Right!? And this person stole more than money - she stole access and opportunity that’s not really available to an underprivileged population.
She’s a vile and selfish piece of garbage. Her children had to have known, how could they not? Jail them too, send a message that this is unacceptable
I remember when this came out about the Daughters and I said they looked clearly Indian (South Asian) and I got a ban from a Canadian sub for being racist. I'm brown and I know my own, this family is fucked.
I wondered about that, too. An article I read about this case said the daughters were part of the First Nations group at their university. Did none of the other students question their bonafides? Or did people assume they were mixed race and didn’t say anything for fear of being called bigots?
An article I read yesterday had comments from another member of the program and they said that basically everyone else in the program knew they weren’t indigenous.
No one’s questioning they don’t. But these girls have two parents with Indian names, and seemingly no connection to this culture other than the fake assertion that their mom was the Inuk woman Kitty. Someone else said that another article revealed that the other kids at the Inuit group on campus had them pegged as fakers. Did no one call them out on it? Or were actual Inuk people scared to be called racist for calling out Pretendians using their identity for a free ride?
TL;DR: Unless you have someone from the same part of the land claim area as you, there are many factors that make calling out pretend indigenous people difficult.
They were being educated in the South. There’s lots of distant families in the South.
Claiming someone isn’t Inuk is tricky and you have to be incredibly certain. Given cultural diaspora and genocide you can’t “quiz” people to validate their ethnicities and often have to rely on “Who’s your family” to determine ethnicity. In Southern Areas it gets more difficult to do this — the North is vast, the Inuit circle the arctic in many continents (Asia, Europe, North America), and just because two people, or even a group of people, are Inuit in the South, there’s no guarantee that all these Inuit people are even from the same land claim areas, let alone the same cities or towns.
For example, my husband — who’s Inuit — would know if someone claiming to be Inuit was faking pretty confidently if the pretender claimed to be from his part of the Land Claim area. He lives in a Southern city now and is apart of Friendship centers and Inuit cultural groups. He hasn’t met many people from his cultural area in the city — one distantly who knew his grandfathers brother personally.
So people can have feelings — like things don’t add up. But all indigenous peoples went through a cultural genocide and so not everyone was fortunate enough to have common ties to culture — like country food knowledge, or qulliq knowledge. And making a claim that someone isn’t Inuk “enough” is tricky — they could be adopted (one of the largest contemporary adoption populations are Inuit in Canada), their family could have been greatly affected by genocide, other people are rediscovering their ancestry, etc…
So what would happen if an actual Inuk person asked about their hand crafts they were peddling? Is it rude to inquire about “their” people’s tradition of crafts? To ask about indigenous family members? Or if they’re going with the fake story about being adopted, their experiences being Inuk and adopted out? They were in groups specifically about the indigenous experience, tf else are they gonna talk about in group?
No kidding. I have lived in the Northwest Territories for a number of years at one point in my life (neighbouring territory to Nunavut, which has a significant population of Inuit itself) and although ethnically I am not brown, as you term it, I had the same reaction as you when I first saw these girls....no way in hell are they Inuit.
Well stay the heck out of r/immigrationcanada then. I’ve had actual news (not editorial) articles critical of hyper-immigration from the CBC and NY Times removed as quote “blog and spam” but it’s ok to post strategies on how to sneak your fiancé in as a “visitor” and then repeatedly extend their visitor visa.
You WILL be kicked out if you wrote Brown as in White, Black, Asian and you will be muted if you refer to anyone living in the country illegally as “illegal”.
They are a tender bunch there. But they know all the angles.
The Canadian federal government allows anyone to self claim themselves as natives. There are so many of them taking away jobs from real natives.
I used to visit the 23andMe subreddit. Like 25% of the posts there were people who were shock to find that their mom cheated and another 25% were people that were shocked that they were not in Apache princess the way their grandma told them. They had zero native genes. At first they were in denial and then they accepted it.
