National Post (National Edition)
Aboriginal impostor or victim of ‘envy’?
Following the explosive allegation questioning Canadian author Joseph Boyden’s Indigenous identity, debate surges in aboriginal circles over whether Boyden is really one of them.
“Do you think Crazy Horse checked his warrior’s status cards before the Battle of the Little Bighorn?” read a fierce defence of Boyden posted to Facebook Monday by Maurice Switzer, a former director of communications for the Assembly of First Nations.
Ernie Crey, chief of B.C.’s Cheam First Nation and a prominent Indigenous commentator, struck a similar tone, calling Boyden a victim of “envy.”
Bemoaning similar instances of bloodline scrutiny — including evictions of interracial couples from Kahnawake land — Crey said in a Monday Facebook post that if it continues “trust me, we’ll all end up in a DNA lab.”
A lengthy expose by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network published Friday dug into Boyden’s genealogical background, finding no records to support the author’s various claims of having Metis, Mi’kmaq, Ojibway and Nipmuc ancestry. Most notably, the APTN found evidence from the 1950s showing Boyden’s uncle Earl — who ran a souvenir shop under the alias “Injun Joe” — dismissed any claims to aboriginal heritage.
In response, Boyden said in statement on the weekend that he had “mostly Celtic heritage,” with traces of Ojibwe and Nipmuc, an Algonquian nation from Massachusetts.
He said that he has mistakenly said he was Metis, which is traditionally applied to descendants of French traders and trappers and indigenous women in the Canadian northwest, when what he meant was he was of “mixed blood.”
“I don’t believe anyone should ever be made to feel shame in their identity,” said the Scotiabank Giller Prize winning author, who was an honorary witness at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Since the article’s publication, other curious examples of Boyden’s unclear heritage have come to light.
In a Monday post, Rebeka Tabobondung, the editor of the Indigenous publication Muskrat Magazine, said she asked Boyden what his home nation was at a writers conference several years ago.
Boyden replied “Wasausking First Nation” — Tabobondung’s home nation. “I later asked a respected community genealogist what his connection was and she said she didn’t know,” she wrote.
Robert Jago, a blogger who uncovered much of the evidence cited by APTN, found a NUVO magazine interview on Monday in which Boyden incorrectly uses the term “two spirit” to refer to his love of both New Orleans and Ontario.
“There’s something called the ‘two-spirit person’ in a lot of First Nations cultures … meaning somebody who is never completely in one physical place,” Boyden said.
The term “two-spirit” is actually used to describe sexual identity; the two “spirits” are male and female.
“Why are so many of our most famous Indigenous (people) ... not Indigenous?” read a Friday Tweet by Metis writer Chelsea Vowel, best known for her blog âpihtawikosisân.
Boyden critics were quick to draw parallels with Grey Owl, a British-born environmentalist prominent in the early 20th century who fraudulently claimed aboriginal heritage.
Twenty years ago, critics were also questioning the Indigenous identity of Ontarioborn country singer Shania Twain, who used her Indian Status to move to Nashville without a visa.
“The native community is much more apt to see impostors than another community,” Dean Chavers, director of the U.S.-based native scholarship fund Catching the Dream, told the National Post by email.
For the Cherokee nation alone, Chavers said there are dozens of fake tribes and potentially millions of Americans falsely claiming status. “Jobs are the leading cause of people assuming an Indian identity,” he said.
However, Switzer dismissed the scrutiny of Boyden’s background, calling the controversy a case of “cultural one-upmanship” brought about by the “racist system of ‘Indian status.’”
Switzer has said that the idea of “blood quantum” did not exist before colonialism, and in an interview Monday he defended Boyden, saying the author has not “traded off whatever Indigeneity he can trace.”
“He is just a damned fine writer who has done a great deal to raise the profile of native issues, and who happens to believe he has some Indigenous heritage,” he said.
Nevertheless, critics have noted Boyden’s increasingly political public persona. Boyden delivers paid speeches about Indigenous issues, is a regular editorialist on aboriginal policy and makes frequent appearances as the native voice on political panels.
And as APTN noted, Boyden’s sister Mary works as the aboriginal liaison for Goldcorp.
“The path that (Boyden) proposes for Reconciliation isn’t one I would choose, and before non-native Canadians latch on to it, they should find out if it comes from an actual native, or from a fabulist,” said Jago in an essay for Canadaland.