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The Conversation
The Conversation
Chelsea Gabel, Associate Professor, Indigenous Studies Department & Department of Health, Aging and Society, McMaster University

Outing a pretendian: How four Métis scholars redefined Indigenous identity policy

Addressing the pretendian issue in Canada is deeply personal, for us, because we are the academics who uncovered and exposed Carrie Bourassa’s Indigenous identity fraud.

We are four Red River Métis scholars who hold Métis citizenship with our familial connections to the Prairies. We are Indigenous health researchers, and our relationship began 20 years ago through the Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research.

In 2018, we discovered that Bourassa had fabricated her Métis identity, a deception dating back to her graduate studies at the University of Regina. An anonymous email from a former student exposed inconsistencies in her claims of Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit ancestry.

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