A French historian's claim that aboriginal Canadian soldiers scalped prisoners during the Second World War has drawn outrage from veterans and scorn from academics.
The allegation has been described as "racist," "appalling" and "garbage."
The accusation is found in Olivier Wieviorka's book Normandy, an otherwise conventional account of the lead-up to D-Day and the eventual liberation of Paris. It was first published in France in 2007. Harvard University Press published a hardcover edition in 2008 and has just reissued it in paperback.
The offending passage comes in a segment discussing atrocities. After briefly outlining the 12 SS Panzer division's penchant for murdering prisoners of war (many of them Canadians) during the Normandy campaign, Prof. Wieviorka turns to what he says are Allied atrocities.
Among them: "Some Canadian soldiers of native Indian origin scalped their captives."
No source or footnote is given. Harvard University Press did not reply to an e-mail asking for comment.
Alex Maurice of Beauval, Sask., president of the National Aboriginal Veterans Association, is furious.
"This is racism at its ugliest, and I can only assume that person watched too, too many John Wayne movies," he said when told of the claim.
He said his uncle landed on D-Day with the Regina Rifle Regiments.
"My uncle … and the rest of the Regina Rifles soldiers didn't insult their fellow soldiers by killing German prisoners of war, much less scalping them.
"Regina Rifles, those that landed in Normandy, were comprised of many, many native soldiers who were trappers, hunters, fishers, labourers, and young men who walked out to join the Canadian military and served with honour and the racist comments (scalping) are doing them a disservice."
Canadian historians scoff at Prof. Wieviorka's claim.
Scott Sheffield, a history professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, in Abbottsford, B.C., has spent 15 years researching the role of aboriginals in the Canadian army of the Second World War.
"I have spoken to many indigenous and non-indigenous veterans, read widely across the literature, delved into virtually every archival source on the subject, and have never encountered such a case," he said.
He said he was "stunned" to see such an accusation made without supporting evidence.
"I can imagine that such claims might have been imagined by military or media commentators of that day and age, given the racial assumptions about the Indian that prevailed in Canadian, and also German, society. But to reproduce that imaginative historical stereotyping in a supposedly objective modern historical work, especially without substantiation, is appalling."
Whitney Lackenbauer, a historian from the University of Waterloo who has also studied native participation in the military, was equally dismissive.
"I have never heard any such allegations - and I presume that I would have, given my extensive work on aboriginal people in the world wars," he said.
"The unsubstantiated rumours peddled by authors like Wieviorka - who fail to even cite their sources - should be dismissed with the disdain that they deserve."
Terry Copp, professor emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of two well-received books on the Canadian army in Normandy and northwest Europe, scorned Prof. Wieviorka's claim as "just garbage without evidence."
"When I was working on the book on the Regina Rifles, who had a significant number of aboriginal and Métis soldiers, especially in D company, commanded by my co-author, the late Gordon Brown, there was not a hint of this and nothing but admiration for the behaviour of these soldiers.
"Stories like these get handed around and embellished."
Dean Oliver, director of research at the Canadian War Museum, said the lack of attribution for the claim is telling.
"I'd be extremely wary, as anecdotal references often have legs that travel stubbornly disconnected from factual bodies," he said.
"There are, of course, some documented instances of prisoner mistreatment by Allied forces in northwest Europe … but none that I've seen which demonstrate Canadian involvement or complicity in what your source appears to be describing."
A spokesman for the Royal Canadian Legion laughed at the allegation, saying he'd never heard of such a thing.
Prof. Wieviorka has written a number of books and articles on France under German occupation and on the wartime resistance movement.