A growing number of "Pretendian" artists and the potential repercussions | InFocus

[Music] good afternoon welcome to our show i'm your host melissa original it's a bizarre phenomenon people pretending to be indigenous to get jobs or grants or even just to get attention because it's cool to be us but what's not funny is that they are taking often highly lucrative work from indigenous people they're teaching our histories they're telling our stories today we're putting identity fraud in focus i have incredibly smart and fed up guests joining us today jacqueline keeler is a den a young again uh yankton dakota journalist in portland oregon who's been researching and reporting on this phenomenon that's been going on for decades uh she's dedicated a lot of her time and incredible talents to amassing a list of pretendians as we know them taking up space in arts politics and academia in the u.s you're going to love her as well veldin coburn is an ishinabe algonquin professor who's been who studied this himself he's seen it himself but he says it's a slippery slope to be getting on the identity to be policing identities also tamara bell she's a hired filmmaker she says enough is enough these people need to face hefty fines or jail time for profiting off a fake indigenous identity uh all of our guests have lots to say and we want to give you a say too on the topic you know we're dedicating our final segment to you you can call in later in the show with your thoughts it's toll-free 1-877-647-2786 i'll give you that number again at the back third of this show so you can give us a ring uh before i introduce you to our guests back in 2018 aptn investigates reporter john murray took a look at this phenomenon of white people playing native in his show cowboys and pretendians let's take a look val kilmer plays an fbi agent who is part sioux he's just one example of an actor who plays indian for a role some people also play indian in real life and grateful little brother grew up in the family the most prominent pretending was archibald bellani he called himself grey owl and is still considered a cultural treasure by parks canada ironized cody is another man who lived his life as a native american he even had cameos in popular sitcoms but guess what he was italian as filmmaker jeff barnaby points out he wasn't the only one that's a phenomenon right people faking being native even outside of like the camera so i think it's a it's a it's an industry that's kind of right for imposters because there's a need for native stories out there but there's not a lot of people that can tell them particularly behind the camera wenti reminds us that identity policing is a tool of colonialism because identity is such a complicated painful thing in our communities and we and we know why uh they you know the government wanted it to be that way uh they they this is what they wanted us this was actually a goal of colonialism right was to rob us of our ability to define our own nationhoods and our own nations and our own identities the director of canada's indigenous screen office says pretendians tend to be weeded out by the communities anyway the end the communities tend to police them police themselves and sort of figure this out and when it comes to true true people who are truly being fraudulent they tend to be called out on it so since that aired in 2018 there's been no shortage of people taking up space most recently of course grabbing the biggest headlines was award-winning filmmaker and director michelle latimer she had claimed metis and algonquin heritage throughout her career but she now apologizes for that here's a story that uh tamara pimentel did on the fallout from that last month it is not an easy time to be indigenous michelle vladimir gives an acceptance speech in 2018 after vice production rise won a canadian screen award for best documentary program over the last week there have been questions around vladimir's indigenous identity after a national film board media release stated vladimir is of algonquin metis and french heritage from kittagon zibi in quebec vladimir said on facebook i made a mistake in naming kitagan zibi as my family's community before doing the work to formally verify people in the indigenous media and entertainment industry have been speaking up author and actor getz duranje was a host for ryze and worked closely with vladimir for us that have have been duped for us that will have bought into that false image that she was portraying um it's it's you feel so used like i feel like my my skin color and my ancestral line was weaponized to further her career vladimir has since resigned from the second season of trickster and the national film board is pulling her documentary inconvenient indian from distribution it won't be playing at the sundance film festival vladimir's claim of identity sparked outrage on social media heisler novelist eden robinson on whose novel the trickster series is based took to facebook i feel like such a dupe i don't know how to deal with the anger disappointment and stress innoce filmmaker alethia arnica barrel wrote michelle i call on you to return your dog vanguard award the documentary organization of canada says vladimir has agreed to return the award which was presented to her early december dranje says vladimir has robbed other indigenous talent of opportunities we want to see ourselves succeed people from our nation and then when this happens they rob us of that they just take our stories and they've always done that they've always taken our stories they've always retold our stories they rob us from these moments aptn national news has not been able to reach vladimir for direct comment but she has issued public statements taking responsibility for not being clear enough about her heritage one media outlet is reporting that she has retained legal counsel tamara pimentel aptn national news calgary joining us now is jacqueline keeler she is done a dakota journalist she's based in