1:32 / 24:06

The harmful, ‘cynical and self-serving’ nature of Indigenous identity fraud | Nation to Nation

https://youtu.be/UEP7VkdmO4o?si=fRZTMjnnaN2VeHsY

Dr. Kim Tallbear

Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta
Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society
Decolonial Sexualities #IndigenousSTS #TipiConfess
Enrolled Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. Descended from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

https://kimtallbear.com

Dr. Tallbear’s substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization.

TRANSCRIPT of Video Above:
Premiered Nov 4, 2021

Universities and the arts seem to be havens for Indigenous identity fraud. Jean Chrétien claims abuse at residential schools wasn’t mentioned when he led Indian Affairs – but Senator Brian Francis doesn’t buy it. That’s happening now on Nation to Nation.

Intro [Music]

Tonight on Nation to Nation, universities and the arts seem to be havens for indigenous identity fraud. One expert says it’s because they don’t develop relations with communities.

It’s a problem because non-indigenous people are simply unqualified for the most part to figure out who is indigenous and how they belong to community or not.

Jean Cretchant claims abuse at residential schools wasn’t mentioned when he led Indian aAfairs migma Senator Brian Francis doesn’t buy it he says it’s time to call out residential school denialism. To me those comments are ignorant and they’re offensive.

Mr. Kracien is in the position of privilege and he would have known fully well what happened and as wet sowed in resistance to a pipeline rises up again.

One hereditary chief warns another rcmp raid may be in the works we know that they’re setting up to come in again you know they’ve done it twice now 2019 2020 armed forces invading our territory.

Hello I’m Brett Forster and welcome to Nation to Nation.

Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimer, Carrie Barasa – what do those names have in common?

They’ve all claimed to be indigenous they’ve all had those claims challenged and in the case of barasa, suspended from her position at the University of Saskatchewan.

But why do people claim to be indigenous if they’re not and how widespread is this problem?

To put this in perspective is my first guest. Dr. Kim Tallbear is an Associate Professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta she joins me now.

Welcome to Nation to Nation, Dr. Tallbear.

Hi. How are you?

I’m good so what do you think motivates people to identify as indigenous when they have little or no connection to the nations they claim?

I think there’s probably a couple of reasons and they probably overlap. I think the first one speaking very broadly is there is this special place for the “Indian” in the kind of “North American national imagination,” so the Indian takes on this important role historically so people, uh, if you go back several hundred years you’ve got you know the the Boston Tea Party you’ve got people dressing up like they’re Indian and fraternal orders you have this playing Indian for a long time in terms of dressing up and putting on costumes.

What happens then as you get into the 20th century is you get people playing Indian in terms of cultural appropriation in the new age movement and then you get this, um, eruption of the race shifter or the pretendian to use a couple of different terms but I think even though it looks like not that old of a phenomenon it actually has roots going back several hundred years which is about needing to belong to this place, and and needing to feel that one has a moral authority to belong to and possess this land so i think there’s this kind of national, uh, nationalistic ideas behind this but also uh on a much more pragmatic level there are economic and career benefits and, uh, media benefits and leadership benefits to claiming these kinds of identities.

So i think there’s both kind of on the ground reasons and then these kind of loftier ideals behind all of this.

Now?

As you mentioned there, it’s not really a new phenomenon you can think back to gray owl kind of the one of the original race shifters I guess you could say so is this becoming more common or are pretenders just being called out more often what do you think perhaps over the last 20 to 30 years it’s become more common um and i also do think they’re being called out more i think other commentators have pointed to the fact that in Canada for example truth and reconciliation and the desire by institutions to enter into what they consider reconciliation, uh, has played a part in this. There are suddenly, you know, I think many more grants and benefits, uh, to being to identifying as indigenous or other kinds of racial, uh, and ethnic categories but I also do think there has been a greater willingness to call this out of late.

I mean, I’ve been aware at my age that this has been a problem since the 1980s. This is when it I think comes into our consciousness more and you know there’s plenty of jokes out there right in in indigenous communities about the claiming a great great grandmother that was this or that thing that had high cheekbones you know so I feel native or indigenous in my soul I must be indigenous so we make fun of that and we have for decades but it was always a little bit, um uncom..or very uncomfortable to call people out like this because i think a lot of indigenous people and community tend to have sympathy for people and for especially with the idea that there are a lot of folks out there who want to reconnect who were scooped or stolen right and these two situations tend to get confused in people’s mind I don’t think these are anywhere near the same situation.

On that same note how does this impact people who may be disconnected from their communities for legitimate reasons?

