When Patricia Onysko and Alan Lawrence married in 1986, the year this photo was taken, it was an interracial marriage at a time when they were rare. Alan has Indigenous heritage and Patricia’s family comes from Ukraine.Courtesy of family
Patricia Onysko is a retired journalist based in Toronto.
My husband Alan was born Albert Ackabee. He’s Anishinaabe, with family lines rooted in the Fort William First Nation. He changed his name to Alan Lawrence the moment he legally could, to shed his early life and become someone new.
Alan became a photojournalist by trade. He was the first Indigenous cameraman to be hired at the CTV television network in 1984, a time before there was an option to mark “member of a First Nation” on human resources intake forms. He was simply an exceptional photographer.
We got married in 1986 – him, Indigenous, and me, Ukrainian – when interracial marriages were rare, especially in racially charged Winnipeg.
Fast forward more than a decade, when we moved to Toronto. Alan, who was doing freelance work at the National Film Board and on other independent projects at the time, was hired as a senior photographer at the CBC. Reporters and producers loved his work, and would request him specifically to do shoots. He would go above and beyond what was required to source incredible images. His job allowed him to travel the world, including a posting in Afghanistan; he covered four U.S. presidents, Queen Elizabeth II, countless Canadian prime ministers and other celebrities.
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He was also the photographer on several news and documentary assignments about Tom King. Indigenous royalty.
Alan was so proud to get to meet and spend time with him. At the end of one shoot, they had a long conversation about the similarities in their backgrounds; the author shared stories about his Greek and Cherokee heritage, and Alan talked about his Ojibwe and Swedish heritage. He always felt that they shared a genuine and special kinship of identity and histories.
The couple in December, 2024. Patricia is helping share Alan’s story, especially now that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.Patricia Onysko/Supplied
In recent years, the revelations about alleged pretendians in Canada have been a painful pileup in Alan’s life: Joseph Boyden, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Michelle Latimer, Carrie Bourassa, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond – and now, Tom King. They were all feted, revered, put on a pedestal by the Canadian cultural elite and mainstream media, and of course, very well compensated for their talents. Most received the Order of Canada for their achievements. They were Indigenous people to be admired, not only because of their noteworthy accomplishments, but also because of what they said they had endured in their early lives: poverty, abuse, and alcoholism, the reality for many Indigenous people.
But there was rarely any level of detail to their stories. Alan’s story, on the other hand, has lots of detail – all of it hard-earned.
Many Indigenous people have thoughtfully described the profound impacts of these acts of fraud and how they continue to reverberate across the country. In that context, I feel like maybe I should hold my tongue, as the white wife to an Indigenous man.
But if Alan doesn’t share his story – one that we are telling together, and urgently, because he cannot tell it himself as a result of his Parkinson’s diagnosis – then it cannot give voice to the thousands of others who have experienced some of what he’s gone through, nor provide understanding around why they might feel particularly betrayed.
His story – his truth – is about identity, resilience and pride. He is a 78-year-old survivor of intergenerational trauma who worked hard to run away from his Indigenous family’s past, and has since worked even harder to return to it – and that’s why the recent revelation that Tom King is not Indigenous brought the nightmares of his past to the present again.
Alan Lawrence as an infant, when his name was Albert Ackabee.Courtesy of family
Born to a single mom, baby Albert was taken from her shortly after birth because she was hospitalized with tuberculosis and couldn’t care for him. At six weeks, he was strong enough to be released from hospital and was placed in an orphanage. That’s where he was kept for more than five years. When he was finally returned to his mother, they moved from rooming house to rooming house. Cupboards were empty and the rooms were cold and dark.
His mother eventually got married, but his life only became worse. He suffered years of physical and emotional abuse at home; then, he was sent to a Catholic summer camp, where he was sexually abused. He was desperate to get away from it all and ran away from home often, but the police always brought him back.
The last time he ran away he was 13, so police took him to a youth detention centre. There, a social worker asked him, “Do you want to go back to live with your parents?” He replied, adamantly: “No.” He was institutionalized again – but this time, it was his choice, so he could finish his schooling by living in a youth centre for disadvantaged children. After that, he left Manitoba, changed his name and, eventually, left the country altogether. With his technical proficiency, he juggled a series of jobs to afford an educational on-ramp to the film business in Los Angeles. He didn’t return to Canada for more than 10 years.
