Front Burner - Carrie Bourassa and false claims of Indigeneity

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

A CBC News investigation into a prominent University of Saskatchewan professor found no evidence to support her claims to Indigeneity. Reporter Geoff Leo breaks down the story, and Veldon Coburn tells us how to address the issue.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Angela Starrett, in for Jamie Poisson. Any greetings? My name's Morningstar Bear. I'm just going to say it, I'm emotional.

to say I'm emotional. In September 2019, Carrie Barasa does a TEDx talk at the University of Saskatchewan. She gets on stage wearing a blue shawl and holding a feather in her left hand. I'm Bear Klan. I'm Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty 4 Territory. And she's talking about growing up Métis in a dysfunctional family surrounded by addiction, violence and racism. But we grew up in a really poor, disrupted family and that was due to intergenerational trauma. At the time, Barasa was one of the country's most respected voices in Indigenous health. The University of Saskatchewan professor

was also the scientific director of the Indigenous Health Arm of the Canadian Institute of Health Research. But now, in the last few weeks, Barasa's genealogical claims have started to unravel. A CBC investigation revealed that while Barasa presented herself as Anishinaabe, Métis and Tlingit. In its review of Barasa's genealogy, CBC traced all her ancestral lines back to Europe. CBC was not able to locate any Indigenous ancestor. And today on FrontBurner, we're talking to CBC journalist Jeff Leo,

who was behind that investigation, and to University of Ottawa professor Velden Coburn about why this problem is actually way bigger than just one person. Hi, Jeff. Hi there. First of all, who is Carrie Barasa? I mean, give me a sense of the role she played in the Canadian policy and the health care world. Yeah, well, she was first described to me as like the most powerful Indigenous health scientist in Canada. And the reason she was described that way is because she heads up the Indigenous Health Arm of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

And that's the body that funds the majority of Indigenous health research in this country. And so that money flowed through this body that she was the head of. Just before we published our story, an advocacy group out of Toronto named her as one of the 100 most powerful women in Canada. And Carrie Barasso, of course, is identified and has been identified publicly for years as an Indigenous scholar. For years, she identified herself as Métis. And then more recently, she's also said that she was Anishinaabe and Tlingit. And I couldn't understand why my name would come in Tlingit when I am an Anishinaabe Métis. It was very confusing to me. It was so confusing to my grandmother, my kukum, who, as I said, is a pipe-carried ceremonialist, that we actually went back into ceremony to ask if this really was indeed my name. And it's really that claim, that sort of expansion of her claims to indigeneity that got the attention of some of her colleagues, some of her Métis colleagues, Indigenous colleagues who were like, you know, hang on here. Yeah. Where did that come from?

Where did that come from? Exactly. Exactly. At one point, I was approached by someone. They provided a tip to me to say, you know, Carrie Barasa, this very high profile, very successful scholar, is not who she says she is. That she says she's indigenous. And in fact, she's of European origin. And that was sort of the tip that got me going. going. And then I did reach out to her at one point. I just, I had her cell phone number. I reached out to her. I said, hi, I'm Jeff Leo from CBC and I'm working on a story related to you and your claims to indigeneity and wondering if you'd be able to chat. And she said, no, I'm not interested. And she hung up. So I got an account on ancestrycom, kind of focusing in on a few very specific people. So her claims were twofold, really. Number one, she said her grandpa, her gramps, as she called them, was Métis. And so that was one person I wanted to focus on. And then she also said her great grandmother was Tlingit. Her grandpa was a fellow by the name of Ladi Kinizacek. And Ladi was a car salesman in Regina for many years. And so I focused in on him to try to figure out where his family came from.

And eventually I found that his parents were Joseph Kniezicek and Johanna Kniezicek. And from all of the documentation that I was able to find, it became clear to me that they both came from Russia and that they were Czech speakers. In my family, my great-grandmother was Tlingit. She married an immigrant. They moved from the far northern BC into... And I mean, this has all come out now. How has Barasa responded to this story?

