Reader > Recent Status Updates

Re: Rebecca Roanhorse cultural identity theft

Agoyo, A. (2020, June 24). The Elizabeth Warren of the sci-fi set': Author faces criticism for repeated use of tribal traditions. Indianz.com.
https://indianz.com/News/2020/06/24/t...

Nicole Demerin was a member of what is now called the international Gothic Association. It is a group where ethnic fraud runs rampant. Rebecca Roanhorse, for example, is not a legitimate indigenous writer. She’s a pretendian. Leah is often associated with literary ethnic frauds so I’m not the least bit surprised.

Obit continued: “An outspoken member of the International Society of Gothic Scholars, Demerin represented the U.K.-based organization in a televised interview during the society’s annual conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1998. —Cynthia Henthorn.”
Art by Nicole Demerin, a black and white 8 x 10 Cibachrome print, titled Medusa (1988). https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/caa-ne...

Obit continued: “She was also instrumental in putting together exhibitions of the DNR Xerox Project, a traveling installation comprised of artwork created by AIDS patients on the Do-Not-Resuscitate forms. The project was featured at a number of venues, including The Bearded Lady in San Francisco (1994) and the Kraine Theatre Gallery (1993) and the Ridge Street Gallery (1991, 1990), both in New York.”

Obit continued: “A graduate of the Hunter College M.F.A. program in 1988, Demerin’s work was included in The Uncanny: Perverse and Convulsive Beauty at Artemisia in Chicago in 1997. She was perhaps best known for organizing group exhibitions, most notably No More Nice Girls (1994) and Abortion a priori: Artists Support Roe v. Wade (1992) both at ABC No Rio in New York.”

Demerin Obit continued: “She was particularly attracted to the pathological nature that the femme fatale embodied: danger, death, seduction, and societal transgressions of every sort. In appropriating this iconography, she transformed monstrous specimens of taboo feminine archetypes into powerful images of women reveling in their own sexuality—certainly in control of it’s they boldly confronted the viewer.”

Obituary in CAA News, Newsletter of the College Art Association, Vol. 29, No. 2 (March 2004), p. 23.

“Nicole Demerin, an artist and exhibition organizer, died December 25, 2002, at the age of 42. Demerin sought to reclaim the femme fatale in her photography, which was inspired by depictions of female abjection and original ‘bad girls’ found in fin-de-siècle art and culture.”

One concerning thing that happens when Leah controls someone’s death is that obituaries often totally leave out the person’s family. There is never anything about who they are survived by. There is very little information at all. It’s just announced that the person has joined the ancestors and that’s it. No questions. No explanations. Nothing.

Leah is creepy after deaths in the community. Leah misuses the names of other organizers after they have died, for personal gain and clout. I have witnessed Leah using the names of people she actually abused and co-opting their work and names after their deaths. It’s extremely fucked up. Leah targets disabled people who she expects to die young. Nicole Demerin was 42 when she died on 12/15/2002.

Patty Berne enabled Leah’s harmful and abusive behavior for many years. Patty was a world class enabler and facilitated a lot of abuse, shielding predators in the community from accountability.

Leah Louise Albrecht, a middle-class American descended from Europeans (Irish, Polish, German / Dutch, German, British, French, Portuguese) thanks Black & Brown working class organizers for teaching her to steal. Leah has been an organized thief since her teenage years. She was scamming her employers and organized a major theft ring targeting booksellers in the Worcester area. She has a lifelong scamming practice.

Maybe Leah could be considered a “child” of Frida if we consider the ways Frida performed marginalized identities for personal gain and activist clout, fabricated lore, and engaged in theft at the expense of Indigenous sovereignty…

Although much like Leah, Frida was a person of European heritage who fetishized Indigenous people, engaged in Indigenous cultural identity theft, and performed fabricated family lore with culturally appropriative clothing and hairstyles

Leah’s Irish great-grandfather Anthony James Conlon was a star of early 1900s basketball. Born in Ballina, Mayo County, Ireland, he immigrated to the U.S. as a child with his father and brother, Pat & Patrick Conlon who settled in Fitchburg, MA. Anthony married Emma Bergner June 11, 1901. Her ancestors immigrated from Saxony, Germany. Leah also has ancestors from Bützow on her dad’s side.

On p. 9 Leah thanks Frida and Harriet’s Children workshop participants. This is an example of the ways Leah has profited from cultural identity theft. Leah created a workshop Leah is not, nor is anyone in her family a “child” of Frida or Harriet. This is fraudulent representation and exploitation of falsely claimed marginalized identity for personal gain and activist clout. Leah is German, however. Not bipoc.

