A story of identity: a cautionary tale

Aen nistwayr/Acimowin/Une histoire/A story (Michif/Cree/French/English)

In the latter half of 2015, a symposium was being promoted through various social media outlets, which came across my digital landscape. When I read through the presentations and the names of presenters, I was struck by one name in particular. It was the name of a graduate student I knew very well and was claiming to be Métis when in fact the student was not of Indigenous decent at all. At first I was shocked, then eventually, I decided to contact the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the department of the western Canadian University in question with a carefully delineated letter sent via email on 1 December 2015. The response was swift, albeit brief, from two of the five people I informed:

Dear Dr. Lewis,

Thank you for this message. I recognize the seriousness of the issues you raise here.

We appreciate the time you have taken to write and the importance of these issues, which we do take seriously as well.

Sincerely, ___________ (personal communication, 2 December 2015)

Dr. Lewis,

Thank you very much for bringing this concern to our attention. The issues surrounding it are quite complex, so I will not offer an immediate response except to say that we understand the seriousness of your complaint.

My regards, ____________ (personal communication, 2 December 2015)

Surely, I thought, a University, a faculty of graduate studies, would take up this information in an expeditious and thorough process, especially given the ethical nature of the misrepresentation and the abuse. So, I waited to hear from them and while I waited, I thought about story, narrative imagining, storytelling, storying, and stories of identity. Stories are central to human understanding in that they are the fabric of our experiential meaning making and exploration of existence, both real and imagined; all people begin and end in story. “Life that is not some kind of story is unthinkable—or more precisely, unliveable” (Carr, 1985, p. 120). Consequently, story holds a powerful position in human relations from the quotidian to the extraordinary and all that swirls in between. Thomas King (2003) reminds us that, “stories are wondrous things And they are dangerous” (p. 9). To wit, he retells the story of the “witch people” from Leslie Silko’s (1977) book Ceremony; all the witches of the world gather for a conference, a contest really, to see who could come up with the scariest idea. There were potions, spells, shape shifting, and others. But in the end, the last witch told a story of “an awful thing full of fear and slaughter, disease and blood. A story of murderous mischief” (King, 2003, p. 9). Of course, when the story was over that witch won the prize, all the witch people agreed it was the scariest thing, so scary they wanted that witch to “call that story back. But of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world” (p. 10).

People forget the power of story or rather most people forget, but there are many people all over the world who very much remember and live the power of story every day. They may not necessarily articulate the sophisticated nuances of studying meta-narratives, but they certainly endure or benefit from the consequences of those dangerous and wondrous stories across generations.

A month passed and I had not heard back from anyone at the western Canadian University in question and could see that the student was still claiming to be Métis, hence, I decided to send a follow-up letter to the same people re-emphasising the ethical implications of the situation. I only received one reply:

Dear Dr. Lewis,

Thank you for this message and for your continuing concern with this issue. Please know that we do take this issue very seriously and are well aware of the ethical issues. Although we may not communicate to you regarding actions taken at the University of _______, I hope that you will not interpret that to mean there are no actions taken.

With best wishes. (personal communication, 7 January 2016)

Although I could appreciate the notion of university’s privacy policies, given the particulars of this issue, I thought they could be a little more forthcoming in assuaging my concerns and confirming that they had indeed dealt with the issue. So, about 2 weeks after receiving e-mail on 7 January, I decided on 22 January 2016 to telephone the author of the email who very graciously agreed to speak with me about the concern I had raised. Unfortunately, I did not learn much more other than the university had taken action within the parameters of what the university could do, which really did not appear to be much at all. However, I did learn that, like most universities (my own included), the university in question is enthusiastically recruiting Indigenous students and relies solely on self-identification in the recruitment and, by extension, identity declaration process. I indicated to the employee that other than self-identification, the student in question met no other criteria for claiming to be Métis, to which the employee quickly replied, “there are no criteria”.

But there are criteria, set by both various Métis communities and organisations and of course by the institutions of the coloniser. The Métis National Council (MNC) states that, “Métis” means a person who self-identifies as Métis is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the “Métis Nation” (Métis Nation, n.d.). Those criteria are in good part drawn from the three-point definition for who qualifies as Métis with respect to rights under Section 35 of the Constitution Act 1982 developed in the R. v. Powley (2003) decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The court did not provide a comprehensive definition of Métis but did set out three basic criteria to identify Métis rights holders: self-identification, ancestral connection to the historic Métis community, and community acceptance. There is an inherent connection to community, history, and of course ancestry that transcends self-identification, in that to claim to be Métis requires a reciprocal claim from the community and place.

