Italian "Injun". Fake but true... it's contagous!-----Friday A/V Club: Shedding Their White Identities

Friday A/V Club: Shedding Their White Identities - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"Yesterday we learned that Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, was born of Czech/German stock before she started presenting herself to the world as black. 
Such "reverse racial passing," as it's called, has been around for a long time, and not just along the line supposedly separating black from white. 
The Dolezal story reminds me of another American who became a famous face of an ethnic group he hadn't been born into.

You may recall this public service announcement of the 1970s:

That man with the tear was known as Iron Eyes Cody. 
Here's what Snopes has to say about him:
"Iron Eyes Cody was born Espera DeCorti on 3 April 1904 in the small town of Kaplan, Louisiana. He was the son of Francesca Salpietra and Antonio DeCorti, she an immigrant from Sicily who had arrived in the USA in 1902, and he another immigrant who had arrived in America not long before her. 
...In 1924, following their father's death, the boys moved to Hollywood, changed "Corti" to "Cody," and began working in the motion picture industry. 
It was about this time Iron Eyes began presenting himself to the world as an Indian. 
...Iron Eyes went on to achieve a full career as an actor, appearing in well over a hundred movies and dozens of television shows across the span of several decades.
Although Iron Eyes was not born an Indian, he lived his adult years as one. 
He pledged his life to Native American causes, married an Indian woman (Bertha Parker), adopted two Indian boys (Robert and Arthur), and seldom left home without his beaded moccasins, buckskin jacket and braided wig.

For more, read Ron Russell's great 1999 story about DeCorti for the Los Angeles New Times...