I think that people are very – because people who have been disconnected who have been scooped or or who have suffered the ramifications of federal Indian policy right that doesn’t allow them status, um, do get very insecure they they experience I think a lot of sadness from that disconnection right? Um, not everybody, but a lot of people and I do think it’s hard for them because they didn’t grow up in community, be that reserve or urban I don’t put a binary between those things like a lot of people do.

A lot of us go back and forth right between different kinds of indigenous community because we have family all over the place but I think people who didn’t grow up in that life don’t understand fully how they are not generally put into the same kind of category as people who are alleging ancestry we don’t even know if it’s true and if they do have it it’s multiple generations away as we saw in the case of Michelle Latimer – when was it back to the 1640s she had a couple ofancestors that is not the same thing.

To go back 17 generations as being a person who has been disconnected through Federal Indian policy or other um uh phenomena of colonialism in the last couple of generations arguments against falsely claiming to be indigenous and what are some of the arguments people accused of falsely claiming to be indigenous often make to defend against the charge well they will actually conflate their situation with the situation of the scoop and disconnected so it’s actually quite cynical and self-serving and again if one is from one of those scoop populations and doesn’t have that that kind of closeness with community it’s not as easy, I think, to disentangle your own story from the story of people who are, let’s be frank, committing fraud.

Right so um that’s one of the main things they do.

They’ll also talk about violence right? And being disconnected through violence and have this kind of overblown story of violence in indigenous communities and sure we have and continue to be subject to colonial violence but when you grow up in indigenous community you also know the profoundly meaningful um and loving and caring experiences that you can have right you know we can we tell stories about our grandparents about our aunties and uncles we talk about the kind of community we have and in any community you have really life affirming dynamics and you might also have violent dynamics of course.

Indigenous people suffer a particular kind of colonial violence but i find in the case of people who are making exaggerated or false claims that they tend to overly focus on that violence as a source of disconnection and then that becomes their dominant narrative indigeneity gets conflated with violence or it gets conflated with this kind of spiritual redemption.

There’s hardly ever any real kind of on-the-ground everyday life dynamics that they talk about that we can take a lot of enjoyment in coming from indigenous community.

By a community” which gives them a legitimate claim to being an indigenous member of that community how do you respond to that particular argument?

Well, I can, you know, I speak mostly from a Dakota standpoint, right? But as I hear people up here – because I came to Canada from the U.S.’s, I hear people appear on the prairies I’m a prairie person talk about adoption ceremonies it sounds similar to ours and when you adopt somebody’s ceremony ceremonially you are making a family member you are making a kin a kin member but you are not making a citizen you are not making a ban member and I think what we need to keep clear both in indigenous communities and in non-indigenous communities is that our political authorities and our citizenship they may be in part a manifestation of our, uh, traditional forms of governance but they’re also in part a manifestation of our nation-to-nation relationships with colonial powers including the Canadian state or the U.S. state right?

And so we have to keep clear that that citizenship and a banned membership or you know, whatever you want to call it, is different than making a family member then making kin and those things can overlap and i think a lot of indigenous people don’t understand that i can go into ceremony and adopt somebody as my sister or my brother – it doesn’t make them a Dakota person. I mean, I have family that are not biological family that are not Dakota people right? I’ve got a white aunt you know I’ve got a family that are you know in other racial categories I’ve got Black family right? You know, some of them are Dakotas some aren’t. Um, so going through a ceremony doesn’t make you that a member of that group necessarily but it can make you family.

Academia and the arts – just finally academia and the arts seem to be the places where this phenomenon happens most what could or should the gatekeepers of those institutions do to clamp down?

We’re really struggling right and I think what we need to do is look to our senior people in those fields who actually come from indigenous community, um, uh. to figure out how to balance, uh, indigenous, uh, rules about citizenship about kinship and about family with the practical kinds of challenges within these institutions – so how do you vet an indigenous hire or student in the university?

Um, we need to understand how these institutions work in order to do that and one of the first ways to do that I think is to have really good relationships with local and regional indigenous communities, uh, and uh, to, to consult them as well now I know this is putting work back on indigenous people – right? It’s putting extra work on to indigenous people in the academy and also out in community but those relationships are a key starting point.

If an institution has no relations with the indigenous communities in their area it’s a problem because non-indigenous people are simply unqualified for the most part to figure out who is indigenous and how they belong to community or not.

Okay Dr. Kim Tallbear that’s all the time we have for now. I want to thank you for coming on Nation to Nation.

Thanks for having me on

After the break migma Senator Brian

Francis will be here he’ll discuss the

progress on reconciliation among other

things stick around.

Senator Brian Francis helped create the

National Day for Truth and

Reconciliation when it was fast tracked

through the Senate in June.