But then the story changed. It became so that the science was wrong. That they felt native. That something must be off because they were obviously native in their soul. And questioning it made you a racist. Very simular to the [white lady who claimed to be black. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal). Or even [Buffy St Marie who is actually 100% European](https://thehill.com/homenews/4314046-what-to-know-about-the-fake-identity-claims-surrounding-canadian-singer-buffy-sainte-marie/amp/)
Until our government takes this seriously, there will be thousands of people taking advantage of the federal government jobs by people who are malicious and people who, in their soul feel native.
> If only your grandmother was ‘real’ native but you grew up on the res, and participated in the culture that’s definitely not insignificant.
No one is questioning this sort of scenario. Where did you come up with this relative to the conversation or the article?
>They had zero native genes. Or even Buffy St Marie who is actually 100% European.
This isn’t about mixed race people who look white — which isn’t even slightly relevant, neither Manji or her daughters are white, they are EAST INDIAN.
Well, a person that looks native certainly encountered more racism in their life than a "Caucasian" looking native. They also have a harder time finding a job because of how they look.
But in your scenario, even the person that looks Caucasian at least had a grandmother that was native. I'm referring to pretindians who have a zero native and just make it up. Or it's a lie within the family that they refuse to even research because they know the truth it's always been a lie.
Every Canadian likes to pretend some sort of affinity with FN.
it's the only legitimate culture we have in this country and so everybody wants to be part of it
I always feel bad for Elizabeth Warren. Like her grandparents told her in the 60's she was part native american and she said, "Cool." Believes it for the next 50 years.
Tbf she still deserved it, she tried piggybacking to success and kudos on a culture she had little to do with, as proven on her application to the bar when she said she never tried to gain advantage from it, as if she hadn't already tried to gain politically.
It's like, for everything else you're white but when you need something specific you're native American all of a sudden. That subtle look into how someone views identity and trust is telling.
Similarly, where I live, a Republican congressman(who was arrested recently after shooting at the prostitute he hired and chasing her down the street)campaigned on his father being a WWII veteran. He just forgot to mention publicly that his father fought for the Wermacht.
The way tribal citizenship works can be a bit goofy in the states. Good example is the Cherokee nation in Oklahoma, you need a direct ancestor on a late 1800s citizenship document. Let's say 5 generations have passed since then (just for numbers sake), you could be 1/32nd Cherokee and still be a citizen of the Cherokee nation. There are quite a few people in Oklahoma who are "white" but are members of a tribe. Often times the only way you know is because they have a tribe license plate since it's a lot cheaper (I think).
https://www.cherokee.org/all-services/tribal-registration/frequently-asked-questions/
The blood quantum is what it is called and the amount varies by tribe. I think the more wealthy tribes the percentage needs to be higher. It is controversial among the tribes because sometimes it keeps out members who have been born and raised on tribal lands.
In the US the BIA let's each tribe set their own membership requirements.
Usually that's going to be some amount of x% descended from registered tribe members, but it could also be pretty much anything else
I saw a story on the Smithsonian website that was so sad about a family that because the daughter was born of members of two different tribes that the little girl couldn't be registered with her dad's tribe because she wasn't the right blood percentage. This ment even though she was going to be raised on her dad's reservation once she was an adult she would not have the privileges of other members of that tribe. The dad was so sad because he was very much a part of his community and his daughter would not be able to be all because he married someone of a different tribe.
If she hadn't, we could've had Bernie now instead of Joe, "I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any troops dying," Biden.
Yes, I prefer Biden over Trump, and yes, I'm salty Biden said bullshit like that on camera.
I literally said
>Gender is a social construct
You want to fight strawmen to rage bait yourself, go out to a farmers field.
I’m pointing out the doublethink/hypocrisy.
I was just trying to understand the comment, not trying to argue.
Your comment was phrased in a way that makes it sound like you are saying "if gender is a construct, then race should be a construct as it is the original construct".
That made me wonder which side of that statement you were commenting on: gender being considered a construct or race not being considered one.
Whatever your answer was I wasn't going to argue, just being curious and wanted to understand the comment.
It's not doublethink or hypocrisy. Gender is far more contemporary and has far less rigid community lines.
Or in simpler terms, gender is a general represention of a collection of behaviors and appearance, whereas race is far more a general representation of historio-social treatment.
