As I’ve written before, if being a ‘person of colour’ is such a one-way ticket to misery and oppression, why are so many white people so keen to join the ranks of the ‘coloured folks’? Nobody was exactly clamouring for their turn to wear the yellow stars, back in the Third Reich. But then, that oppression was real.
Not only does the ‘oppression’ of so-called ‘people of colour’ seem to be imaginary, then, but any ‘systemic racism’ seems to flow the other way. Which would explain the explosion of race-fakers. It seems entirely too obvious that the brigade of pale-skinned scribble-faces and box-tickers are trying to get in on the ‘POC’ act for a reason, be it social cachet, career enhancement or just plain, hard cash.
Which might explain why so many of these honky race-swappers are so vehemently opposed to any form of objective determination of race (something they simultaneously deny even exists, and claim is an inexorable life-determinant). Don’t be so uncharitable as to even think that something like a DNA test, or even a rigorously-researched genealogy, would expose these fakers for the phonies and grifters that they really are.
Although, as it happens, some groups take very seriously the question of who gets to belong (and claim the bennies). Most particularly Native Americans in the USA and Canada. Who, understandably, are not exactly keen on ‘prentendians’ trying to crash the pow-wow.
Cheyanne Turions was an award-winning curator at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia and recipient of grants intended for aboriginal applicants. She resigned in late 2021 after an anonymous Twitter account, NoMoreRedFace, exposed her non-indigeneity. Dr Carrie Bourassa (aka Morning Star Bear) was a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan who claimed Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit identities and ran an indigenous health research laboratory. She resigned in summer 2022 when the CBC found no trace of indigeneity in her heredity. Dr Vianne Timmons, Order of Canada, Vice-Chancellor of Memorial University, Newfoundland, who claimed Mi’kmaq identity, was removed from office in early April 2023. A CBC investigation could not verify her claim, and the Bras d’Or (Mi’kmaq) Nation declined to countenance her. Until August 2022 Gina Adams was an assistant professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, claiming to be descended from inhabitants of the White Earth Reservation (Ojibway Nation), Minnesota. A few days after “outing” Turions, NoMoreRedFace posted a tweet accusing Adams of indigenous identity fraud. Like several of the others, she was a teacher and curator and thus a conduit for indigenous culture.
The most distinguished casualty of this purge of alleged (white) “Pretend Indians” has been Dr Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (aka aki-kwe), Order of Canada, tenured professor of law at the University of British Columbia, criminal law judge, senior counsel with an indigenous law firm in Victoria, BC, British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth, and author of a 2020 report on racism endured by indigenous people in the BC health care system.
Big surprise: neither Turpel-Lafond’s Treaty Indian status nor some of her academic ‘qualifications’ could be verified by investigation.
So, why are the ‘pretendians’ doing it? Ask Elizabeth Warren or Buffy Sainte-Marie.
These high-profile cases involve significant stakes in job appointment, preferment, prestige, salaries and grants. Tellingly or not, they all involve women, but the claims to indigenous identity made by the well-known Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden have also been disputed. The author of the acclaimed Three Day Road (2005, winner of an Aboriginal Book of the Year award amongst other awards), who has been outspoken on native affairs, has over the years sequentially asserted his Ojibway, Nipmuc, Woodland Metis and Mi’kmq blood. An investigation by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APN) and various researchers could find no evidence for Boyden’s claims of indigeneity.
Did somebody say ‘Bruce Pascoe’?
About the only claim to ‘Indian’ status Boyden had was a cheeky uncle, Erl Boyden, who back in the ’50s would dress up and pass himself off as ‘Injun Joe’ in order to flog fake souvenirs to tourists and pose for selfies with what Uncle Injun Joe himself admitted “they idiotically believe to be a real live Canadian Indian”.
Erl was at least an honest (fake) injun: he admitted that he didn’t have a drop of native blood. It was all just a bit of tourism theatre, he said: “Who am I to spoil their fun?”
His nephew, though, was as if King Billy Cokebottle’s kids started passing themselves off as real Aborigines and signing up for the welfare. Unfortunately, there’s thousands of white folks who are doing exactly that.