portland oregon she studied and reported on this phenomenon uh which maybe if you're like me it feels like it's a new thing but no in fact it's been going on for generations she's editor-in-chief of pollination magazine among many other hats that she wears we're so happy to welcome her from portland thank you thank you for having me oh yeah well i'm glad you could take time i mean this is i had such a great chat with you on this topic um you know i had said this this feels sort of fresh i don't remember this being a thing when we were growing up that people would pretend to be indigenous in fact you know when i was growing up if anything you would distance yourself from any um aspect of your indigenous identity um but you shared stories you know i mean you remember as a kid your parents coming back and saying telling you these stories too right like that somebody was was faking it uh to make it i guess but what are some of the stories do you remember well i mean i remember my parents coming back um both of my parents are native and they would come back from dinner parties with colleagues and they'd say there'd be some new book that had come out you know i think got like seven arrows but i can't announce the name pastor storm which came out in 1973 all these books they have to answer questions about and these people were not native they were frauds and certainly uh we've had these these folks have been exposed you know in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s even 10 years ago and people forget our communities tend to be kind of siloed uh whether it's by you know field or by community and um and so this information is not passed down and what i found is a journalist interviewing native folks for years was uh particularly native academics i would call them and and try to get a quote on something completely different and they would tell me you know we have um a fraud who's being uh you know being uh he's they're going to be my boss pretty soon but they try to fight it they try to fight it at the department level they try and they you know whole native organizations famous native people like suzanne harjo and they have they have called out these frauds i think suzanne harjo called out roxanne dunbar ortiz in the 70s you know so did hank adams you know all these folks have fought these frauds but these frauds persist there is no accountability and particularly because our communities are not in control of academia we don't own the universities we don't own the publishing houses we don't own any of this it's white people that make the decisions and so it's uh they don't they don't really you know they i do feel also one of the why we're doing the list and i should say it's an alleged pretendings list so we will actually be showing people who actually do have genuine connection as well right resolving those questions and um but the issue is that we want to show the pervasiveness of this because if you look at the list we're at 158 now wow this list is only people who who profit off of it who hold high status jobs who are in authority positions in academia in film and television you know and all sorts of places and or people who are positioning may not be making a lot of money off of it but are positioning themselves as our leader as our spokespeople on national international issues and so these people have to have standing to make these claims and what we're finding with the particularly the professors and other and the film actors is that they are claiming dissent but they when we look at their family trees they have no dissent there is no dissent they're making the claim and they're equivocating their lack of proof to that of someone of genuine descent like a fir we we actually suggest that when we use the term of dissent that we that you stipulate the generation how many generations separate you from a tribally enrolled or an indigenous person who was raised in a tribal community a recognized part of a tribal community you you give the number is it one or is it six um you know anita luckenzi who heads up the miw database here in the united states she is a sixth generation descendant and the shine woman that she claims we have no documentation of what family she came from and her family has lived as white people ever since 1830. i love this idea of listing your of the descent right because i think that's kind of a part of the conversation that hasn't been happening when we're talking about how people identify um and and then it's like well where is the cut off like you know your your grandma was indigenous so is that good enough or are we willing to accept that your great great great great great great grandmother as is the case in canada a lot of times we've got people who proclaim to be indigenous today based on a root ancestor from the 1600s right yeah is that enough let's just get it out there and and identify like where how indigenous you are i guess um and i like yeah i like the idea you're talking about sixth generation you're talking about 164th and so you're talking about a generation in which you had 64 ancestors 63 of whom were european right one of whom was native and then your family goes and lives in a colonial european society you know you actually are part of the the the like anil kezi her family actually were county officials which oversaw laws that enslaved native californians jimmy yeah during the gold rush and so this is uh there's a complicity in what they're doing and also the fact that they enjoyed white privilege legally at a point at a period in time when it was very dangerous to be native and they got to what they didn't have to endure what we our communities endured and they cannot even point to many of them i mean almost every academically checked has no documented native ancestry they have none why do you think it's so common like it's i know on both sides of the border it's the field of arts and it's the field of academia that draw these people uh to fake indigenous