Since then from Trudeau’s tofino trip to

Cretchet’s comments about residential

schools and now a proposed Papal visit

to Canada the path of reconciliation has

been a bit bumpy Senator Francis is

migma from Abigail also known as Prince

Edward Island and he joins me from there

to offer his reflections welcome to

Nation to Nation Senator Francis.

Thank you for having me.

Let’s start with recent news what would

you like to see Pope Francis do when and

if he arrives in Canada?

Well I think, uh, you know the fact that

he is going to apologize is certainly a

step forward in the right direction it

saddens me that it took so long for him

to actually say that he was coming to

Canada to apologize but, um, I think now

that he is it’s time for us to you know

work together in true spirit of

meaningful reconciliation and have the

Catholic church atone in the way that it

should have come for what it has done to

our indigenous children through the

residential school era.

Will an apology be enough if that does

happen on Canadian soil or should he

come bringing reparations or maybe

something else…

Well absolutely apology is just words if

it’s not followed by meaningful action

so reparation is key to it, um, it all

starts from the top down in my opinion.

Um, right down to the congregation I’m a

practicing Catholic and in my church I

haven’t heard very much spoken about uh

the residential school error and atoning

for, for, um. what has happened to our

children and i think uh now’s the time

that it has to it has to happen and it

has to happen from the talk down in a

meaningful way.

Last week former prime minister

Jean-Claude told Radio Canada that abuse

at residential schools was never

mentioned when he led Indian Affairs

between 1969 and 1974 what was your

reaction to those comments?

Well first of all, I was hurt as an

indigenous person because to me those

comments are ignorant and they’re

offensive MrCretchen is in the position of

privilege and he would have full known

fully well, uh, what happened in the residential

school.

You know error during that time and, um, I

think it leads to a broader issue of

genocide denialism where

you know some people whether they be in

positions of power or not deny or

underscore what really happened in the

residential school era and all they

really have to do is go to our First

Nations communities to anyone in Canada

and see the awful effects of the

residential school era, uh, and see that

intergenerational promise alive and well,
and so on. So for those comments to be

made i think they’re just, um,

they’re they’re ignorant.

His government did actually apologize

for residential schools in 1998 but even

then it was considered to be not exactly

full-throated he administered a lot of other

harmful policies so how are indigenous people

supposed to reconcile with that sort of

thing well i think it’s it’s important for all

of us to, um, you know, to counter what’s

being said by whoever and it’s important

for all of us as Canadians to get the

full story to understand what really

happened.

I mean the facts are there when

it comes to Jean gretchen you know that

he should have known the facts are there

and I think it’s important for us to

confront as Canadians these types of

commons and because they have no place
in our country and it’s now time to deal with

them.

You sponsored bill C5 which created the

new federal holiday for reconciliation

when it reached the senate in the spring.

What was your reaction when the prime

minister skipped out on the first one?

Well you know, life is about choices

right? And i wasn’t very good choice for

the Prime Minister mate to make

you know we all know

that it was a day of solemn thought.

You know, thinking about the residential

school survivors almost like a

remembrance day a day of reflection it

wasn’t a day to go to a golf course or

to a resort in my opinion i think it was

just a poor choice. We’re all human

and you know that happens

you spoke out when migma lobster

harvesters were under attack last year

for exercising their treaty rights.

What should the government do on that file

moving forward?

Well, I think, you know, the government
should really visit that file immediately there’s
now a new minister I’m hopeful that the new

minister will take a different approach

than the previous minister

and it’s about acknowledging our rights

and implementing our rights in the way

that they should be done. You know we

have the supreme court decision,

um, that was rendered years ago that

wasn’t implemented properly in my

opinion.

We have to get on with it and do it in

the right way or there’ll be further

violence on the water if it’s not done

the right way and just finally as i mentioned
in my introduction it has been a bit of a

bumpy road, uh, on the on the path of

reconciliation this last little while.

What’s your take on how the country is

fared?

I think we’re starting to make a turn in

terms of reconciliation i always say

it’s a marathon not a sprint they’re

going to be bumps in the road there’s

going to be have to be some difficult

conversations but we all have to be

brave. We all have to

really look at this in a true meaningful

way and move forward and with concrete

actions. Words are one thing but we have

to move forward with concrete actions in

terms of, uh, you know, having our

indigenous people have their rightful

place in Cnada with all Canadians>

Okay Senator Brian Francis will have to

leave it there for now I want to thank

you for joining me on Nation to Nation

thank you for having me it’s a pleasure

we have to take a short break but when

we return i’ll be joined by wet sewed

and Hereditary Chief Namaks for an

update on the coastal gaslink pipeline

standoff.

