Canada: university president to take leave amid controversy over Indigenous ancestry claim

The president of a Canadian university has apologized and is taking a leave of absence after allegations that she falsely claimed to be Indigenous, in the latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud.

Vianne Timmons, who is president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, said that she would be taking a six-week leave after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a report last week questioning her claims that her father’s great-great-grandmother was Mi’kmaq.

“While I have shared that I am not Mi’kmaq and I do not claim an Indigenous identity, questions about my intentions in identifying my Indigenous ancestry and whether I have benefited from sharing my understanding of my family’s history have sparked important conversations on and beyond our campus,” she said in a statement on Monday.

Timmons said she “sincerely regrets any hurt or confusion” and that she “deeply apologies to those impacted”.

The incident is the latest in a string of events involving prominent figures who have been accused of overstating their claims to an Indigenous identity, prompting fresh debate about who can make such claims – and whether embellishments and falsehoods should be treated as fraud.

Though Timmons told the CBC that she had not claimed to be Indigenous, she had listed membership with the Bras d’Or Mi’kmaq First Nation in Nova Scotia, which is not recognized by other Indigenous groups or by the federal government. She also accepted an award in 2019 from Indspire, an Indigenous-led charity, which on Tuesday still listed her as Mi’kmaq on its website.

When Dr Megan Scribe, an assistant professor in sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, saw Timmons’ statements, she said her first thought was: “Oh no, again?”

“Even after learning some of the circumstantial details … it all starts to blur. Because there have been so many confirmed and potential cases of identity fraud at universities in the last year,” said Scribe, who is Ininiw from the Norway House Cree Nation and the education director for the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education center based at the university.

Other recent cases include Carrie Bourassa, a former professor at the University of Saskatchewan, who was suspended after her claims to multiple Indigenous identities were challenged. She resigned from the school in 2022.

In October, the CBC published an investigation into Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a former judge and then professor at the University of British Columbia, about discrepancies in her claims to Indigenous history.

At the time, Turpel-Lafond said that she had trusted her father’s account of having Cree heritage. Some of Turpel-Lafond’s honorary degrees were revoked, and she recently told the Canadian Press that it was “liberating” to be freed of the honours, as it allowed her to “focus on what really matters in her life”. She cautioned that “trial by media is rampant” and could lead to “wrongful convictions”.

And in 2021, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, faced a backlash after reports emerged that cast doubt on the Indigenous identity of several faculty members. The following year, a 32-page report by Indigenous academics called on the school to apologize and create a process to validate Indigenous identities.

Since colonization began, white Canadians have often pretended to be Indigenous, from white people dressed as Indigenous “performers” at 20th-century fairs to Canadian summer camps where children were told to pretend to be Indigenous as an element of “play”.

Scribe said that falsely claiming Indigenous heritage remains “an emerging feature of settler colonialism” and is “now taking root in our society in a more structural, systemic way”.

“It’s a feature of colonialism that allows settlers to legitimize their claim to these territories,” she said.

As more cases emerged, institutions have made missteps in addressing issues. And it has often fallen on Indigenous people to guide schools in making change.

But efforts to investigate allegedly fraudulent claims are not without risk: in January 2021, Michelle Latimer, a film-maker, sued CBC journalists, most of whom were Indigenous, after they probed her heritage. The lawsuit was dropped in 2021.

In 2022 lawyer Jean Teillet, who specializes in Indigenous rights law, wrote an extensive report for the University of Saskatchewan that examined Indigenous identity fraud.

It covered the history of this type of fraud and methods used, including the reliance on embellished or concocted personal stories, DNA testing and the “grooming” of Indigenous elders by using manipulation to provide legitimacy to claims of Indigenous identity.

Teillet called on universities to better address such issues, and cultivate better relationships with Indigenous peoples.

“It is crucial to create more meaningful and close relationships with Indigenous peoples, and not just with respect to the partnerships necessary for identity verification,” she said.