claims why why these two fields in particular well with academia we did we did document a movement around the early 90s where actual enrolled native professors were trying to create guidelines but they were stopped cold by pretendians and these these folks are in almost every native department they're running the departments so they they act collectively to protect their interests and we also include their publications so people can see how they're driving the discourse on native identity to suit themselves and their needs and also in universities here in the united states under equal employment laws they are not allowed to ask for proof of native identity so there really it's a really it's an open field for grift and and white folks have been you know taking advantage of it you had said something uh that really stuck with me that describing white people performing our identity can you explain that and why does it work so well for them yeah well my cousin phil phil deloria he wrote a book called playing indian in which he documented the historical um sort of use of playing indian you know this here in the states you know of course they dressed up like mohawks when they did the tea party and threw the tea into the you know starting the revolutionary war but it's persisted and it is even more it really is another form of caring almost i would say and um and it's i think that white people are so accustomed they're centered by white supremacy to such an extent that they feel no compunction about doing this and and i think that um there's a level maybe even which they they covet what we have and they feel we don't deserve it and so they decide they can perform the identity better than we can and they can for a white audience white people liked there was a study done in 2017 by reclaiming native truth and what they found was in these focus groups that white people first of all 30 think they are of native descent 30 that's 50 million people in the united states right yeah how many are gonna check the box how many are going to you know go full you know live action role play jimmy and um and so we have a sitting senator who did that elizabeth warren right right and harvard tried her out when they had accusations of lack of representation of women of color at harvard in the 1990s you know and so it's um i think that white people like to see what they found was why people like to see other white people in red face it makes them feel really good it reinforces their in-group cohesion it raises their self-esteem so we're fighting something in which and they also found that only 30 of white people understood the mascot issue which is another it was just i think on the spectrum of this performance of ethnicity yeah um we had somebody on twitter johnny hawk on twitter said something i wanted to get your your take on this uh it's ironic that political correctness outlawed questioning those with questionable identity who come in our circles which only helped to create this issue and now the same cancel culture wants to make it a requirement to question those with questionable identities in our circles i mean just kind of you know what's your i thought of that i'm like well this is why i'm perpetually confused and feeling like i'm living in a snow globe uh is because of those layers of of confusion and yeah well it's purposeful i mean they want to use real issues in our communities to benefit themselves these are not not these are not non-issues but when i why we're doing a study of comprehensive study we're going to do a 30-year study of hiring practices in academia here in the united states and we want to see the pervasiveness of it we want to track and what we're finding now is the majority of nittany of hires in native studies departments are preference people who have no client who have no proof right they're getting all the jobs and is that demographically an accurate representation of us do can most native people not prove that they are native is that the norm or is this demonstrating bias and certainly white people and white women in particular have benefited the most from the civil rights movement here in the united states and so there is always the issue of white supremacy of white privilege that is brought into any of these different things and we and i should say that anyone who is enrolled right has had to prove things we are this is this is inherent in who we are we've had to prove and you know if a professor was hired thinking that they were sri lankan and they were hired to cover southeast asian studies or work directly with the council southeast asian students and then you found out they were actually of ink they're english people from great britain pretending to be sri lankan wouldn't that call into question a lot of their their scholarship their state of mind everything and i think that it's our lack of political but our political the outlines of our our political reality have been made purposely fuzzy through the interests of colonial governments right and because they want claims to our land it's our political reality that is the most threatening reality we possess and this is why our identity is so assumable it's you know any colonized people you know everything is up for grabs you know their language their children everything can be taken from them and this is just part of the colonial process and so we should create ways you know i have a whole um i do this podcast for pollination magazine and i have a whole podcast about structural fixes for pretendingism and what i actually propose is a federal indigenous government through which we recognize each other and also then we also strengthen our political reality um we have to take a quick caller here and then we got to go to a break we have get from calgary on the line hello hello hey we just saw you uh in a story that we ran from last month oh wow that's cool and now you're here with us in real in real life totally i'm totally loving the conversation you're