At this juncture in the conversation, I realised that as far as the university was concerned nothing more was to be done. I had provided them with a plethora of corroborated genealogical evidence and more demonstrating that the student had absolutely no Métis ancestry beyond an apparently compelling story and certainly no connection to any Indigenous community or ancestry. However, in conversation about this situation with Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues invariably it went from, “it’s important that you’re doing it” but arrived at “Why?” Because as I wrote as part of my email to the university in question:

I am not Indigenous; however, I work as an ally with Indigenous colleagues, friends, and school communities. I also work with our pre-service teachers in our faculty to take up and understand Treaty Education and to Indigenize our teacher education program and answer the TRC and Justice Sinclair’s call to action. Over the past several years I have also worked hard to have Elders and Knowledge keepers work with our students, faculty and staff so that we have an Elder in Residence this academic year. I also work with SUNTEP colleagues in the Métis teacher education program here on campus. Furthermore, I am also a member of the Indigenous Inquiries Circle SIG of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and a member of our faculty’s Indigenous Advisory Circle. I tell you all this in order to indicate my commitment to my role as ally in the Indigenization and decolonization of my own teaching and our university. So, to learn of what [the student] has been doing is very troubling if not alarming.

I am sure you can appreciate the ramifications should this act of ethnic fraud through your department come to light across your campus and into the general public. I trust you will deal with this issue directly and expeditiously. (1 December 2015)

Identity, both individual and collective, is suffused with narrative imagining. Being human has us narrate a self; we create a self through story, a self-story in order to help make our identity. “We represent our lives (to ourselves as well as to others) in the form of narrative” (Bruner, 1996, p. 40). We are born into a narrative that is in process so that we may not ever be the sole author of our existence because the social environment, culture, and “the story of my life [are] always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity” (MacIntyre, 1985, p. 221). Each one of us is able to imagine ourselves, otherwise, however, such imaginings are always anchored and constrained or supported and opened up by the narratives of the social structures and practices into which we are born and are borne by the people of our communities and their intersecting stories. Therefore, identity, individual and collective, is a narrative process and product that is a communal act requiring tellers and listeners who engage in a deeply reciprocal act of becoming. It is a relational process that is ineluctably entangled with answerability and responsibility to self and other.

The term Métis in the Canadian context is complicated and contested both historically and contemporarily. “Métis” describes people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry tracing their origin to the Red River Valley in present-day Manitoba and the western prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) and parts of Ontario, British Columbia, North West Territories, and northern USA (Gaudry & Welch, 2009/2016). They have a common culture, ancestral language (Michif), “political self-consciousness and attachment to the Métis people” (Andersen, 2014, p. 10), and community springing from “peoplehood-based relationships” (p. 11) through kinship and family. It is through shared ancestry, including stories of place, language, culture, and the integral notion of political identity and relational peoplehood through enduring kinship that speaks to being Métis beyond “the simplistic tropes of mixedness and hybridity” (p. 5) that most Canadians fix upon it. However, even with the recent Daniels v. Canada (2016) decision of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning federal government legislative responsibility to Métis, the three-point Powley broad definition of Métis rights holders outlined above remains. Organisations like Congress of Aboriginal People (CAP), which is not a Métis organisation but advocates for many Métis and other Métis organisations (e.g. Métis Federation of Canada) have been critical of this definition and ruling calling for more inclusion of who is Métis (Gaudry & Welch, 2009/2016). However, the MNC represents all Métis who trace roots to the historic Red River settlement, and is primarily located in modern-day Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories. “Not a single historic Métis community east of Ontario has ever been proven in the Canadian courts” (Vowel & Leroux, 2016, p. 34). In one small way, the Powley decision has supported the idea that Métis refers

to the history, events, leaders, territories, language, and culture associated with the growth of the buffalo hunting and trading Métis of the northern Plains, in particular during the period between the beginning of the Métis buffalo brigades in the early nineteenth century and the 1885 North West Uprising. (Andersen, 2014, p. 24)

However, in more significant ways, the Powley decision (and now the Daniels case) has limited and undermined the struggle of the Métis to achieve nationhood and self-determination because the courts invariably default to racialised definitions of Métis “rather than being based on links to the people, places, events and histories that comprise a rooted Métis peoplehood” (Gaudry & Andersen, 2016, p. 23).

