Canada may have thousands of pretendians – here’s why

The followed opinion piece written by yours truly focuses on the growing exposure of exalted status white people trying to enhance their already elevated privileges by faking indigenous identity, a process called pretendianism.

I argue that pretendianism is simply the flip side of the tarnished racial-cum-ethnic differentiation coin. For most of the long period of contact between the first settlers of Canada and the later European immigrants, pretending to be white, like the now declining practice of passing for white in America among mixed-race people, was an important strategy for coping with racism and other forms of oppression. 

The best known recent Canadian pretendian case involves Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, widely regarded as one of Canada’s most successful and honoured indigenous scholars and legal professionals, who for decades claimed to be of aboriginal ancestry through her putative Cree father William Turpel. According to an October 12 CBC exposé, she even referred to herself as the “first Treaty Indian” appointed to the judicial bench in Saskatchewan history.

My take on what is both identity theft and cultural appropriation deals with issues not mentioned in that exposé.