After another celebrated figure in Indigenous arts and culture was revealed to not have Indigenous ancestry, some scholars say it’s time to examine the Canadian institutions that have helped these people build their careers.
Ontario-based author Thomas King, whose books include 1993’s Green Grass, Running Water and 2012’s The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, wrote in a Globe and Mail essay published Monday that he learned he has no Cherokee ancestry, despite having identified as Cherokee for most of his life.
Experts who spoke with CBC News noted striking similarities with the high-profile cases of author Joseph Boyden, musician Buffy Sainte-Marie and filmmaker Michelle Latimer — who adapted King’s Inconvenient Indian for a 2020 documentary before her Indigenous ancestry was called into question — among others.
“We’re getting kind of desensitized, as Indigenous scholars, to now having irrefutable evidence of these very prominent individuals who have taken up a lot of space and been go-to voices for understanding Indigenous issues in Canada,” Allyson Stevenson, the Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair in Métis Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, said Tuesday.
King, who was born in California, said his mom told him when he was young that his dad — who had left the family — was part Cherokee, and he grew up believing that. The 82-year-old said he did not purposefully pretend to have Indigenous roots and that he felt as though he’d been “ripped in half” by the news.
But Stevenson and others told CBC News that they had known or heard rumours that he wasn’t Indigenous going back a decade.
‘Shockingly similar’ to past cases
Stevenson said she understands family histories can be complicated but it’s important for people to be “as honest as possible” and do their homework, especially before building a career around their identity.
King was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2004 and promoted to companion of the order in 2020, among his many literary awards and other accolades.
Hayden King, executive director of the Yellowhead Institute and assistant professor of sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, said he’s glad that Thomas King – who he describes as “a giant in Indigenous literature” – verified the longstanding rumours himself.
But he agreed the case is “shockingly similar” to the cases of Boyden, Latimer, Sainte-Marie and others who long claimed Indigenous ancestries that were called into question after they had built successful careers.
Author Thomas King revealed in an op-ed in the Globe and Mail that, after working with investigators, he has discovered he has no Cherokee ancestry. King says he believed he was Indigenous his entire life but learned of rumours several years ago questioning his heritage.
“They’ll say, ‘I grew up being told I was Indigenous.’ None of them seem to do the work to actually find their relatives or confirm that they’re Indigenous. They just sort of carry on through life with this family lore that’s unverified,” he said.
“And when they are exposed, there’s a degree of self pity here, or victimization, that they have been wronged somehow.”
Push to evaluate Canadian institutions
Hayden King, who is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing in Huronia, Ont., and is not related to the author, says the fact that Thomas King was one of the first Indigenous writers to really “break through” in Canada should compel some introspection from Canadian publishers and universities.
“The foundational writers on Indigenous issues in Canada, some of the first were actually not Indigenous people,” he said.
“And I think that that provokes questions of the institutions that curate the public discussion on Indigenous issues, and which authors get platformed and which don’t.”
He says non-Indigenous people have a way of navigating the world that might be free of the “colonial baggage” carried by people with lived Indigenous experience, so “they have this layer of privilege that makes them more palatable to the type of institutions that are platforming this work.”
Stevenson shared similar concerns, saying she would like to see a “critical evaluation” of the major institutions in Canada that have supported non-Indigenous scholars, writers and thought leaders who have claimed Indigenous identities.
She wonders why their stories have been “so compelling and convincing” to these institutions and the broader Canadian public, “when there’s been many Indigenous scholars and writers with lived experience, verified ancestries, who have struggled … to have their voices heard.”
Stevenson says Boyden, Latimer and King in particular have all had prominent roles in narrating and storytelling about Indigenous experiences in Canada, despite their personal experiences not being authentic.
Reparations needed, scholar says
Amy Shawanda, director of research at Kenjgewin Teg post-secondary institution on M’Chigeeng First Nation in Ontario, said she has no sympathy for King after he took so long to verify his identity.
Shawanda, who is Anishinaabe from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory, Manitoulin Island, says she would like to see reparations to the communities hurt by King and others who received honours and funding meant for Indigenous people.
King’s many honours have included the 2006 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award for A Short History of Indians in Canada and the 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature, for The Inconvenient Indian.
“That was a big motivation for a lot of these individuals that engage in false identity. They get all of this financial [help] and they get the accolades that come with it, and get to speak on behalf of us,” Shawanda said.
King acknowledges these issues, if obliquely, in his Globe and Mail essay, saying that if he were a journalist covering his case, he’d ask how the author had financially benefitted from his claimed identity, and how his work pushed out actual Indigenous voices.
He declined calls to apologize, saying he hadn’t known he was wrong about being Cherokee.
Shawanda says King, like Sainte-Marie, did great work, but in the end it was “all a lie.”
“Some type of reparation on his part to give back to our communities, I think, is a first step to repairing that relationship,” she said.