I must step back and point out that both the Powley and Daniels court cases are through the institutions and practices of the coloniser. The Daniels v. Canada (2016) case which ruled on jurisdiction only set down which level of government has legislative control of Métis and non-status Indians. It did not re-determine or define who is Métis or non-status Indian. As Vowel and Leroux (2016) note, “the decision is quite narrow, and simply clarifies which level of government non-status Indians and Métis must turn to when seeking legislative action. Asserting Aboriginal rights remains as difficult as always” (p. 33). The R. v. Powley (2003) case for identifying Métis rights holders remains and was acknowledged in the Daniels case. However, the three-point Powley test of self-identification, ancestral connection to the historic Métis community, and community acceptance is only the beginning of the test. The Powley test delineates more criteria to be met in order for a person to realise their Aboriginal rights. Neither of the court rulings address Métis identity through kinship, community, and peoplehood as articulated by many Métis scholars (Andersen, 2014; Gaudry & Andersen, 2016; Vowel, 2016; Vowel & Leroux, 2016). Gaudry and Andersen (2016) contend that as important as the Daniels decision is and the Powley decision before it, “these developments should be understood and used, from a policy perspective, as building blocks for affirming Métis nationhood and the self-determining power of the Métis Nation” (p. 21).

After the phone call, I was left wondering if there was indeed anything else to do. There are several issues of concern here; the importance of having the student stop identifying as Métis in order to reduce the harm that the student might do to the work of Indigenisation, to the department or programme, the University, or the student’s own career. The student is taking the space of an Indigenous student; is occupying a sessional teaching position intended for an Indigenous student; is using resources, including graduate supervision, department funding, and human resources support, all intended for an Indigenous student; and finally, applying for funding from Social Science & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), where the misrepresentation could continue. I decided to contact SSHRC and the programme officer with whom I spoke was very concerned about the issue and took notes while I outlined all the details, then thanked me. The officer took it to the unit manager who then took it to the Secretariat on Responsible Conduct of Research I then received an email which said, “the matter needs to be filed with the individual responsible for research integrity allegations at the [University in question] since the student in question is registered at that institution” (SSHRC, personal communication, 19 February 2016). They provided me with the contact information for this person at the university; the same university that I had already informed of the ethical issue of Indigenous identity fraud. As inane as this sounds, I opened my email and drafted a letter, again to the western Canadian university in question; however, I was not confident much would come from the effort.

In using personal narrative in this writing, I have positioned myself within one of the more controversial forms of narrative research—autoethnography. Yet, there is an established tradition that sees the personal narrative proposing, “to understand a self or some aspect of a life as it intersects with a cultural context” (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, p. 4.1) in the midst of lived experience. Narratives “constantly transform places into spaces or spaces into places” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 23) in such ways that a story can become a location of resistance, resistance to the narratives of instituted power, so that these “stories offer their audience a repertory of tactics for future use” (p. 23). This is not new, in fact Indigenous people have known this since the birth of Turtle Island, and it has become especially poignant before, during, and after first contact with Europeans because “stories in Indigenous epistemologies are disruptive, sustaining, knowledge producing, and theory-in-action” (Sium & Ritskes, 2013, p. II). Personal narratives of experience “can nonetheless offer immensely powerful emotional placeholders for truths that we otherwise understand only intellectually” (Andersen, 2014, p. 5).

The personal narrative is a process and a product not just for the autoethnographer, because it also “invites readers to enter the author’s world and to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives” (Ellis et al., 2011, p. 4.1). It is writing that travels across the personal and the political which then has consequences because I do not just implicate myself in the writing but I also implicate others (Ellis et al., 2011, p. 4.3). Through such writing the politics of identity often emerge entangled with personal and communal ancestral narratives. The story of ancestry often presents a compelling narrative woven through time and space insisting upon some kind of remembrance, whether or not the story is wholly accurate. Born from such narratives are stories of identity, nurtured in the story of one’s community into which we are born. Thus, ancestry is a story that is unfolding before we enter it and long after we part with it. All peoples of the world, present, past, and future, have a first story; sometimes called the creation story, it tells how the people came to be whether in their place of origin or the place they find themselves. The Seneca, Cree, Irish, Nordic, Kono, and many others all have such stories.