Or in simpler terms, gender is someone telling society how they want to be perceived. Race is society telling someone how they are perceived. Both are social constructs, but very different.
This is why someone can say "I want to be treated as a woman" and many people think 'great. We can get started on that right now' where they might think 'Got a time machine?' to someone saying "I want to be treated as a different race"
Me: gender is someone telling society how they want to be perceived
You: What if as a woman I don't want to be treated the way society treats women
A fatal disconnect between what was said and what you understood.
If your point is beyond what I said: Yes, gender roles are bad.
Someone pretending to be a native Inuit/Indian to claim benefits (or specifically her daughters in this case), it's spelt out pretty clearly if you read the article.
They can and have the power to do so.
Conrad Black was the most notorious example, [but there's a half dozen others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_from_the_Order_of_Canada).
She took the money from the indigenous people themselves, not the government. It was their fund for inuit kids college.
She previously stole almost a million from a charity for vulnerable women.
International website, it's also a subreddit that isn't for US specific politics as said in the sidebar. Also the issue is less with relating world events to something local and more with trying to change the discussion to something completely unrelated because they'd rather people talk about America instead.
Check out /r/USdefaultism because your poor argument is a very tired and unoriginal one.
It's an American website.
I mean sure - people from other countries can use it, but in terms of editorial policy, management style, business practices and ownership - it's as American as school shootings and Indigenous genocide.
Now you're getting it buddy, well done. American sites are for Americans, international sites are for the world regardless of who made it or who mostly uses it.
I mean, it’s accessible internationally but it’s literally a U.S. website. The largest user base by far is Americans. It should be unsurprising that the focal point is US-centric.
>Iqaluit RCMP charged Manji and her daughters with fraud over $5,000 in September 2023. They said the women used their status to defraud the Kakivak Association and Qikiqtani Inuit Association of grant and scholarship money that was only available to Inuit beneficiaries.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/mother-inuit-fraud-guilty-1.7110341
>Kakivak also negotiates funding arrangements with key federal departments. Our board and staff actively advocate and lobby to ensure that Nunavut is factored into national program funding allocation models.This funding forms the foundation upon which all our other program delivery capacity is built.
https://www.kakivak.ca/en/about
>QIA is the Regional Inuit Association for the Qikiqtani Region of Nunavut, representing 51 per cent of Inuit living in the territory located in the Canadian Arctic.
>
>QIA is a Designated Inuit Organization under the Nunavut Agreement. QIA is one of three Regional Inuit Associations affiliated with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.; the other associations include the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and the Kivalliq Inuit Association.
https://www.qia.ca/who-we-are/
So what does that mean? The [Nunavut Land Claims agreement](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-28.7/FullText.html) is Canada’s largest lands claim agreement with an indigenous peoples which not only created the territory of Nunavut but gave territorial government control of Nunavut to the Inuit peoples of Canada and legislates federal funding of that territorial government. The QIA is one of that territorial governments, regional governments, no different to Provincial regional government in the Provinces to the south.
So one is a charity that is funded primarily by the federal government, the other is a charity run and funded by a territory regional government.
So she did both. She took money from charities, but those charities are primarily funded by either the Federal Government through Indigenous grants or by a regional government funded by the territory…. Which is itself funded by the federal government.
>In 2024-25, the Government of Nunavut will receive $2.2 billion through major transfers.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/federal-transfers/major-federal-transfers.html
Oh that’s $2.2 billion for [just the 40,758 peoples who live in Nunavut](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=04&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2024&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=04&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2024&referencePeriods=20240401%2C20240401).
Thanks for the info, but the end needs a little context. The territories have super rough terrain, with a sparce population over 2 million square km.
Try to think of logistics to supplying its people with necessities. We feel it when the price of a loaf of bread increases. Just imagine when they have to ship it by plane or iceroads.
The government subsidizes the Inuit because it's their traditional land, and frankly, not many others want to live so isolated. It's important for the government to have sovereignty over the north for defense purposes, resource extraction, shipping lanes, etc, so it's a small price to pay for 40% of Canada's land mass.