So we were preparing to publish. We had tried a number of times to reach out to her unsuccessfully. We were preparing to publish and I wrote her an email to say, okay, we're getting ready to publish. Here are some specific things we're going to be saying. Here are some very specific questions I have for you. And she finally responded. And when she responded, so I said, tell me about your Tlingit ancestry. Tell me about your Anishinaabe ancestry. Tell me about your Métis ancestry. Be as specific as possible.

You know, who are the people that you're related to? In her email to me, she didn't mention anything about Tlingit. When she talked about her Métis ancestry, she didn't offer any genealogical evidence. In fact, she said she was adopted by a Métis friend of her grandfather's. Her grandfather passed away when she was 19 years old. Those adoptions were more meaningful and have stronger bonds than colonial adoptions. Those bonds are even deeper than death because the family has taken me as if I was blood family. In turn, I serve the Métis community to the best of my ability. She did talk to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix after the story published.

When he asked her specifically about her Tlingit ancestry, she said she doesn't have any genealogical proof that she was Tlingit but she says she hired two years ago she hired a genealogist to help her investigate her genealogy so far they haven't turned up anything but she said when it comes to Tlingit you know maybe we will find an ancestor maybe we won't. Who knows? Wow. I mean, how have others responded? What kind of reaction in particular have we seen to this information from institutions over the past few days? University of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research was twofold. Both institutions said that Carrie Barasa has done great work, has done amazing things for the community, and they stand by her work. They also both said, you know, this is a really complex, complicated issue. And, you know, this is the sort of thing for Indigenous people to work out themselves and not for institutions to kind of weigh in on. weighed in on that. And yeah, so both the CIHR and the University of Saskatchewan have said she is on leave. In the case of the University of Saskatchewan, they say we've launched an investigation. We don't know how broad the investigation is, who's conducting it,

what the scope of it is, But the University of Saskatchewan says, we're going to conduct this investigation. We're going to do it quickly so that we can get the answers we need and move on. Jeff, thank you so much for taking me through this really wild ride of a story. Yeah, you're welcome. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

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Well, for a little bit more context on why this is happening and what we need to do about it, I'm joined by Veldin Coburn. Veldin is a professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Ottawa, and he's Anishinaabe and a member of the Algonquins of Pukwaknugan. Hey, Veldin. Hi, how are you doing? I'm well. Thank you so much for joining us and for talking to us about this. You know, I wanted to talk about Barasa later on in the show, but I also kind of want to broaden this out. You know, only Barasa herself can know what her reasons and intentions were here. And we don't want to ascribe intention to her, of course.

But we do know that this has happened so many times, both here and in the U.S. Why are people still doing this? You know, I've tried and I've had several discussions. You know, we haven't really thought about it too much on an individual psychological level. What is the personality type behind those that are doing this? You know, is it part of the cultural moment? Because I'm sure we all remember times not too long ago when it wasn't fun to be Indigenous.

And for those of us that can get away with it, as a fairly, as a fair complexioned Indigenous person, as a white-coated individual who has, you know, one half of my family is, you know, all Indigenous and has stereotypical features, which I didn't quite inherit all of them, is I can pass through life white passing and understand the fact that it is a very stigmatized identity. But today, that people are

willingly adopting it and embracing it, I think it's part of the cultural moment that we're in these days, that we've done quite a bit of work in the last decade or two, even since Idle No More, is reinvigorating, putting a whole lot more esteem back into a previously negative, stigmatized identity. And now it's a territory for others to move into as though they are identity tours. They abandon their own and colonize ours. Yeah. And I was just thinking, too, like about that. I mean, it's another stereotype as well to the romanticization of Indigenous people that people kind of want to grip onto. And that might have happened here.

that people are talking about online, at least, is the way that Carrie Barasa framed her indigeneity as one that was, you know, deeply seeped in trauma. You know, the fact that I was able to overcome, you know, the cycle of poverty and violence in my family, the drug and alcohol addiction in my family. That's something she's brought up in her talks, and it kind of reminded me of how, you know, Black people found a Rachel Dolezal. The double life has made international news.