having right now um i just want to quickly point out that settlers white people really only look at our blood and color they don't really look much deeper than that and for indigenous identity color and blood tells me what you are doesn't tell even who you are and it's our connection to our kinship connection to our our culture our history our communities that really define who we are and they're so diverse between communities the other thing i really wanted to touch on too was that there's a whole spectrum of these pretenders um i i call them cultural larpers or cultural cost players a cultural cost player is like a cosplayer who just dresses up like that lady from i think it's yellowstone that asian who said she was native didn't she that's it she's just something that she's putting on to get a part whereas you have people like michelle vladimir and joseph boyden who fully immerse themselves and it becomes like a larp adventure which is live action role playing you know those dudes and people who dress up like lord of the rings then they go fight in the field the civil war reenactors type yeah exactly right yeah okay these are these are cultural larpers and they they and it's like they're like joseph boyden's whole career has been one big called a cultural larping experience you know like he's he's just putting on this stuff and pretending and that's all he really is but they get so far into it and then they get exposed and it becomes really i don't know what's more sad or tragic or pitiful or dumb i don't know i don't know um back to you jacqueline just quickly here so what um you know where can people follow the work that you're doing on this where's the best place to kind of is it twitter yeah um i'm at jf keeler and then also i'm on facebook i have a facebook page jacqueline healer and then we're going to be publishing this in pollination magazine and uh and with the list is accessible to people who um you know are legitimately interested in helping with the research and uh but i also have a term that i came up called ethnic mimicry and um and it's um yeah but i think that what they take advantage of and most of these folks are white presenting um is the fact that we have diverse families and you know two people can look equally white but one have a legitimate native descent and the other one be completely fraudulent and so it's um you know they and in here the united states uh you know tribes they set their own terms of enrollment and so it's a form of sovereignty uh to determine who are our uh who are our citizens and um and we may disagree with a particular uh tribal nation's decisions um but uh but it is really up to the tribe themselves to make those changes totally well we thank you for taking the time to join us today jacqueline you can find her on twitter follow her work we have to take a quick break when we come back how pervasive is this in the hallowed halls of academia we just spoke about that a little bit what's being done to stop it we're going to talk to uh belgium coburn joining us and hi to filmmaker and first talk host maribel she says people need to be fined or go to jail if they're faking their identity she'll tell you why when we come back why do people not care about our indigenous economies shouldn't we care we should care we make our living from this so when people are taking our jobs and taking up space they're actually taking food off of our plate join our conversation now call in toll-free at seven six four seven two seven eight six like us on facebook on our aptn news page follow or tweet us at apt infocus and send your thoughts to infocus fdn.ca welcome back we had a lot of comments and discussion on our social media about identity fraudsters let's go to our social media editor jesse andrewski to hear some of your thoughts thanks melissa online we wanted to know your thoughts on indigenous identity fraudsters we've received hundreds of comments let's take a look first from tracy lynn people need to just call them out not worry about being kind about it call it what it is vaughn commented identity politics is cancel culture identity politics is neo-colonialism academics and filmmakers both want to be gatekeepers do not speak for the people thank goodness joshua said my view is these folks who are not indigenous claiming to be us are only taking up space and making it tougher for those disconnected to find their way back to their respective nations from betty i have witnessed white people claiming i did an indigenous identity in a federal government workplace these fraudsters not only get hired but promoted successively they then snub and look down their noses at real indigenous people that they're supposed to represent stephanie said finds for sure it's getting ridiculous these days cultural appropriation to the max with pretenders lastly from cake from cat i'm working to find a path back to my creek culture and the onus is on me to learn my language i have been confronted by so many different versions of cultural people that it's become ridiculous even people from my community telling me i don't look like anyone from the community thank you to all of our commenters if you want to share your thoughts on indigenous identity fraud here's how join our conversation now call in toll-free at 1-877-647-2786 like us on facebook on our aptn news page follow or tweet us at 18 infocus and send your thoughts to infocus apn.ca i had a filmmaker and the host of first talk which airs here on aptn is calling for the creation of an indigenous identification act tamara bell says that it would hopefully deter fraudsters and impersonators from taking on the identity of indigenous people to get jobs or to get grant monies she joined me on aptn national news last week to explain how it would work so tamara the act that you're proposing is similar to what exists already in the united states the indian arts and crafts act uh can you give us a little bit of the gist of what that is and what's required