Interestingly, our institutional structures are rife with ancestral narratives but engage with the stories very differently; it is the narrative of the White settler that is propagated and permeates Canadian institutional discourses:

Professor Lewis: Thank you for your email.

I have consulted with colleagues in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. Your complaint to them on the same matter in December 2015 was investigated under the University of ______’s Code of Student Behaviour. I am satisfied that the investigation was carried out appropriately, and therefore no action will be taken to re-investigate your complaint.

For your information, I have attached a statement prepared by the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research on Metis [sic] Scholarship.

Thank you. (personal communication, February 25, 2016)

Action was indeed taken when they received the information about this graduate student falsely claiming to be Métis. However, it is interesting, if not edifying in how they dealt with it in this particular circumstance. The FGSR investigated the allegation, then prepared a memo on “Claims of Metis [sic] Ethnicity in the context of scholarly work”, which because of this particular case they “deemed it wise to find agreement on a path forward in order to avoid [emphasis added] the possibility of allegations of a similar nature” (Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research [FGSR], 17 December 2015) that found support from all parties. To wit,

Where no claim of ethnicity is made, there is no need to provide any clarifying statement. Where the statement, “I am Metis” [sic] or any derivative of this phrase is used in scholarly work (journal papers, conference presentations) or in grant or scholarship applications, the following wording is recommended as a frame and clarification:

I self-identify as Metis [sic], springing from my own family engagement with FNMI [First Nation, Métis and Innuit] communities going back to (my great grandparents), although I cannot document Metis [sic] ethnicity according to the standards set by (the Metis [sic] Nation). As a scholar, I respect the necessary balance between my own self-identification in the context of uncertain historical records and the serious violating nature of making false claims of ethnicity (FGSR, University in question, 17 December 2015)

Of course, these kinds of institutional policy statements are seemingly responsive to identity concerns; however, they remain grounded in colonial self-preservation. As Chris Andersen recently noted, “what we should be thinking about, though is how colonial contexts privilege self ID over other dynamics of identity making” (DrChrisAndersen, 2016).

The story of colonisation is a centuries long narrative of erasing the Indigenous people of Turtle Island. It is, as mentioned earlier, a story “full of fear and slaughter, disease and blood. A story of murderous mischief” (King, 2003, p. 9). The story that was the scariest thing at that witch gathering was in fact the story of colonisation “set in motion by our witchery to work for us” (Silko, 1977, p. 135) through the creation of White people because before then there were none. The witch said, of the White people,

they see no life … they see only objects … they fear … they fear the world … they destroy what they fear … they fear themselves … they will fear the people … they kill what they fear … they will poison the water … the people will starve … they will bring terrible diseases … they will slaughter whole tribes … set in motion now set in motion to destroy to kill. (pp. 135–138)

Turns out the witch was not exaggerating; the colonial history of North America provides overwhelming evidence to that effect, and that witch’s story is still “set in motion” today.

From centuries long colonisation emerges the politics of identity that are fraught with the ongoing legacy of colonisation’s aims of assimilation and erasure of Indigenous people. In Canada, this erasure manifests itself in scores of reductionist questions: who is First Nation, Inuit or Métis; who is status, non-status, on reserve, off reserve; and more importantly, who decides? In Canada, we have the Indian Act (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 1876), we have had the Residential school system, had the pass system, have broken Treaties with First Nations, and have Treaty-less and landless Métis to name only a few of the policies, legislation, and practices of colonisation. The residual of those systems lives on today in the fabric of Canadian society through intergenerational trauma, institutional structures and practices, and the ongoing patriarchal relationship with the department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, including the determination of who can be First Nation, Inuit or Métis. Interestingly, Canada finds itself in a moment of possible change through the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the 94 calls to action. The TRC was created out of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement (IRS) Agreement. The 6-year mandate of the TRC was to “inform all Canadians about what happened in Indian Residential Schools (IRS)”. The TRC documented the “truth of survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the IRS experience”, including “First Nations, Inuit and Métis former Indian Residential School students, their families, communities, the Churches, former school employees, Government and other Canadians” (TRC, 2015b). On 15 December 2015, the Commission released its final comprehensive report that included the 94 “Calls to Action”, which had been released in June 2015 with the summary report. Several calls to action are in the area of education, which has for a long time been contested on issues ranging from an uneven funding allocations to inadequate resources for K-12 education of First Nations children both on and off reserve (TRC, 2015a, pp. 1–2). Another is the increased effort to recruit more Indigenous students and faculty at the postsecondary level, which is “for many institutions … the main focus at the moment of their Indigenization efforts” (CAUT, 2016, p. 5). Even before the calls to action were published, many universities across Canada had embarked upon energetic efforts to recruit First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students and faculty as universities take up Indigenisation in a variety of forms and functions. A few examples of these initiatives include requiring all students to take an Indigenous studies course, expanding services for Aboriginal students, and providing cultural sensitivity training for non-Aboriginal students, staff and faculty.