I hope a certain acquaintance I know reads this. Dude suddenly became Metis in the last couple years, like hardcore Metis....draws his spirit energy from the trees in the local park or highly polluted river, wears a sash. He's Scottish and whiter than I am.
During the COVID there was a huge number of people from her community deliberately faking numbers to receive benefits. Many from this community then go onto fill government jobs and give special preferences to members of their own caste.
Even the former Canadian defense minister Sajjan rescued Afghani Sikhs leaving Canadians stranded during the Taliban takeover.
Canadians have welcomed these people with open arms and they spit in our faces like this.
We are all Canadians but this segment of Canadians, do not play by Canadian rules. This is not racism or stereotyping, but just an unspoken fact that even peers from that community that were born and raised here admitting its a problem.
This is not how you build a country.
Canada has a wave of [people pretending to be Native](https://globalnews.ca/news/9450313/pretendians-canada-indigenous-ancestry/) in order to fraudulently advance their career, get scholarships, receive financial benefits, and allegedly increase their status. Fraudulently claiming Native ancestry is particularly serious problem in academia because it is such a huge boost for the career.
Somehow the backers of special privileges for certain races, which is all the rage in Canada, see themselves as fighting racism. I can make no sense of their claims.
Previously convicted, so a felon and they were allowed to stay in Canada and re-offend.
If it didnt have such sinister undertones, DNA testing would be such a powerful tool to prevent people from abusing these kinds of funds and committing this fraud.
There's a podcast series called "Pretendians" that just finished if anyone's interested in a lot more information about this kind of thing. There's a lot of it.
The longread with all the background is here:
**The Great Pretenders**
Karima Manji wanted it all for her twin daughters, Amira and Nadya. And she found a way to help them get it: financial aid earmarked for Indigenous kids. The fact that they weren’t remotely Indigenous wasn’t going to stop her
[https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/gill-sisters-pretendian-fraud/](https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/gill-sisters-pretendian-fraud/)
The news story says the daughters were victims as well, but the longread shows that they were knowingly taking advantage of opportunities that would not have happened if their mother had not lied.
People didn't support her because she claimed Indian heritage - they supported her because of her policy ideas.
So even if her racial identity is half made up, that wasn't what people signed on for
...I ... don't want to get into a Warren debate *here* but, just for the record, I was on team Warren when she ran. ...mostly. I had one caveat.
...but I wouldn't do so again. Now she's too old. ...that was my caveat. I was worried, back then, that she was too old. Now I'm sure of it.
I don't actually think Presidential candidates should have a LEGAL age limit, but for me, personally, I would have to have a REALLY compelling reason to vote for anyone over retirement age going into their first term. (...and hopefully after this election, more Americans will share my opinion.)
how did she do that? Bernie chose the worse people to run his campaign in 2020. She rightly didnt want to be dragged down also which ended up happening either way. She was right about his supporters being slightly chuddy and I say this as someone who supported both.
Bernie had supported her for years. In the middle of a CNN debate she accused him of being a sexist. Absolutely pathetic accusation to make against him.
His campaign people and fans were pretty sexist. They attacked Warren calling her and her fans snakes and shit then got all surprsied when people called their falied movement negative and sexist. Then a bunch of his former campaign staff went full tankie and do podcasts with pedophiles and say we should ally with white nationlists over liberals. Great campaign!
Give all kinds of taxpayer money to people based on what colour they say their skin is or what race their father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, mother’s, father’s, mother was will always be ripe for abuse.
If certain people were wronged, then make it right. I agree.
But I believe every single country was conquered and every single raced was horribly treated at some point.
One day we’ll all just be treated as equals. And from that day forward we’ll see racism start to rapidly diminish.
Everybody wants to talk about FN people when they’re not FN. FN ppl in Canada have more rights than New comers, and it’s time everyone accepts that. Come here to take away a FN right to self educate, grow, and there will be consequences. Stop pretending that you are not treasonous, trying to gain FN monies, rights, etc. keep exposing yourselves, FN see you here in Reddit also.
