Pretending to be indigenous—informally called “pretendianism”—for fame or fortune began long ago.
The first Canadian exemplar of this fraudulent activity was Archibald Belaney (1888–1938), better known as Grey Owl, a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who pretended for decades to be aboriginal. While he achieved fame as a conservationist during his life, along with some wealth from his book-writing and speaking tours, the revelation that he was not indigenous destroyed his reputation following his death.
Ironically but unsurprisingly, indigenous identity theft is superficially the other side of the tarnished racial-cum-ethnic differentiation coin: for most of the long period of contact between the first settlers of the New World and the later European immigrants, pretending not to be indigenous, like passing for white in America among pale-skinned African Americans, was an important strategy for coping with the racism of the day.
And it is superficial, because those passing for indigenous these days are, for the most part, already privileged for other reasons such as having advanced education or influential parents.
Though it had a slow start, indigenous identity theft in both Canada and the United States has taken off in recent years in lockstep with the growing status, influence, privilege, and wealth that faking aboriginal heritage now yields.
The list includes well-known imposters like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but also less well-known figures in media and the arts.
As many cases show, this scam is growing because claims of indigenous status have not required, until very recently, any proof, protected by the myth that aboriginal identity is something determined solely by individuals rather than by legally or historically constituted band or tribal entities.
Most indigenous leaders and activists now fully support the verification of indigenous identity claims when these are made to support aboriginal-only rights and privileges.
But non-indigenous entities have been slow, even reluctant, to do so as well, as a recent case still unfolding in Manitoba shows.
However, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson said she won’t judge whether the former mayoral candidate and city councillor is Métis.
“Look, in our party we don’t police people’s identity and I think that Minister Klein does an incredible job in his ministerial portfolio. He also does a great job representing his constituents. Those are the things that we care about,” she told CBC.
This is a lame excuse based on indifference to identity theft because some kind of “policing” is what most indigenous leaders and activists are now demanding to protect their special constitutional and other rights.
But all these scandals beg the larger question of why differential racial/ethnic group rewards exist at all, an issue many activists would never challenge even though identity theft is the unsurprising outcome of special treatment based on birthright.
This is because allocating different rewards for selected categories of people was given extraordinary official legitimacy in Canada via the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ affirmative action clause and the protection of indigenous rights in Sections 25 and 35 of the 1982 Constitution.
Though she doesn’t acknowledge the effects of such legislation, Jean Teillet, the great grand-niece of Louis Riel and an indigenous rights lawyer, believes “thousands of individual Canadians have falsely assumed an Indigenous identity.”
“Thousands” is a big but not unexpected number given that self-identification is all that’s still required in most cases to reap the advantages of aboriginal status.
But for most Canadians, “the greatest harm of all is the sense of suspicion that now prevails and the loss of trust” when the country’s citizens are granted or denied all manner of scarce benefits and resources based on the colour of their skin or their ethnic affiliation. Moreover, it is an incontrovertible logical and observable fact that favouring some people for their identity automatically disfavours others with a different identity. Even among indigenous people themselves, differentially rewarding already privileged people results in fewer rewards available for currently disadvantaged ones.
So why are we so zealously promoting racial and ethnic animosity in a country where most citizens believe all Canadians should be equally allowed to openly compete for access to limited social and economic assets? And why should one’s birth status—in this case, the inherited right to an Indian or Métis status card and a myriad of other unearned benefits—determine superior access to power, privilege, prestige, and prosperity in what is supposed to be a nation based on freedom, fairness, and equality of opportunity?
To paraphrase Teillet, for the good of all Canadians we should take every measure to put a stop to this unethical practice.