Universities, in the recruitment of Indigenous students and faculty, rely on one criterion for claiming Indigenous identity, that of self-identification. Given the complexity, not to mention messiness of identity politics and the history of colonisation, it is understandable why these institutions might choose to use self-identification as their only criterion. However, such a policy has the potential to be misconstrued, misused, and even abused by non-Indigenous people when applying for employment or for admission to postsecondary institutions, through what Indian Country Today (Ross, 2015) refers to as “box checkers”, applicants who check off the box “Indigenous” in an effort to shrink the pool of competition for themselves. These box checkers are another example of what Tuck and Yang (2012) call the White settler move to innocence; “[s]ettler nativism or Indian grandmother-complex” is when “settlers locate or invent a long-lost ancestor who is rumored to have had ‘Indian blood’, and they use this claim to mark themselves as blameless in the attempted eradications of Indigenous peoples …” (p. 10) and then use that self-identity to reposition themselves for their own benefit.

This is particularly interesting in the “Quebec-as-Indigenous or Quebec-as-Métis narratives” as discussed by Chelsea Vowel (2015) and unpacked by Darryl Leroux (2015) in his presentation “Now I am Métis: How White People become Indigenous”. The move to innocence in the Quebec context has aggressively taken up the myth of Métissage, which sees some Quebecois:

merely feeling more Indigenous than French, want to identify as Métis … not French not even Quebecois. Something else … that belongs here, does not engender guilt, and washes away Quebec’s history of colonialism while reinforcing Quebec’s own experiences as a colonized people. (Vowel, 2016, p. 44)

Such moves are in fact the opposite of innocence they reify the colonial project’s continuing evolution in the erasure of Indigenous identity. It is an act of violence, the ultimate act of violence, which has the White settler literally take Indigenous identity for him or herself while in the midst of reconciliation rhetoric that, as Belcourt (2016) notes “is an affective mess” constructing a “neatly bordered desire; a desire to let go, to move on, to turn to the future with open arms, as it were” (para 2). A reconciliation that fails to acknowledge that it “doesn’t actually remake the substance of the social or the political such that we’re still tethered to scenes of living that can’t sustain us” (para. 2).

I am aware of “the tenuous position of a settler scholar” (Sium & Ritskes, 2013, p. IV) in my telling of this story. However, I am much more concerned that my story is “already turned loose. It’s already coming. It can’t be called back” (Silko, 1977, p. 138). I know that story is about relationality, relationship, a relational process (Clandinin, 2006; Kovach, 2009; Lewis, 2011; Wilson, 2009), and has the potential to influence and reshape the social, the personal, and the institutional. But in the end what has surprised me the most, potentially a direct consequence of my own naivety, is how the institutions involved responded to the information provided; they followed “policy” even where there may have been none and drafted a new policy of sorts in the process. This may be an example of seeing settler colonial violence not as an event but as a structure (Wolfe, 1999 as cited in Tuck & Yang, n.d.), the ongoing colonial structure that in this case allows and continues to support Indigenous identity fraud even when exposed with corroborating and indisputable evidence.

