The headquarters of the Kawartha Lakes First Nation sits off a single-lane highway 100 miles north-east of Toronto. Between signs advertising the sale of all-terrain vehicles, hand-scrawled messages on the three buildings decry government corruption.
At the centre of the lot, near signs for the “Redneck Church” and “Chief Willy’s Man Cave” stands a 26ft tipi. Alongside banners commemorating missing and murdered Indigenous women and the victims of Canada’s residential school system, Confederate flags flap gently in the wind.
To its 20 members, this is the heart of Canada’s newest First Nation. But seven local Indigenous chiefs claim it is the site of a brazen fraud that threatens to erode their hard-fought constitutional rights.
In recent years, Canada has grappled with a wave of “Pretendian” cases – in which people falsely claim Indigenous identity. Meanwhile, the use of Indigenous symbols and slogans has also grown increasingly common among the country’s far right.
Members of Kawartha Lakes First Nation argue they are exempt from laws and taxes, echoing the rhetoric of the extremist sovereign citizens movement, and the group’s emergence has raised concerns over how groups might use Indigenous identity to lay claim to land or demand concessions from local and provincial governments.
About two months ago, William Denby, the self-proclaimed “chief” of the Kawartha group began sending emails to local chiefs, municipal and provincial officials. The messages, seen by the Guardian, were often written in all caps and combined grievances and increasingly bold claims.
Denby protested against the destruction of farmland for housing developments and made broad allegations of corruption. He also said he was the hereditary leader of a forgotten Indigenous nation and claimed his group had rights to nearly 5,800 square miles (15,000 sq km) of land.
At first, Taynar Simpson, chief of Alderville First Nation, ignored the near-daily emails. But then, he said: “Against my better judgment, I decided to respond.”
Simpson is one of Canada’s leading Indigenous genealogical consultants and his work has been critical in reaching historic financial settlements for widespread abuse at residential schools as well as the episode know as the Sixties Scoop, in which Indigenous children were forcibly placed in foster care.
“I asked Denby for any evidence of his claim because I know pretty much everything about the First Nations people in this territory. And told him I’d never heard of his group before,” said Simpson.
In email correspondence between the two seen by the Guardian, Denby – a businessman and former mayoral candidate in the region – told Simpson he was in possession of “records” dating back to 1780 that proved “our Ancestors” were on this land for over 30,000 years. But he failed to produce any documentation to support his claims of Indigenous ancestry.
But it wasn’t until Denby appeared before Kawartha Lakes city council a few weeks later that Simpson grasped the scale of the group’s aims.
“Denby stepped up to the microphone to say Alderville First Nation had transferred all authority of the region over to him. He put this on record. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I never said anything like that!” Simpson said.
The group’s apparent readiness to make questionable claims in a bid for territory – in this case, the entirety of Kawartha Lakes – alarmed Simpson and the chiefs of six other nations that are signatories to the 1923 Williams Treaties.
In a rare joint statement, the chiefs warned Denby and his group were “illegitimately assert[ing] rights” and had no ancestral Indigenous connection to any of the region and warned they would take “any necessary legal action to protect our citizens, rights and interests”.
Denby called the statement “lies” and told supporters he had sued the chiefs for “slander”.
The city of Kawartha Lakes also said Denby’s group “lacks any connection to a historical Indigenous community” in the region and his claims were a “disservice to legitimate rights holders”.
Denby’s claims of Indigenous ancestry and of a “great, great, great, great-uncle Firebolt” also caught the attention of a local genealogy enthusiast, who created a blog to catalogue and debunk the claims by Denby and the group calling itself the Kawartha Lake First Nation.
“I wanted to see who his [Indigenous] ancestor might be. I couldn’t actually find one – which doesn’t mean there isn’t one – but almost certainly there isn’t one within at least six generations or five generations,” said the genealogist, who asked not to be named to avoid potential harassment.
Denby has claimed both Ojibwe and Mohawk ancestry, but also told supporters that anyone born in Canada is “native”. Denby also claims he is a descendant of the “Kawartha Tribe” – but the genealogist points out the name “Kawartha” was created in the late 1800s as part of a tourism campaign to rebrand the Trent Valley.