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Alan and I have only discovered the extent of his trauma over the past six years. He had very few memories of any of it until he was diagnosed with childhood PTSD at the age of 70, and the floodgates of horror opened. He came close to the abyss, but decided he wanted to live. That’s when he started the healing process with psychologists and psychiatrists.
In May, 2021, he broke down in tears one night watching the breaking news about the suspected remains of children at the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc residential school. I’ll never forget that night. He kept repeating, “why do they want to keep killing us?” The National broadcast put up a 1-800 number for a help line. He called it that night, and the very next day he was connected with an Indigenous counsellor and eventually an elder at Anishinaabe Health in Toronto. That’s where his healing for his intergenerational trauma began. He realized he couldn’t outrun his Indigenous past – he needed to learn from it, and learn how to heal.
Three years before, Alan had applied for his Indian status. He’d helped his Ojibwe mother obtain hers after the 1985 passage of Bill C-31, which amended the Indian Act by reinstating status to women who had lost it through marriage to men without status. His first cousin, former NHL star Reggie Leach, had gotten his status, as did a stepsister through the maternal line. All of his Indigenous friends said it was a no-brainer.
Despite having the identical maternal bloodlines as his cousin and stepsister, however, Alan was rejected. The reason he was given: his maternal grandfather had chosen to be enfranchised, to acquire full Canadian citizenship, and so he lost all his rights to status – and apparently, there was no proof his grandmother was Indigenous.
Alan was the first Indigenous cameraman to be hired at CTV in 1984. He also worked for the National Film Board and the CBC (pictured in 1981).Ken Gigliotti/Supplied
That’s when we started the process of proving his indigeneity. Of course, he knew he was Indigenous. But he had to prove it to the Indian Registrar at Indigenous Services Canada.
So we did the work – the work that Mr. King and others like him chose not to do. Tracing Alan’s maternal line was a full-time job. We now have hundreds of pages of documents based on many more hundreds of hours of research, weeks-long deep dives into Ancestry.ca and other Canadian historical online sites. We traced his maternal Moar/Moore family line to the late 1700s in the James Bay Area. He took a DNA test which confirmed exactly what he knew: he is half Native North American and half Swedish. We gathered extensive documents about his paternal family history. His grandfather Joseph, who spent 11 years in the St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ont., was the first Indigenous person from that city to enlist to fight in the First World War.
That’s pertinent to Alan. Because of his grandfather’s time in residential school, he did not want his children to experience the same trauma. That’s why he took enfranchisement, even though it meant the loss of his family’s Indian status.
We also applied for access to Manitoba government documents about his early years in the child welfare system. Those documents were heartbreaking. After reading them, our family doctor said he shouldn’t still be alive.
Now, almost eight years after he first applied for his status, he is waiting for the federal government to pass Bill S-2, which would amend the Indian Act to address remaining inequities.
We have been fortunate to have the support of Aboriginal Legal Services in Toronto and members of the Indigenous community during this process. Damien Lee, who is also from Fort William First Nation, reached out to us after CBC did a story on Alan. He connected us with Chief Michele Solomon to discuss Alan’s ancestry, and to Darryl Leroux, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and an expert in race-shifting and genealogy, who confirmed Alan’s indigeneity and described his denial of status as an injustice.
In the meantime, Alan continues to learn about his lost culture and heritage. He has started his recovery, and in the process, he’s learned the impacts of trying to distance himself from his family’s past. Two years ago, Alan was invited to a naming ceremony. He is now White Eagle Man, of the Bear Clan. And every morning at sunrise, wherever we are in the world, Alan is outside with his tobacco facing east, south, west and north, praying and giving thanks. He is grateful for his life. So am I.
Together, we are writing his story. It is a slow process because the memories are often so overwhelming that we have to stop our work. It’s anxiety-triggering, which also exacerbates his symptoms of Parkinson’s. Thankfully he has his counsellor, elder, and psychiatrist for support.
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I have a message to all of the pretendians, discovered and yet to be discovered: Your lies have an impact. You have profited handsomely from a fraudulent identity; you have strategically stepped over others and denied them opportunities; you perpetuate the vicious cycle of cultural appropriation; you increase scrutiny of others who are legitimate.
But also, you have hurt countless people like Alan – people working hard to find their place, instead of just claiming one without concern. You should be ashamed of the damage you continue to inflict.
Alan is far more philosophical and generous than me. He prays for your healing, and hopes you find your path. But I’m the white wife. And I say: Karma is real.