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA; 2015) published a statement on the issue of Indigenous identity fraud after the story of Andrea Smith was carried across North American media in 2015. Dr. Smith is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California who has claimed to be Indigenous (Cherokee) but offers no proof beyond a statement of belief derived solely from her own self-identification. Smith drew criticism from many scholars, including five Cherokee women scholars, who wrote that Smith’s claim undermined tribal integrity and community kinship, and that she built her career on a falsehood. As one of the five scholars wrote, “it is Smith’s deception—not her enrollment status and not her advocacy—that constitutes the central issue”, thereby damaging the work of Indigenisation (Thurman, Whitehouse, Kingfisher, Cornsilk, & King, 2015).

NAISA acknowledges the complexity of Indigenous identity because of centuries of colonisation, but argues such identity is not so complex that it “does not mean that there are no ethical considerations in claiming Indigenous identity or relationships with particular Indigenous peoples. To falsely claim such belonging is Indigenous identity fraud” (para. 1). The statement calls on people to be honest about their relationships, if any, with Indigenous groups. “Belonging does not arise simply from individual feelings—it is not simply who you claim to be, but also who claims you” (para. 2). The statement reminds people of the harm that is done by falsely claiming to be Indigenous, and that “Falsifying one’s identity or relationship to particular Indigenous peoples is an act of appropriation continuous with other forms of colonial violence” (para. 3). The Canadian government has their policies, albeit questionable, concerning who is Métis and who is not along with section 35 of the Constitution Act 1982 which recognises Indigenous rights, including those of the Métis. There are also several court rulings related to Métis identity in Canada that provide some clarification as mentioned earlier. Furthermore, there are Métis communities and organisations that have their own ideas and practices of who is Métis.

The term “metis” usually written with a small m is sometimes used by people claiming Indigenous ancestry based in Euro-Indigenous mixedness and not necessarily recognised by the Powley decision nor the MNC criteria or some local provincial Métis councils. As Andersen (2014) noted with the increasing use of the census where people check a box to self-identify ethnic origin, there has been a “dubious increase” (p. 60) of over 100% in the Métis population from 1996 to 2006 (p. 74). Furthermore, as discussed by Andersen (2014) and Vowel (2016) the legislative and legal legacy of colonisation has and continues through the courts to define Métis along racialised lines rather than through Indigenous nationhood. The Canadian government’s historical practices and policies of racialisation in defining Métis as mixed race of European and Indigenous bloodlines essentially suggest that “anyone with even the most tenuous claim to a First Nations ancestor” (Vowel, 2016, p. 43) can often claim Métis, and that “the concept of hybridity can be used to find Métis wherever we look” (Andersen, 2014, p. 58). Adding to this is the growing misinterpretation or deliberate interpretation of the Daniels case to circumvent the Powley test and define Métis to include anyone with Indigenous ancestry who self identifies and is accepted by others who self-identify (Gaudry & Andersen, 2016, p. 24; Vowel & Leroux, 2016, p. 38). As one reviewer of this article noted, such practices feed into the ongoing “larger abuse of Métis identity in academia”. It is indeed complex but that complexity is derived from and a direct result of the machinations of colonisation. Consequently, “Métis is not a catch-all term for anyone who is Indigenous-but-not-First-Nation-or-Inuit” (Andersen, 2014, p. 24) nor is it a category to define other “Indigenous individuals and communities disenfranchised in various ways by the Canadian state” (p. 24). And it is certainly not a term small m or not for White settlers to claim Indigeneity because of a belief that a distant ancestor is thought to have been Indigenous. When people falsely claim to be Métis, it augments the

colonial erasure of Indigenous peoples; the fact that this is being done more and more through the lens of métissage is of particular concern to Métis people. [Métis] are being used as a wedge to undermine Indigenous rights and existence. (Vowel, 2016, p. 46)

By falsely claiming to be Métis, the graduate student in question is damaging Indigenisation and harming Indigenous peoples, in particular the ongoing Métis struggle for recognition on their own terms of community, culture, kinship, and nationhood (Andersen, 2014; Vowel, 2016). I am a White settler of Irish descent; my ancestors came to Canada and participated in the colonial project of creating Canada, and I am complicit in that project today even as I attempt to decolonise and Indigenise my praxis and my practices. I call this place home, but I must always remember that “there is a great deal of grief and sorrow about place in Canada, about land and who it belongs to, about whose stories get told and which stories are to be believed” (Chambers, 2008, p. 124). In calling out this graduate student’s false claim, I must acknowledge and claim that this student is a member of my family, of my community, White settler people, and to my intimate knowledge, the student has no “family engagement with FNMI communities going back to great grandparents”.