On a recent afternoon, the group’s camp was quiet. Denby was not present, according to his wife, who said: “He’s probably out raisin’ hell.” Multiple calls to his phone went unanswered.
Steven Lesperance, who Denby made a “deputy chief”, declined to comment.
On 26 April, Denby was arrested and charged with criminal harassment, uttering threats and intimidation of a justice system participant.
During his bail hearing, a crown lawyer read from an email sent from Denby to a number of city councillors that led police to detain the self-proclaimed “chief”.
“We do not want to start to kill, poison, bury every one of you or your families if you do not stop destroying our farmland. We know where you all live. Nobody wants to have to go this far but we will. This is your final warning,” the attorney read in court. “You have no idea how well organized we are and how much firepower we have in storage,” the email said.
Denby has not yet entered a plea and none of the charges have been proven in court.
The far-right strategy of using Indigenous identity to claim a right to lands has concerned researchers, who see the move as a threat to legitimate Indigenous groups.
“They seem to believe that if they can finagle a little land claim, if they can call themselves a First Nation, they’ll get to create their own little fiefdom with their own laws,” said Veldon Coburn, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies.
The use of what Coburn calls a “potpourri of Indigenous iconography” has become a growing trend among far-right groups. Romana Didulo, the Q-Anon figure who has proclaimed herself the “Queen” of Canada, uses the motto “Kiçhi Manitō Osākihin”, a rough Cree language translation of “God Loves You”. During the “Freedom Convoy” occupation of Ottawa two years ago, truckers pinned “Every Child Matters” flags to their vehicles – a phrase associated with victims of the Indigenous residential schools – and protesters held pipe ceremonies and lit a sacred fire – against the wishes of the Algonquin Nation.
Canada’s constitution outlines the rights of Indigenous peoples, the state’s obligations to recognized groups and the legitimacy of historical and contemporary treaties.
But Coburn says many of the assumptions the groups like the Kawartha Lakes First Nation make are based on a misunderstanding of those constitutional provisions and an antiquated view of Indigenous peoples.
He and others worry that as federal government weighs self-governance legislation that would recognize new – and sometimes contested – Indigenous nations, increasingly sophisticated groups could convince government officials they have a legitimate claim, and even supplant the existing rights-holders.
“We’re seeing cases where legitimate Indigenous peoples are having to defend their title,” said Coburn.
In March, the Narwhal reported that the Métis Nation of Ontario received a C$1.33m (US$1m) grant to acquire 40 hectares of wetlands in a conservation effort, as well as to develop a “Métis culture and language camp” to focus on “land-based education” – even though none of Ontario’s recognized First Nations believe the Métis Nation of Ontario has any legitimate claim to their homelands.
“There are no historic Métis communities in Anishinaabe territories and therefore any [Métis Nation of Ontario] self-government agreement involving lands and resources discussions or processes is illegitimate,” the Anishinabek Nation, which represents 39 First Nations in the province, said in a statement.
In response, the Métis Nation of Ontario said it did not need the “blessing” of other Indigenous leaders to “exist” outside of its historic homelands.
As well as claiming to be a First Nations chief, Denby has also alleged that the Kawartha Lakes municipal authorities have a constitutional “duty to consult” with his group.
“He’s trying claim ownership to all of the Kawartha Lakes region. But when you misrepresent yourself – he’s not Indigenous and he’s not a chief – to achieve gain like this, that’s fraud,” alleges Simpson.
Ontario police said no investigation had been opened into Denby’s claims.
Some scholars caution against empowering the government to determine which groups are making legitimate claims.
Riley Yesno, a research fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, says she gets “nervous” about the government developing a mechanism to arbitrate claims of Indigenousness.
“We see the federal government pick and choose which Indigenous people are more favourable for them to work with, so why wouldn’t they be incentivized to develop a system that perpetuates that?” she said.
Chief Simpson, whose community has spent recent years trying to buy up as much of the surrounding land as it can in order to restore it ecologically and rebuild territory lost to Canada, sees strong parallels between with fight with Denby and the legacy of the colonial project.
“In many ways, the federal government is no different from Bill Denby. They masquerade that they have ownership over all these lands. They use the same playbook to try to gain rights and access to the territory. And they work to discredit the people that have been here for thousands of years.”