Rachel Dolezal has resigned her post as the head of the Spokane NAACP. Are you Black? Yes. You're not Black. I was biologically born white, but I identify as black. Trying to, you know, one up them with her plight. And anytime she talked about her blackness, it would be about her struggle, you know, which, as you say, in many ways can reinforce stereotypes rather than break them down. What what are your thoughts or what have you been hearing from people about the way that she, you know, used this trauma to sort of perform her identity? Yeah, I think it's one of the more galling aspects, especially more generally when you see others adopt or plumb in mind our trauma and amplify those and exaggerate them for their own stories. Because from what we've gathered in this particular case is the story that, and it's a backstory for the persona that she produced, and it was a whole production,

is that it was built around some of the uglier stereotypes of our historic and the legacy that we live with of our historic identities. That we're deeply traumatized individuals and as collectivities too. So it was fertile ground to pull out some of the elements that, and this is where it becomes so galling, is that the ones that hurt the most, she picked at the wounds and chose them and chose to wear the wounds. And I think after speaking with other Indigenous academics, and we don't really openly speak a whole lot about our own trauma. And what do you think that does to, you know, our Indigenous identity overall when people are

just seeing us in terms of the trauma that we've been through rather than, you know, our connection to our land, our connection to our culture, you know, our family and our kin and all like the beautiful sides of our identity. Yeah, they leave the very best bits of us behind. They discard that and then they use what Dr. Chris Anderson and Maggie Walters, Indigenous authors, speak to, especially when people are doing Indigenous research, is the deficit indigene, starting from the place that we are the walking wounded, that we have wounded identities. And that's the only thing we are. And that, it leaves the impression and it misrepresents us. So that's a little bit of the harm is it exaggerates the negative and sets a standard for us that we have to correct because we do live

fairly beautiful lives. We live in beautiful communities and for the most part we're doing all right. We're getting by. I think that part of this conversation is so interesting. And I don't know if this is like too inside baseball for non-Indigenous people, but there's this idea of who gets to govern Indigenous identity, which I find so interesting because that was like the goal of the Indian Act was to control our Indigenous identity. And now you have people who are potentially white and using this race shifting or shifting their identity to become indigenous.

And that paternalism kind of is happening again, where white people are governing or deciding our identity for us. I mean, do you find this sort of irony or interest in that piece of this? Yeah, absolutely. There's a great deal of irony in the fact that, well, one, it first began as an identity that they wanted to eliminate. Now, for some in a small segment, perhaps of the population, is it's something that they fetishize and they become identity tourists and decide that they're going to move through it and adopt it wholeheartedly. They decide just arbitrarily that it is their entitlement to make the decisions who is and who isn't because they say they are.

And when questioned upon it, they invoke some of the tropes of defense that we see of, you know, backed into a corner. Well, I heard these stories, and who are you to question my indigeneity? So again, they adopt the defensiveness that one would think from vulnerable people is that you have no right to question me. Two, you're an Indian Act Indian. So the gall there, the nerve of them to use the Indian Act against, say, status Indians when we're not actually invoking that is another thing.

Or they'll say, well, you know what, you're using the colonial blood quantum logics here. Well, oftentimes what they are doing is, well, it's de facto blood quantum because they're drawing their line of biological descent from some oftentimes non-existent ancestor but then they put up the shield of self-determination is you know we're decolonizing now nobody no outside foreign influences can tell me how i identify and therefore you indigenous people can't question this yeah and that that i found challenging because i guess like i was just

telling my producer you know like five ten years ago you know you'd say like where are you from you know and you'd be like oh i'm gitsan oh like what village are you from oh i'm from get them x and kiss p ox oh like who's your grandma and grandpa who's your mom and dad right and that that's like our cultural way of being, of identifying kin and who we are, finding out like who's not your cousin, etc. But I find like today there's like this defensiveness, particularly around people who are white and are possibly white and pretending to be an indigenous person or carrying an identity that they're not. But I'm just wondering, like, how do you balance, you know, that gatekeeping in a way to make identity accessible? Because there are people who are disconnected from the 60s scoop, or maybe their school