for authentic authentication well the authentication is handled by each sovereign nation so there's a lot of confusion in terms of well how are you going to authenticate people but it's actually authenticated already by the government so you've got your sovereign nations who authenticate you and then you've also got the government involved so people think that we're we're going to intervene we're not intervening those methods already exist this is simply an act to say that if you are fraudulently saying that you're indigenous that you could possibly be um um criminally have charges pressed against you 250 000 fine or five-year prison term some people say there shouldn't be a prison term but if an act doesn't have teeth people are not going to act accordingly um so if you look at like say for example in canada if we have jobs and money and a whole bunch of people from other countries taking high-level positions there's laws in place to prevent say um a whole bunch of german people coming over and then taking up tons of positions that are meant for canadians without being authenticated so those things are already in place so i'm not proposing that i'm proposing consequences to actions love it um i know you've said that this is widespread in the arts and film industry whereby non-indigenous people suddenly uh discover some old indigenous root and and then uh go to access funding that's meant for indigenous creators you know who are you looking uh is it is it just the arts world that shouldn't shrink this act or do you want to see it more broadly applied like to you know politics uh jobs that sort of thing well it it it needs to be broadly applied um when you look at that um academia um it's incredibly it's infiltrated academia it's infiltrated so say for example in my sister's law school i mean when she was going to ubc and studying law i'd say 30 percent of the people in her university were not indigenous but they claimed indigenous identity so those high-level jobs if they enter into a job and self-declare themselves as indigenous we actually are not protecting our economies so we have an indigenous economy that we're trying to protect so when we lost the keystone pipeline in canada trudeau immediately jumped in and said we're not going to lose revenue we're not going to lose jobs but why is it okay for indigenous people to lose jobs and why is it okay for us to not have control over who declares and and who doesn't declare indigenous ancestry without validating evidence you know there's a lot of charlatans out there and it's a common term called protendians which is people assuming indigenous identity when they're not because it's profitable for their career or it's profitable for you know their pocketbook and i think you know when you look at it in jobs and statistics and information when you look at like the amount of revenue that is being lost because we're not feeding our indigenous economy we're not actually not feeding people literally and when you talk about the arts it's an incredibly painful i've read all of the stories about how the arts have been infiltrated and it literally broke my heart and there's an underbelly to this story once a charlatan is revealed there's a playbook so this didn't get covered in anything but i want to say it because there was a number of elders who supported this act and they're all from across the country and what happens is that the playbook says you get found out that you're not indigenous you do a dna test and once the dna test comes back that you might have a sliver of like indigenous ancestry and then the next thing is to go to our elders now so there's elders who are being called solicited you know they've already gone through enough and so they don't sometimes have social media they're not on the internet and they're actually being targeted to validate the fraudulent career of a person who's claiming indigenous ancestry so i think that there's many layers to this story um i know people are very upset about the bill and what i've proposed and i'm sorry if people are deeply upset and very angry at me really the intent was is to protect our artists our elders our academia our people and not attack you know i mean i'm there but please don't attack the elders and on especially on social media because that's a hundred percent inappropriate so what is what has to what's the next step for this act to to take effect what has to happen well the next act is presented to senators so i've already talked i've already sent things out to two senators i'm in the process of sending something out to another senator so it's going to go to the senate and then there's going to be the legislation drafted and it's very similar to an existing legislation in the united states so it's not revolutionary the only reason i came out and i decided to say something is that i saw how badly traumatized our community was and when you look at the ongoing theft it's almost like they stole one of the most precious amulets we've ever had that's been our possession for thousands of years and then they go to the people that they stole it from and said now can you protect my career after i stole this from you and so this is the injustice so i'm here because i don't want elders to be targeted i'm here because i think that we have a bright moment here where we can define in this seminal moment who we are as indigenous people who owns the culture who gives us the right to tell our stories who gives us the right to protect our jobs who allows us why do people not care about our indigenous economies shouldn't we care we should care we make our living from this so when people are taking our jobs and taking up space they're actually taking food off of our plate and i've been hungry i know what it's like and it's horrible and it's terrible and for people to just come in and take indigenous identity they really cheapen our trauma our genocide our history and it makes me incredibly sad i was heartbroken and uh