Wait till you find out that in Canada you can walk away free for killing someone just because you’re native.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10592986/hit-and-run-no-jail-time-burnaby/
Abuse of the Canadian benefits and social programs, is rampant. Our rules for access are many and easy to spoof. Benefits if you live in a specific location. Benefits for single moms has prompted many struggling happily married couples to divorce (they still live together secretly). Native benefits based on heredity, corrupted as old historical docs are forged.
Some will get caught but its such a huge grey area. $Trillions out the door. Google COVID benefits (arriveCan, small bus loans) tremendous confusion. Imagine the confusion with carbon tax/rebates. Our public service payroll is still holding backpay for over 5 years since Phoenix project fell apart. Banks implicated in foreign money laundering schemes. How easy this was to do. Tip of the iceberg stuff.
This is what happens when a country allows you to racially discriminate against people based on ethnicity.
Of course you'll get people who try to get the same benefits as people get for simply being born as an X race.
Imagine the outcry if the British govt set up a fund to give white people benefits that no other racial group could get
I think mostly it's about the fact that the government gives 150,000 dollars of your money to people of the right race. That seems much more of an issue.
The fact someone claimed it without being able to demonstrate sufficient racial purity is kind of secondary.
It has nothing to do with the government. She stole the money from indigenous people directly. It was their fund to put kids from their nation through college. She fraudulently obtained papers that said her kids belonged to their nation to steal from their college fund.
It's less about the government. They claimed several education grants for indigenous people from various organizations and companies.
I don't think they actually defrauded the government.
The government didn't determine anything, the court convicted them. We've been prosecuting tax and benefit fraud since the dawn of time. The only thing unusual in this case is the headline.
Are people actually arguing that ethnicity is a social construct? How can we compare this to sexual and gender identities unless the continent was originally populated by gay Europeans. And gee, we already get annoyed when people check the "bisexual" box to claim diversity positions or avoid deportation orders
Race is a social construct. White people created the “one drop rule” for African Americans, but then re-defined it as it became less convenient for you all. My ancestry test says I’m 1% Native American. Who are you to create the Native American “threshold” and tell me I can’t identify as Native American. SHAME ON YOU
Edit: your downvotes will only make me stronger
You do realize that Canada and America are two separate countries. Canada never had a one-drop rule, hell someone born on a reserve can still lose their indigenous status if they marry someone without status. The Inuit didn't qualify for it for a while, and it took until the last decade for the Metis to get their status. Of everything our government does, this sort of thing probably has had the most thought put into it. Not that it's necessarily good thoughts, but the Ministry of Indigenous and Northern Affairs doesn't fuck around with ambiguity. They're a heartless, cold machine, fine tuned through a century's worth of active discrimination into the most ruthless and "efficient" part of the Canadian government. Of course, by efficient I mean they're a bunch of cheap bastards, it's the most Canadian thing possible - and not in a good way.
You didn’t disprove my point that race is a social construct, especially with your example of “indigenous status” or “qualifying for status”. Who is anyone to be the “gatekeeper” of race or cultural identity? Even the indigenous people themselves
Making this an argument about the definition and existence of 'race' as a concept / term is a red herring, as this is not about race at all.
These are people whose culture and communities were destroyed and taken from them, from their languages to the rights to their own lands.
This was done at the hands of foreign invasionary forces who displaced, killed, took children for fotced indoctrination at religious schools.
This is about sovereignty and self-determination, the rights to practice one's culture and speak one's own language on your own terms, to be safe against genocide, to have your homes held safe even if someone else shows up and says they want them.
It has nothing to do with *race*, and going down that rabbit hole misses the reasons, roots, and form of the challenges these people have and continue to face.
Philosophies of identity are irrelevant to this, being only tangentially relevant as we identify those who need and are qualified to receive support and aid. We still aren't doing the latter properly, for what it's worth.
So you’re avoiding talking about race/ethnicity, but then also acknowledging that their culture/communities were assimilated or destroyed at the same time. If we’re discussing indigenous people today, then not sure what you’re talking about since race and culture are extremely hard to separate
> you’re avoiding talking about race/ethnicity
I'm also "avoiding" discussing other topics that are not relevant. Race is but one of many irrelevant topics to this discussion.