records were burned at residential school, or maybe they were fostered out. How do you balance that? You know, I mean, you don't want to offend people who are Indigenous and are struggling with their identity, but you also need to find out, like, to protect our communities, who is Indigenous and who is not. Yeah, I've had this discussion, too, with Dr. yeah i've had this discussion too with dr pam palmitter about this before is that for a long time we used to err on the side of over-inclusiveness because we didn't want to leave those people out and we knew that if we were to draw any boundaries of inclusion and exclusion who belongs and who does not is that we would invariably leave out or reproduce some victimhood in those people that are trying to reconnect legitimately. But we found that that over-inclusiveness is leading to our exclusion.

That was it. It was crowding us out in almost every sort of sector, even if it's in social sectors. out in almost every sort of sector, even if it's in like social sectors, like, you know, our elders could not show up to perform opening ceremonies because you would have some sort of white shaman taking the place of them. What do you think we need to do to make this stop? What, you know, policies and practices need to be in play that are respectful of people's past experience with colonization, but also keeping in mind that what we have, this self-identification, is not working anymore? Well, I think we have to abandon two very prominent strands. One is the idea that we're a race, that we're a biological people, that there's something in our blood that descends. We're nations with national membership, which is a citizenship, rather than just a cultural flavor as well.

So, you know, how many degrees of descent? Do you spend time on the land? Do you go to powwows or something like that? You abandon race and culture as markers and then go to the nations themselves. If we are to respect Indigenous national sovereignty and self-determination, that would be the authority to go to. And sometimes it will be a lot of hard work for reconnecting individuals. protecting individuals, those that are legitimately on the margins, you know, at no fault of their own, the interventions done by the colonial state, because they could have been apprehended at birth and never known who they are. The reinvigoration of our national institutions require the support

and resources to be able to adequately ensure that those individuals aren't left behind the tough cases. I'm wondering, because this is a situation that I've noticed a lot, especially over the last five to 10 years, and I'm speaking in general terms here, not about the situation of a high profile academic. Is it possible that there are still some well-intentioned white people out there who, you know, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50 so the in it and when they're an adult say hey i just learned on ancestry.com that i have an indigenous great great great grandmother and just get enthusiastic about it want to take a dna test and then they're then they're checking

that box how do you feel about that? Yeah, I also take a deep view of it, a less than academic view of the sort of dishonesty behind it because sure, you're enthusiastic. That's great. What is your lived connection? Did you actually live in the same lifetime as this particular individual?

Because could there ever be any community continuity between them? Because the community that they're looking for is in the graveyard. I guess knowing your history is okay, but maybe leave it in the past, because we're not dead nations. We're alive and living today, and we have a future. What would you say to somebody, you know, who came to you and said, Hey, you know, professor to professor, I do think I have, you know, some ancestry, you know, I might have been talking to my auntie, I've seen some pictures, I'm gonna identify like that today. It's not hypothetical, because it's happened a few times.

And I take a deep breath and I clench my teeth a little bit and I don't give them a whole lot of assistance in it. If they are becoming a sort of racial identity tourist, I'm not going to be the travel agent. Belden, I'm sure we could go on and on with this conversation, but this has been really great to chat with you. Thank you so much for your time today. It's my pleasure, Angela. And before we go today, an update on a story we've covered on the show before. New Defence Minister Anita Anand announced that all sexual misconduct cases in the Canadian

military will now be investigated and prosecuted by civilian authorities. This was a recommendation made by retired Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, who is leading an external review into sexual harassment and misconduct in the Canadian military. Cases that are currently under investigation will be transferred out of the Canadian force's hands. And that's it for today. Frontburner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Simi Bassey, Imogen Burchard, Ali Janes, Joytha Sengupta,

Katie Toth, and Derek van der Wijk. Our intern is Akanksha Dhingra. Our sound design was by Brittany Amadeo, Mackenzie Cameron, and Julia Whitman. Our music is produced by Joseph Shebison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McCabe-Locas.

I'm Angela Starrett in for Jamie Poisson, and I'll be back with you again next week. Thanks so much for listening.