Adams had originally claimed to be a descendant of a member of the Ojibwe-Lakota people/White Earth nation. Maclean’s magazine did some digging, only to discover that her grandfather was actually white. According to the Daily Mail, the Connecticut-born Adams said that the inspiration for her quilts came in visions from her ancestors, and the paper also reports that she was denied tribal membership because there was no provable ancestral link. This is particularly problematic since she was brought on board by the university as part of an initiative to hire more indigenous people, which included a vetting process.