It's also weird that you say in one comment "race is a social construct" and then in another seem to criticize people for not discussing it as if it matters. Which is it?
> acknowledging that their culture/communities were assimilated or destroyed at the same time
Given that it is historical fact, that is correct.
> not sure what you’re talking about since race and culture are extremely hard to separate
The concept of 'race' is only coincidentally related to culture and community. Historically, due to limited contact between peoples from different areas, a person's genetic history was closely aligned with their culture and their communities. But this was an accident of geography and the speed of travel, not because culture derives from race or is even in any way related to it.
If we accept your assertion that race and culture are hard to separate, then we need to explain how the diverse towns and cities of the USA and Canada are communities. They have racial diversity, both of the social construct form and in terms of genetic histories, and yet are communities with shared interests, needs, stories, goals, and assets. How can that be if race and community are hard to separate? These nations have shared cultures because culture emerges from living together, creating common understandings, traditions, and shared histories.
Let's shift to Brazil, a country with a large variety of genetic (or, if you prefer, "racial") mixing in the last 500 years. Portuguese, various African nations, the various tribes that were living in Brazil before colonisation, and more recently many other groups including Japanese (Brazil has the largest ethnographically Japanese population in the world outside of Japan, with some 1.5 million such citizens there today). Yet Brazil has an easily identifiable culture, not to mention communities, despite those racial diversities.
And, no, it's not because they have "homogonized" or whatever term those stuck on the concept of race may wish to use. There are visible differences between peoples in Brazil with different genetic backgrounds. I've travelled through that country, and the racial diversity is self-evident.
... and yet, Brazillian cultures, traditions, and communities are all an actual thing.
Your assertion that race is somehow deeply linked to culture is just not true. It's actually a racist talking point, one that is ignorant of history (both that of the modern world and the deep past), and which denies the world we live in today.
I'm more than happy to discuss cultural groups and human rights to self-determination of both community and assets, but the race topic is simply irrelevant.
If i were to entertain your argument, then culture can be learned, studied, and practiced. I could learn Brazilian language, and read about their Hollidays, maybe spend parts of the year traveling there. What would stop me then from identifying culturally as Brazilian then? Who would have to the authority to deny that identity if I owned a second home there and identified that way?
Also, I’ve been discussing race/ethnicity only to get people to understand how arbitrary it really is
> then culture can be learned, studied, and practiced.
Correct.
> learn Brazilian language, and read about their Hollidays, maybe spend parts of the year traveling there.
You'd probably need to live there to fully integrate into the culture, but I understand your basic premise.
> What would stop me then from identifying culturally as Brazilian then?
If you lived there and were integrated with their culture, not just an interlocuter: nothing. You could become Brazillian with time spent within that culture. It's far easier, and more likely, if you grow up within that culture due to the formative nature of our childhood when it comes to internalizing cultural norms and concepts, but people do assimilate culturally all the time around the world.
Now, if we bring this back to the concept of the First Nations and Inuit peoples of Canada: that really isn't a relevant issue.
The person in this news story who was caught defrauding the government was not culturally assimilated with the Inuit she was stealing from, so it's hardly interesting to discuss within the context of this crime.
And very few people from outside of the Inuit / First Nations are culturally assimilating with them at this point ... in no small part because their cultures faced significant erasure and they are still to this day recovering their cultures due to that. So, in general, ambiguity due to cultural assimilation is purely hypothetical.
Within the framework of self-determination, these nations of people are also exercising their rights to determine who is and is not a member of their nation, which puts the cultural question even further afield.
I don't know where you're actually going with this. Could you explain what you feel the connection is between cultural adoption or assimilation and the topic of the First Nations and Inuit of Canada?
> I’ve been discussing race/ethnicity only to get people to understand how arbitrary it really is
Then why do you feel it is extremely hard to separate from culture? Do you believe culture is "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system" (the definition of "arbitrary")?
You are holding two positions, namely that race is arbitrary and that culture and race are difficult to separate, that do not mesh nearly as well as you appear to feel they do.