Still on page 9. I am a survivor of The Seattle Disability Justice Collective. It was a destructive group where physical and sexual assaults occurred with extreme exploitive labor practices, theft, and abuse. Most evidence of DJC Seattle has been scrubbed by narcissistic abusers & financial predators dodging accountability for criminal behavior. Susan Naomi Finkelstein aka Bear has a long record of assault and theft

Clarification on the last comment. I was in the Sick and Disabled Queers Facebook group from its early days. It was not always secret & changed to a secret group later. I was not in the bipoc SDQ group and do not know who moderates that, but it’s my understanding the moderators of that group removed several white people misrepresenting themselves as people of color. Leah’s accomplices were among those removed.

Still on page 9. Leah thanks the Sick and Disabled Queers group and the Sick and Disabled Queer and Trans People of Color Facebook group. These are secret groups moderated by high-control narcissistic abusers. Sick and Disabled queers was founded by a white race-shifter— notoriously racist Erika Maria Reinstein, who has also used pseudonyms Billie Strain, Billie Rain, William Maria Rain, Mix William, & Rain-Shadid

Leah thanks the Harriet Tubman Collective. Like Leah, Talia A. Lewis is narcissistic & has enabled Leah’s harmful behavior for years. I guess when you have a book written by a movement narcissist, there is going to be a long list of enablers and other narcissistic abusers in the acknowledgments section.

One more comment about the Deaf Poets Society. There was previously a group with the same name that was legitimately a Deaf community group featuring Deaf poets. That’s not what this is. One tactic of predatory journals is to select names that are the same or similar to legitimate groups. It’s a deceptive tactic intended to manipulate people. Hearing disabled people: it’s not okay for you to behave this way.

Leah also thanks the Canaries. I don’t have direct experience with that group but as a neurodivergent person I have experienced abuse from Leah specifically targeting me as a neurodivergent person. She’s been extremely harmful to other ND people. The majority of those she has abused are neurodivergent. She exploits neurodivergent and Autistic communities intentionally. Stop giving her access to new victims.

Still page 9?! Leah acknowledges and thanks the “Deaf Poets Society.” This fraudulent group has a predatory online journal. It is NOT a society of Deaf poets. It is HEARING disabled poets. The hearing disabled poets named their group “Deaf” poets in order to raid resources designated for Deaf communities. It is cultural appropriation and theft. The predatory journal also charged submission fees. Red Flag!

No one in Deaf community spaces in Seattle knows Leah. Leah does not respect Deaf people in her local communities. It is only HEARING interpreters and HEARING CART professionals who profit while Leah raids resources intended to support Deaf community organizing. Leah needs to drop her mic, sit down, turn her voice off, and listen to Deaf—Stop speaking about Deaf people without Deaf people!

Continuing the discussion of Leah and Deaf community… in 15 years of events with this writer, Deaf community has never been present. There are hearing interpreters and one or two isolated Deaf people but Leah has not built meaningful relationships with Deaf community anywhere she has lived. It is performative for Leah to acknowledge Deaf community. She has actually abused Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.

In the Thanks and Acknowledgements, Leah thanks the Deaf community. Leah is a hearing person and is not part of any Deaf community. She does not know Deaf community members in her local communities and does not support actual Deaf people. She has however targeted individual Deaf and Hard of Hearing people and isolated them from Deaf community for years.

Ugh. Still page 9? How much BS can Leah fit on one page? Leah mentions Sins Invalid in the Thanks and Acknowledgements. Sins Invalid is such a cesspool of Movement Narcissism and covert abuse. It has been that way since it was established. I also think the way this small, very controlling group of individuals calls themselves “The Founders” of the movement is a red flag. It is cult-thinking & needs to stop.

“I am not the one right kind of cripple, the kind that is convenient enough to nod at and ignore all the rest. I am all the rest” (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018, 9).

Leah Louise Albrecht is not “all the rest.” What an arrogant, gross claim to make. She has a lifelong pattern of ignoring important differences, appropriates others’ experiences as her own, & uses the term “we” when it’s not appropriate.

“This book … was made through many community conversations, organizing efforts, arguments, fuckups, terrible challenges and Crazy brilliant ideas and leaps of faith. These ideas were crafted by collective disabled genius, science, and labor” (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018, 9).

As a survivor of the Disability Justice Collective, I assure you that what really went on behind closed doors wasn’t brilliant genius.

“This book is also emphatically not the product of a single smart and special person’s brain” (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018, 9).

Now, however, Leah self-identifies as a messiah and gives herself the self-bestowed titles “THE ONE AMAZING TRUSTWORTHY PERSON” & “The One Who Will Save Us” (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2023, 254).

As a survivor, I know this is an example of Leah’s Narcissistic grandiosity.

Comment on the previous quote: Future faking is a tactic where someone makes false promises about the future to manipulate you in the present. When Leah hooks you at the beginning and lures you in with these wild, dreamy, decolonial, majestic promises, it is a deliberate manipulation tactic. Leah’s future-faking is definitely not the revolution.