and i still am i'm still heartbroken but i think that as indigenous people we're strong we're compassionate we're resilient we've got indigenous intelligentsia that are amazing who are going to figure out this situation and i am so grateful that we have those academics there who are going to move things forward and move the dialogue forward and protect us protect our indigenous economies i love this tamara i don't think you need to apologize for anything that you said uh story that people are angry that's their problem i thank you for taking time to to join us today and share this with us oh thank you so much i really thank you very much for your time as we discussed earlier with jacqueline keeler before the break uh pretendians are rampant in post-secondary institutions teaching our histories uh from the comfort of their whiteness well welding coburn is an anishinaabe algonquin canadian and indigenous studies professor at the university of ottawa he joins us now to talk about exactly that hi valden hi melissa i'm glad you could join us i wanted to say though you know i i hear uh you know people like uh tamara who we just heard it's like they need to be hauled out these people they need to be fine they should go to jail and i'm like yes maybe this is the fix and then i you know very highly intelligent people like you going pump the brakes that's not the answer how come i think it's a little bit excessive in terms of the punitive measures that they want to impose uh lifting from say the united states and their legislation i don't know if that's actually a model we want to emulate um i have a little bit more generosity and reconciliatory kind of inclinations towards those who might be guilty of being pretendians i just think that prison is particularly draconian and and disproportionately cruel to what is what is otherwise a social sin and you know what they do and like jacqueline and tamara are saying i mean these people are taking a lot of money off of our kitchen tables right by doing this and so you know is it too heavy-handed to say if you're going to do that the the just know ahead of time the repercussions i mean i see what you're saying with the you know when people do this to try to be uh you know a little more forgiving and to approach it a little light more light-handedly than throwing people in jail and finding them 250 thousand dollars i mean i i get that but i'm just looking at like if there was this as a deterrent maybe we wouldn't have to then be dealing with so many of the people who are just making these false claims or or is oftentimes the case in canada i have a relative from the 1600s who may or may not have been migma or algonquin you know we see that a lot too just is you're just totally opposed to the idea of that being a potential penalty for making those claims well i sympathize with the with the frustration um it is really deeply offensive in a lot of ways for what they do especially in certain industries where they do make their money and livelihood by i guess crowding out legitimate indigenous people by through fraud and deceit um [Music] i don't know how rampant it is to say well you know what five years in prison plus 250 000 what might have been proposed in in the legislation that miss bell has put forward is um is proportionate it might i i understand this thing that people respond to when they lose out on a job to somebody who checks the box and says i'm indigenous and they probably don't have any indigenous connection whatsoever uh we i do see it quite a bit in academia as well more than i'd like to and you know they get propped up by the institutions too so there's a little bit more blame to be spread around than just to prop it on the shoulders um it seems um you know de regard today like very fashionable for some people who would never have claimed to be indigenous before like they don't want to go to our reserves and our communities to drink the water because they they'd rather the accolades and i guess whatever sort of financial benefits they can gain themselves by claiming this um yeah it it for me just looking upon it it's a bit of a parody to see the sort of inane and ridiculous almost almost ignorant parade of pretendings come out like it's a personality type for me that who adopts this and and and why do other people you know clamor or at least gather around these people and prop them up to to pretend what is uh authentic when it's otherwise just uh a deceit i'm gonna ask you what you know why it's so prevalent in academia too but we have a caller here we want to go to quickly erin are you on the line yes i'm on the line hey aaron what did you want to add to the conversation oh thank you um so i'm a mcmahon masters student here in nova scotia um and so i'm doing my master's in indigenous health research and through my research and my community work i've been hearing a lot of frustration with how data is collected specifically frustrations with statistics canada in that they mainly rely on self-identification one example here in atlanta canada is that the self-identifying indigenous population doubled in the last uh statistics canada census uh and there's a lot of questions around the validity of this data and whether or not this increase is a result of people claiming indigeneity who have real no claims so so my question is uh you know in general what is the implication of this particular issue on indigenous-based data i'm thinking specifically health data but also other forms of data employment housing etc thank you for that belgium yes i've actually studied this myself and looked at post-secondary education complete completion rates and the extraordinarily um huge bump in completion rates that occurred in 2011 on the east coast for self-identified mikma individuals i had wondered when i was looking at it what happened between 2006 and 2011 and then again to 2016 why did indigenous people close the post-secondary education gap and it happened to be because everyone