Welcome back. Almost two years ago an
rcmp raid on wet sewed in territory sparked
nationwide protests in solidarity with Hereditary

Chiefs who opposed the coastal gaslink

pipeline the pipeline would carry

fracked gas through their unseated land

to a processing facility on the British

Columbia coast and the Chiefs still

oppose it they mounted new blockades

last month which the mounties responded

to with more arrests my next guest is

Namak’s John Ridsdale. He is the

Hereditary Chief of the Wet Sowed in

Saiyu or Beaver Clan. Welcome to Nation

To Nation.

Thank you for calling me.

Protests subsided last year after the

Chiefs Canada and BCsigned an MOU on

land rights and title how much progress

has been made actually?

With a pandemic that has

happened worldwide it has actually

slowed down quite a bit

but I put it as a strategy too because I

think that was their intent you have to

realize we talked about it in February

and then we did sign off in may of 2020.

But the progress on it – we had to separate
our rights and title from the coastal gasoline
project itself because they were going to focus

on that project which we adamantly oppose

because it is our jurisdiction. We have

rights and titles you know from the

gamut to stay away – court case of 1997.

We’ve never ever given that up

but we had to separate our rates and

titles from that so we could stay

focused and yet that project itself continued

and so what led to this latest round of

direct action and new blockade and you

know our Premier John Horgan – he supports

this project you got to remember Prime

Minister Trudeau bought a pipeline right

so we know exactly where they come from,

but there were so many infractions on

their permitting process – the access us

we’ve never ever supported this at all

we gave them an eviction and so

when our people stand up along with our

supporters to support our chiefs our

decision our law is Enoch Newton

our own law our own way which is

protection of the land the waters the

salmon…All of our territories – the 22 000

square kilometers and so they pushed an

extra step and you have to realize it

was coastal gasoline who had actually

put in their own blockade and the rcmp

come in later and supported it.

This we know that they’re setting up to come

in again you know they’ve done it twice

now. 2019-2020 armed forces invading our

territory. Like i thought we lived in

democratic country and yet we have armed

forces. Myself being a son of a second

world war veteran served in the navy

navy in the Pacific and Atlantic

theaters and yet here i am fighting our

own government over what something that

will kill our clean waters and our lands

and threatens our rights and title which

we will never give up.

We will never stop protecting our territories

and our culture.

I understand that five of six

elected chiefs of the wet sorted bands

did sign agreements to support this

project. What progress has been made

mending internal disputes?

The internal issues are actually brought

on by government and you have to realize

they’re elected we’re not elected or

hereditary like when elected officials

chiefs and council they have a mandate

to look after the reserve not the

territory. Yes, they are house and clan

members that’s where their voices but as

elected officials, which is,

you know, it was created by the Canadian

Government, the reserve system and so

their voices heard as house and clan

members, but the government and industry will

always take the path of least resistance

they keep our reserves in poverty and so

they offer them these shiny little

nickels to enhance their projects.

Meanwhile the need on the reserve is always

there for more compensation for what has been

taken away and yet the voice and the

authority lies with us within the house

the clan not with any any form of

elected government.

As a rule and you kind of hinted at this

earlier the feds generally don’t

negotiate while blockades are up. Are you

concerned that ongoing resistance to the

pipeline may endanger the talks?

Actually they won’t. That’s why they are

separate. There, we strategically made

sure it was separate because they would

have focused strictly on resource

development and enhancement of such

projects as this and so it had to be

strategically separate and yet they keep

on steering it back to, you know, their full
support of an industry which is willing to

kill our culture our land our water our salmon.

That’s why we as chiefs decided no. We

steer this discussion you have to

realize before this we had a table with

BC it was called the ranking table and

they walked away from us we referred to

it as respect table they walked away and so

this was their next step but we will

never ever sign a treaty.

Okay one more question: the mounties put
out a press release last week saying they will
be quote unquote proactively patrolling the

forestry roads on your territory from

now on what do you make of that and what

happens next?

They’ve been doing that for the last

number of years and it’s all in support

of this industry…this proposed project.

We say proposed because we’ve never ever

supported it and we never will.

But they have always been doing that

harassment that they’ve done for our

people and our supporters that will

continue and that’s under the direction

of the provincial and federal

governments i think the public should

know that.

Okay Chief Namak that’s all the time we

have for tonight i want to thank you for

coming on Nation to Nation.

Thank you for inviting me.

And that’s all the time we have for this

episode as always if you missed any part

of tonight’s show you can find us online

go to aptnews.ca

Nation to Nation I’m Brett Forster and

thanks for watching.