When the high-profile health researcher Carrie Bourassa resigned as a professor at the University of Saskatchewan earlier this year – amid allegations that she was not Indigenous, despite her claims – an investigation that was already under way into the matter had to suddenly shift its focus.
Instead of looking solely at the case of Ms. Bourassa, Métis lawyer Jean Teillet broadened the university’s probe to look at the problem of Indigenous identity fraud more generally, and how it’s been allowed to grow in academia.
Her findings, released last week, were blunt and disturbing.
Ms. Teillet said universities have been blind to the complexities of Indigenous identity. As a result, there have been “few checks and balances to detect or deter Indigenous identity fraud.” This, she wrote, allowed some to exploit what was effectively an honour system by fabricating or embellishing their identity claims. The university will now require a “documentation verification process” as determined by Indigenous communities.
Which brings me to the deeply troubling case of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.
The renowned lawyer, academic and former judge has long promoted her Indigenous ancestry, in media reports and elsewhere. But in recent weeks, a CBC investigation has cast doubt on those claims. In particular, the reports have alleged that her declarations around her Cree heritage, her treaty Indian status, and where she grew up were at odds with publicly available records.
Ms. Turpel-Lafond, who was the inaugural academic director of the University of B.C.’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre and is still a teacher at the university’s Allard School of Law, has said that her non-Indigenous grandparents adopted her father, William, a Cree child from Norway House, Man. But the CBC talked to an elder from the small First Nation who could not recall this happening. The CBC did, however, find a 1929 newspaper birth announcement that suggests her father was born that year in Victoria to her non-Indigenous grandparents.
Ms. Turpel-Lafond has not been able to explain this discrepancy. She issued a statement that said that her father “was Cree, spoke Cree and lived the values of a Cree person,” but she offered no material evidence that contradicts the reporting. And, although Ms. Turpel-Lafond has said that she grew up in Norway House, the CBC found a picture of Ms. Turpel-Lafond in a high-school yearbook from Niagara Falls, Ont.
That is only a fraction of the CBC’s many problematic findings. She apparently never received the prestigious Queen’s Counsel designation she once boasted about. A book that she co-authored (according to her 2018 curriculum vitae) does not appear to exist. Her CV also indicated that she received an honorary degree from First Nations University of Canada, but the school says it has never granted an honorary degree in its 46-year history.
It’s fair to say that there are many people who know Ms. Turpel-Lafond who are shocked by the reporting by the CBC (which has not backtracked on any of it), and the lack of forceful response to some of the most damning allegations. I got to know Ms. Turpel-Lafond during her celebrated 10-year stint as B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth from 2006 and 2016, and I can tell you that I’m baffled.
Unsurprisingly, the Indigenous community seems to be torn over the revelations. Some seem to be prepared to give her a pass based on her strong advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people across the country. Others, including those in a newly formed organization called the Indigenous Women’s Collective, are calling on all 12 of the universities who have given her an honorary degree to revoke them. None has done so, to this point.
UBC has also been mostly quiet, even though Ms. Turpel-Lafond remains employed by its law school. Earlier, it made the preposterous claim that it wasn’t going to comment on the matter because “Indigenous identity was not a criterion” for the positions she held at the school – including, apparently, her former job as the head of its Indigenous dialogue centre.
Surely, UBC would not have given that job to a non-Indigenous person. One has to wonder what other jobs and awards she was given based on the assumption she was Indigenous.
I think Ms. Turpel-Lafond owes it to UBC and the broader Indigenous community to offer a detailed response to the allegations that have been levelled. UBC, for its part, should launch its own investigation and suspend Ms. Turpel-Lafond until it is completed.
This is an extremely serious situation that concerns someone of near-iconic status among certain groups. There is a dark veil of mistrust hanging over her right now – one that will remain until a bright light is shone on the entire affair.