was self-identifying in 2011 in the census um because of the establishment of the halipu landless mikma community over well over a hundred thousand people all of a sudden became indigenous overnight and uh it was uh quite a mess at inac because i was there at the time and um all this leads to very distorted uh statistics which undermine the effectiveness of public policy that targets say health inequities and education outcomes so for instance you might start believing now in the east coast that there is no gap between outcomes in education that all of a sudden indigenous people down on the east coast are uh on equal terms but again it's a lot of white non-indigenous people who are now claiming to be indigenous who never had to face sort of the dis disadvantages and discrimination of being indigenous and all the barriers that was to completion so you would see that also likely play out in say health statistics and other socioeconomic outcomes um that aaron was was alluding to here so um it's a deep statistical distortion of the overall picture and it's it's it's unhelpful because then governments stop providing targeted programming to those who actually need it absolutely so it's i mean it's destructive in that regard and then it's also destructive in that it's taking money off of indigenous tables uh you know these people taking up space taking up these jobs but you're still saying we can't throw them in jail or find them what are we what do we do like what's there's got to be something that that puts a stop to it like it's so destructive yeah i agree uh it there is some damage that we incur because of uh these wayward sort of personality types and at the aggregate level certainly oh and just i i think because we do end up probably in my sector in academias we do figure out who they are we ferret them out and we find out that well they were hired on fraudulent basis that they convinced the people that hired them that they were indigenous and they never really were and then later on when they're getting grants and getting other sort of accolades and and public adulation that um they start to withdraw because and not all of them because some double down but yeah uh yeah and really hard in their stance but for others um when they get found out say like you know even in the arts community like the michelle latimers of the world is there sort of a corrective adjustment effect here is that they're not going to be taking anymore and what sort of benefit to us would it be to throw someone into prison and i'm cognizant though say for example of the uh extreme incarceration rates of indigenous people both indigenous men and women especially on the prairies that's all in manitoba and saskatchewan where we make up 15 to 20 percent of the population yet uh 80 of the prison population and we indigenous people know what it does to destroy an individual by imprisoning them yeah okay okay so if not actual jail what about this if you want to pretend that you if you want to make up a fake claim and take up a job of an indigenous person then instead of jail we make you go live on a res you want to you want to claim that you have to go and it has to be one of the ones that has a boil water advisory it's got to be remote it's got to have overcrowding yeah i mean that gets back to the sort of authentic lifestyle if you want to put on the feathers and show up at a board meeting and and uh have everyone think that you are the voice for indigenous people yeah i mean if you want to embrace some sort of parody and of authenticity than go and live like us but i mean some of this thing too it just makes us look stupid because um we don't all live like that from the urban indigenous person to um yeah yeah well we appreciate you taking the time to join us today valden to talk about this we have a quick call and then we got to go to a break um who will from ottawa what did you have to say quick well it's i think that uh you guys brought him some valid points that it takes away the legitimacy of uh those of us that have been struggling uh not only to find our identity to be or but to be able to live in our identity uh there's groups for instance like asthma and uh the algonquin solution indigenous nation that are claiming to be uh indigenous what the heck is the solution that the whole solution thing has been has been disproven and yet you know they want all these people want the benefits of being native without having to go through the struggle that we went through reality to be to be where we are even today even through the continued genocide of the canadian government and all that so we're gonna go to a quick break here though i'm gonna have to cut you off sorry we've run out of time here um but we are gonna take more callers after the break so stay with us [Music] last week we dove into the wonderful world of native tik tok and the incredibly talented people that are creating content on that platform well uh identity imposters have not gone unnoticed on that app uh we have to share this one because it's appropriate and it's hashtagged pretendian it's by charlie flight an actress of lakota nashony and european descent let's watch nobody's gonna know nobody's gonna know they're gonna know how would they know [Music] how would they know how would they know i can't i just i can't oh my god uh we have another call we have a bunch of callers actually damon i believe is on the line damon are you there yeah i'm here from saskatchewan so you you had an interesting perspective uh on this saying that the whole conversation is toxic this whole conversation we're having today explain yeah i think that it um it devolves into a form of identity politics that isn't necessarily helpful and it can can turn into a conversation where you have a lot of we have people who are being harassed and intimidated and bullied because they don't look like they're first nations but they might have first nations ancestry and i've i saw it in the in the comments earlier