RUBENSTEIN: From revered indigenous storyteller to ‘pretendian’ — Thomas King’s fake indigenous identity crisis sparks backlash

Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.Celebrated and prolific “indigenous” author Thomas King now says that despite believing so nearly all his life, he is not really indigenous, a claim that is hard to accept.Like Buffy St. Marie, who was also exposed as passing for indigenous, King’s physically swarthy facial features made it easy for him to claim indigenous ancestry.The writer of many celebrated and award-winning books, including 2003's The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative and 2012's The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, says he is “reeling” from recent news that he has no Cherokee ancestry..SLOBODIAN: RCMP Veterans' Association apologizes for sending MAiD suicide talk invitation.Whether he is “reeling” from the news or from finally being outed is unclear, given that the accusation of being a “pretendian” — a pejorative portmanteau of "pretend" and "Indian" used to describe non-indigenous people who publicly and falsely assert an indigenous identity — often for personal or financial gain, has been plaguing him for decades. Why he waited so long to explore this accusation carefully is the single most important question he has left unanswered.In an essay titled "A most inconvenient Indian" for the Globe and Mail, a play on the title of one of his most famous works, the Guelph, Ontario-based King, who is also a former University of Guelph professor of indigenous studies, says he learned about rumours questioning his heritage several years ago but ignored them. .A contrary explanation is that he hoped this rumour would eventually disappear.In his defence, King claimed in his essay that he had previously tried unsuccessfully to track down members of his father's family in Oklahoma, to shed light on his father's biological father, who his mother said was "part Cherokee." The extent to which he tried to do so has now been undermined..OLDCORN: Alberta’s Bill 11 won’t ‘Americanize’ healthcare, it could finally move the needle on wait times.Born and raised in California, King says he finally made a concerted effort this year to find the origin of these rumours. In fact, mounting external pressure may have compelled him to contact a US Cherokee organization called Tribal Alliance Against Frauds. TAAF investigated his past with help from a University of British Columbia scholar, Daniel Heath Justice, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a professor in the Institute of Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of English Languages and Literatures at the University of British Columbia.Heath Justice was on the Zoom call between TAAF and King, where he discussed his finding that King had neither any Cherokee heritage nor any known indigenous ancestry after carefully tracing both his father's and paternal grandfather’s lineages.Heath Justice said King seemed genuinely shocked to learn of his genealogy. But he said this wasn't a surprise to many Cherokee citizens, who had long been aware that King was not Cherokee. .He said while King is absorbing things, his “statement is a first step but it can't be the only step” toward accountability.In his defence, King wrote that he did not purposefully pretend to have indigenous roots. Instead, he argued that he was three years old when his father left the family and that his mother rarely spoke of the man but had claimed he was part Cherokee.King says the revelation "a couple of weeks" ago was "so very devastating, though devastating is too pedestrian a word.".WENZEL: It’s time to reverse blanket rezoning and bring back Fort Calgary.Again, this claim is hard to accept given how long this rumour has been around."At 82, I feel as though I've been ripped in half, a one-legged man in a two-legged story. Not the Indian I had in mind. Not an Indian at all," King wrote in his G&M essay.A “ripped in half” feeling is shared by many of his former indigenous followers..Anishinaabe writer Jesse Wente said King’s students were the first to come to mind when he heard the news.“I think of all the people that have been in a relationship with him, what they're feeling today,” he said.Wente said he was aware of rumours surrounding King’s heritage and distanced himself from him after his experience working with director Michelle Latimer on a film adaptation of The Inconvenient Indian. .“This should have been taken care of long ago,” Wente said."I can't speak to why people don't resolve their own issues if they're going to represent themselves in ways publicly."Wente said he doesn't understand how King could be shocked, since this is not new to many in his circle, and that the burden is on King to repair those relationships, not his community..Wente also claimed he doesn't understand how King could be shocked, since this is not new to many in his circle, and that the burden is on King, not his community, to repair those relationships.Celeste Pedri-Spade, an Anishinaabe associate professor in anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, called on King to act on his statement about continuing to support indigenous causes and indigenous artists.“Your book royalties, the money that you make off of these Indigenous stories, donate them to some initiative to support Indigenous students, to support the future of brilliant Indigenous writers,” she said..MACLEOD: Unlocking Alberta’s potential — why independence must be on the table.None of the sort is likely ever to happen.King admitted that he has received financial grants and other benefits in his career from being seen as indigenous. But the only award he intends to return is the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Arts and Culture in 2003.“The rest of my awards are based on my writing,” he said, “not my ethnicity,” a claim many people would likely dispute.King's many accolades include a Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his 2020's Indians on Vacation, and being made a member of the Order of Canada in 2004. He was promoted to Companion of the Order in 2020..At the time, he was lauded by the Governor General's Prize for work that "exposes the hard truths of the injustices of the Indigenous Peoples of North America" and through which "this revered storyteller and activist challenges stereotypes and cultural assumptions, and furthers dialogue and reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples."Now King has to confront a stereotype and cultural assumption of his own making: the surge in white people pretending to be indigenous for fame and fortune. King says in the essay that he expects a "firestorm" of anger, disbelief, and feelings of betrayal, and after it is over, he will "sort through rubble to see if there is anything left of my reputation, of my career.".THOMAS: City of Calgary budget public hearings; is everyone being heard?.“Feelings of betrayal” are hard to comprehend given how a growing number of pretendians have been outed in recent years."I'd like to think that, at the very least, I will be able to find a way to continue to support Indigenous causes and Indigenous artists, though I'm not sure the causes and artists will want to stand too close to such a smouldering wreck," he wrote..Indigenous journalist and university professor Niigaan Sinclair probably said it best when he opined:“For decades, individuals have profited mightily by claiming to be Indigenous with little more than a vague family story while displacing legitimate Indigenous people.”“Intentionally or not, the real-life consequences of King’s story are that his inability to find out the truth of his own identity, which apparently wasn’t hard for others, meant Canadians were duped, Indigenous peoples were marginalized, and all of us are left to ask a lot of questions.”Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.