The systems and structures of White settler society enable misuses and abuses to be carried out with near impunity because institutional structures and practices (of universities and granting councils, that is, SSHRC, in this case) are neither answerable nor responsible to the discourses of decolonisation and Indigenous people. In my telling of this story, I am attempting to respond to and acknowledge Sium and Ritskes’ (2013) assertion that “settler narratives must speak stories of embodying colonial violence and complicity in the ongoing settler violence(s) against Indigenous peoples” (p. IV). My narrative speaks directly to institutional structures and practice, and through it I point out the need to engage in decolonisation authentically and to not simply implement Indigenisation as a policy but rather to engage with Indigenisation as a genuine project of TRC. Regrettably, in the current moment, as Belcourt (2016) notes,

Reconciliation is stubbornly ambivalent in its potentiality, an object of desire that we’re not entirely certain how to acquire or substantiate, but one that the state—reified through the bodies of politicians, Indigenous or otherwise—is telling us we need. (para. 2)

It is worth noting that this narrative of Indigenous identity fraud could have happened at any university—including my own—so it is imperative that all universities revisit and review not just their aims and goals for recruiting more Indigenous students and faculty but also really interrogate what that means and might come to mean in the context of rebuilding relationships nation to nation. Recall Tuck and Yang’s (2012) contention that “decolonisation is not a metaphor” (p. 3). Once it takes on those trappings, as is often the case in many university contexts (e.g. acknowledging the land we are meeting on, but never working towards honouring treaties to share the land or repatriate it), it re-centres the coloniser. Indeed, it “recenters Whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (p. 3), but decolonisation and Indigenisation cannot imagine a settler future because that would just be more of the present.

In the story Ceremony (Silko, 1977), the old man Betonie, when relating the story of the witch gathering, reminds his listeners of the trickery of the witchcraft that wants the people to “believe all evil resides with White people” so that “they [the people] will look no further to see what is really happening” (p. 132). He reminds listeners that the witchery uses the White people as tools and manipulates them through the story “set in motion”. Betonie continues, “we can deal with the White people with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented White people; it was Indian witchery that made White people in the first place” (p. 132). This is not to exonerate White settlers in any way from everything that has happened and continues to happen through and because of colonisation and imperialism but rather just the opposite.

Whether revisiting mythologies past, or grappling with inventions of the present, there is not, nor can there be, exoneration for White settlers until there is a rupture from the cycle and recycle of the myriad forms of violence carried out against Indigenous peoples from first contact to the present moment. White settlers need to stop believing the story of that witch, they need to undo the wanton forgetting of the tremendous violence and theft that they have visited and continue visiting upon Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Aen koonteur/Otâcimow/Conteur/Storyteller (Michif or Cree or French or English)

I am a storyteller, and I have drawn upon the craft of storytelling to lay this narrative down. As a storyteller, I point to “experience, [my] own and that reported by others”. Through the sharing, I “make it the experience of those who are listening to the tale” (Benjamin, 1973, p. 87). As an offering, story “contains openly or covertly, something useful. [A] moral, practical advice, a proverb or a maxim” (p. 86), an insight or a possibility. This story as do many stories has counsel for the listener or the reader. Walter Benjamin (1973) redraws our attention to the idea that, “counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding” (p. 86).

So, what does this story propose concerning universities and students, faculty and staff with respect to Indigenous identity fraud? The university in question took up the story quickly and endeavoured to “find a path forward” with a “recommendation” albeit a limited one. That is a beginning; however, we cannot stop there; we must work towards a better understanding through reciprocal relationships of nation-to-nation dialogue and listening. “When someone articulates connections to a particular people, the measure of truth cannot simply be a person’s belief but must come from relationships with Indigenous people” (NAISA, 2015). The “path forward” involves cutting a new trail through uneven terrain, which will require us to engage honestly and authentically with each other if there is to be reconciliation. As old Betonie intimated ceremony must continue, it takes a long time “there were transitions that had to be made in order to become whole again, in order to be the people our Mother would remember … ” (Silko, 1977, p. 170). In the words of the late Dr. Mary Young (personal communication, 18 September 2012), we must strive towards pimosayta, and in that “walking together” we may learn and heal from the memory of the land and the people so that we may realise pimatisiwin—“walking in a good way”.