this week and it was i thought it was quite troubling you know i guess and i and i see that too and i mean i'm i lots of people say like well what are you don't look first nation i'm not first nation i'm i'm metis on my dad's side and uh polish and english on my mom's side um and people and usually when you explain that people go okay well that's fine um but isn't it like shouldn't we be having these conversations shouldn't we shouldn't it be okay to be like well what what are you where are you from who's your family and then if you don't have an actual claim to an indigenous identity should you be you know you're taking jobs you're taking grant money you're taking you're in positions of power you're you're forming um policy that that affects indigenous people i mean i get that there's the bullying aspect of it but look at all the all the cons on the on the other side of it like does it make it does it i don't know i'm sort of thinking out loud here but yeah you know i just i don't don't you see like the harm that it causes isn't it so much that it's worth having the conversations certainly it's it's it's worth having the conversation definitely it's just my fears when the conversation goes to the point of of that level of harassment and and i don't want to discount that there's the people who do make fraudulent claims but you also have to take into account that canada is a very multicultural society and that there's a lot of people who come from mixed backgrounds who they might not have the they might not have had this strong claims to their past to their families in the past but you know they they recently just found out about indigenous ancestry that they have yeah there's a lot of people who are in that in that uh in that boat who they don't have that strong connection so it's i get it i mean i get your point and i thanks i thank you for joining us on the phone here today to make that point i mean i do i see it i do see it we also have betty on the line from saskatchewan hi melissa how are you hey i'm great betty how are you doing i'm doing really well thanks so i mean you have seen this this isn't a new i mean it might be it's in the news now because of michelle latimer but this is not new to you you've witnessed this at work right oh yes i worked in a federal government workplace where i witnessed people identifying themselves as i did indigenous uh just to get hired and then to get promoted and because they checked the box they are promoted successfully but at the same time they have no physical resemblance to an indigenous person they had don't have the background and in my opinion the strongest disadvantage that an indigenous person faces is is being um is our physical appearance and how native we look no that is that's for sure i mean as somebody who i i don't get stared out walking down the street i don't i don't know that that lived experience is not mine nobody looks at me and judges me based on well that girl right yeah it's very very real the hate is real for sure i think uh because of the abuse of affirmative action and these fraudsters should actually face some very serious consequences like i don't believe in jail but i do believe in very stiff fines and the process the vetting process to get real indigenous people in those positions right uh but are you saying are you saying there has to be people who like i mean it's two different things being indigenous but not looking indigenous and then being indigenous you're okay with people who who are authentically legitimately indigenous taking these jobs even if they're light-skinned people that's right yes so i think right here we have to distinguish between being indigenous and having indigenous ancestry uh a person that is legitimately indigenous like a person from a first nations like i am or from a metis settlement are very uh visibly indigenous are very disadvantaged and this is why section 15 2 of the charter was created to ameliorate or or fix and improve the conditions that people like me face yeah so when somebody comes along that is not visibly native and uh well i don't have a problem let's let's just say that with somebody taking space speak uh taking space because they are indigenous and i include uh in this yeah uh people that have indigenous ancestry though they face less disadvantage right than somebody who is like uh very visibly indigenous absolutely i think this is a conversation we should be having and there should be fines for fraudsters within the system who are taking advantage yeah well like i said to valden maybe you know if you want to pretend that you're indigenous you want to pretend you've got some first nations ancestor from hundreds of years ago and that makes you indigenous today then maybe the fun and if it's wrong then maybe the fine should be you have to go and live that that reality uh on your reserve thanks for talking to us uh betty we have to go now to you take care um as jacqueline keeler had points out uh many imposters continue to make money from the work uh even after they're outed for identity fraud aptn broke a story in 2016. of course when question questions began to surround author joseph boyden's indigenous background uh and where and how he acquired some of his stories well in case you're wondering what he's up to since then he packed up and headed down to the states a post for a creative writing class by boynton are currently being offered using his award-winning work um that he did while he was uh pretending to be indigenous we are all at a time thanks for joining our conversation today always great to talk about identity i'm melissa ridgeon have a great afternoon we'll see you back here next week with some indigenous reads that you will want on your bedside table take care [Music] you

Channel: APTN News

Views: 1,211

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: aptn, national, news

Id: 3nzt7XecLzI

Length: 51min 11sec (3071 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021