of Martin’s other claims: Martin states that he is “enrolled” in Pine Ridge, a Lakota reservation in South Dakota, in his X bio and has tweeted that he has collected money to donate to the reservation. Britton, however, says Martin isn’t enrolled and his fundraising campaign is phony.
“Do not donate money directly to John Martin as he is being shady about it, is refusing to name his contact [at Pine Ridge], isn’t being transparent with receipts,” Britton wrote. “And could be lining his own pockets instead.”
Officials at Pine Ridge did not respond to the Daily Dot’s multiple requests for comment.
Infamous ‘pretendians’
Doubting the Native ancestry of others has become more common over the last few years with the rise of “pretendians,” or people who claim to be Native but aren’t. A well-known example of a pretendian is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who infamously claimed to be part Cherokee and took a DNA test to prove it.
After backlash from the Cherokee Nation itself which stated that her behavior was “inappropriate and wrong,” Warren was included on the “Alleged Pretendians List,” a public document created by Jacqueline Keeler, a Native activist and writer.
Other well-known “pretendians” outed from Keeler’s list include Elizabeth Hoover, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who has since apologized for faking Native identity; and Susan Taffe Reed, a Dartmouth College employee was named dean of the Native American Program—until the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma, which Reed claimed to have ties to, disputed her alleged affiliation.
In an interview with the Daily Dot, Keeler said that her Pretendians list focuses on people who aren’t Native but have built a name for themselves (or their entire career) around saying they are Native—not people who have a privately held belief that they may have Native ancestry.
A huge part of Pretendianism, as defined by Keeler, is performing Native identity for white people. She explained it to the Daily Dot using the case study of a Pretendian competing with people who are actually Native to get a job in which their Native identity is valued.
“You’re in a hiring committee, and you’re looking at a group of people. One of them is performing the [Native] identity, and doing it just the way you like,” Keeler told the Daily Dot. “And you have all these [actually] Indian people who are kind of foreign and weird, have weird accents. Or dark [skin], maybe not as good looking as you thought Indians should be…. What do they do? They hire the person performing the identity.”
As for the cause of Pretendianism, Keeler says it’s the “failure by academia, the media and others to appropriately specify what it means to be American Indian” in an op-ed she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“How is verification possible if anyone can claim authenticity without any proof?” Keeler wrote. “The cost of Pretendianism is more than just the misleading play-acting of a role for an unsuspecting American audience. It causes harm to Native nations, communities and individuals who have already endured enough.”
Frances Danger, a Mvskoke and Semvnole woman who is also blocked by Martin on X, says she is hesitant to declare him a “pretendian.” People have doubted her Native identity before, so she knows how invalidating that can feel—she does, however, feel he is “harming Natives for clout.”
“I won’t question his indigeneity. I question his motives. I think that he’s doing this for his own advancement of his own brand,” Danger told the Daily Dot. “If it comes out that he is not [Native], I wouldn’t be surprised.”
LakotaMan’s pattern of behavior
Still, Danger is “not a fan” of Martin.
“It’s really kind of gross to watch,” Danger said of Martin’s online behavior. “I’m very glad he blocked me.”
Danger said Martin “blows whichever way the wind takes him.” For example, in 2014, he tweeted “call me a Redskin” and shared a photo of himself in a Washington Redskins T-shirt. Years later, he tweeted that the team’s logo was “analogous to the ‘n’ word.”
“You don’t get to play #notyourmascot when you gave permission for people to call you r*dskin,” Danger tweeted, alongside the hashtags #lakotaman and #hypocrite.
Danger has also noticed that Martin recycles his tweets by posting the same anecdotes over and over again.
“When they tell me to ‘go back to my country,’” Martin tweeted in July 2022, “I set up my teepee in their backyard and say ‘I’m home.’”
He has tweeted a similar story about putting his teepee in the backyard of “a white lady,” parking his buffalo in the yard of “a MAGA white lady,” and setting up a wigwam in the yard of “a racist white lady.” The aforementioned tweets all received thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets.
“He never owns his behavior. He never corrects it,” Danger said. “People are walking off with this horrible, horrible, twisted idea of who we are as a nation, our sovereignty, and who we are as peoples.”
Though Martin did not respond to the Daily Dot’s multiple requests for comment, he remains consistently active on Twitter and continues to post statements in line with those that he has been criticized for.
Shortly before publication of this article, Martin posted that “a MAGA” called him “Woke-ahontos” because he shares content about Native people on Twitter. He wrote that, to him, Woke-ahontos is a term of endearment and he’ll “wear it proudly.”
“Unless of course you’d like me to stop,” he wrote in a now-deleted reply to his over half a million followers. “Well, do you want me, to stop?”
Update 3:28pm CT, Nov. 28: After this story was published, a family member of Martin got in touch with the Daily Dot. In a phone interview, the family member said that although Martin “fabricates a lot of stuff,” he is enrolled in Pine Ridge and is Oglala Sioux (or Lakota).
They also said that Martin is related to a man named John White Eyes, though he is not the White Eyes that Martin has posted about; that his great-grandmother did not play piano at the St. Louis World’s Fair; and that Martin is not related to Floyd Westerman—though Westerman was a friend of their family’s.
“He’s just an older guy trying to get attention in the wrong way no matter what kind of attention it is,” the family member said of Martin.
The source shared that Martin’s family is not a fan of his presence on X and doesn’t appreciate that he shares photos of his family members and children online. The family member also wishes he would prove his authenticity rather than block people who doubt him.
Regarding Martin’s collecting of funds for Pine Ridge, the family member said the PayPal account that Martin shared to crowdfund donations on social media belongs to another family member who had a contact at Pine Ridge.
The Daily Dot’s source said the family member did send donations from the PayPal account to the reservation.
The family member said still, Martin often embellishes the truth online.
“He can be a pathological liar, a storyteller,” the family member told the Daily Dot. “There’s truth and then there’s just him and his truth. Which are lies.”
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