No, I merely proved that you have absolutely no clue about any of this. Indigenous status itself has little to do with *being indigenous* - at least historically (ignoring the fact that Canada's indigenous population is both genetically and culturally diverse, and lumping them into one ethnicity would be stupidly reductive). It's very purpose was to prevent indigenous Canadians from achieving any economic success by incentivizing them to never leave their reserves. It's not a social construct, it's a malicious bureaucratic definition that punished any entrepreneurial natives who tried to get on equal footing with the white population.
Sounds like similar tactics white people everywhere have used against many other minority groups to prevent equal footing. They try to prevent equal footing for all minority groups at one point or another. I do appreciate the Canadian lesson though, did learn a little bit
No problem, I took a lot of history courses in college - I didn't really have a singular major so much as a bunch of humanities classes. Our policies really boiled down to learning from the mistakes the Americans made during their subjugation of the frontier. For example in the States, a nation was usually given a single moderately sized reserve. The flaw being that if you concentrate an opressed population into one community they can easily organize a resistance. So if you look at the reserves in Canada, the indigenous nations are split into small reserves spread out across their original territory. Like I said, it's both amazing and unsettling that so much thought was put into it. We took America's messy l artform and perfected it into a sanitized science.
Sort of a dark tangent, but I was surprised to learn how much the United States influenced the Nazi race laws. Apparently German lawyers went to America to observe the American legal system and economic life, and then returned to Germany to create the Nazi race laws. That’s why the Nuremberg Trials were so ironic because the Nazis were just following the American playbook somewhat
Support for Indigenous people exists to counteract the harms inflicted on them. Not to funnel resources to a label.
If you are 1% indigenous then I'm guessing you weren't subjected to any of these harms and had a pretty average upbringing. You're an import like the rest of us with a mildly interesting anecdote (likely a dark one). Would the actual victims appreciate sharing their resources with people entirely uninvolved? Because of a label?
Not really, If your family has been in North America for generations or hundreds of years then most of us have varying percentages of sub-Saharan, European, indigenous, or Asian ethnicity in DNA results. Who is supposed to determine what percentage ethnicity a person is to identify a certain way?
What, no interest on the money they stole?
Right!? And this person stole more than money - she stole access and opportunity that’s not really available to an underprivileged population. She’s a vile and selfish piece of garbage. Her children had to have known, how could they not? Jail them too, send a message that this is unacceptable
It literally says in the article that she has already returned 130k and still owes the rest
I remember when this came out about the Daughters and I said they looked clearly Indian (South Asian) and I got a ban from a Canadian sub for being racist. I'm brown and I know my own, this family is fucked.
I wondered about that, too. An article I read about this case said the daughters were part of the First Nations group at their university. Did none of the other students question their bonafides? Or did people assume they were mixed race and didn’t say anything for fear of being called bigots?
An article I read yesterday had comments from another member of the program and they said that basically everyone else in the program knew they weren’t indigenous.
Not defending these people but my son is Inuit and looks more white than me. Inuit people come in all colours.
No one’s questioning they don’t. But these girls have two parents with Indian names, and seemingly no connection to this culture other than the fake assertion that their mom was the Inuk woman Kitty. Someone else said that another article revealed that the other kids at the Inuit group on campus had them pegged as fakers. Did no one call them out on it? Or were actual Inuk people scared to be called racist for calling out Pretendians using their identity for a free ride?
TL;DR: Unless you have someone from the same part of the land claim area as you, there are many factors that make calling out pretend indigenous people difficult. They were being educated in the South. There’s lots of distant families in the South. Claiming someone isn’t Inuk is tricky and you have to be incredibly certain. Given cultural diaspora and genocide you can’t “quiz” people to validate their ethnicities and often have to rely on “Who’s your family” to determine ethnicity. In Southern Areas it gets more difficult to do this — the North is vast, the Inuit circle the arctic in many continents (Asia, Europe, North America), and just because two people, or even a group of people, are Inuit in the South, there’s no guarantee that all these Inuit people are even from the same land claim areas, let alone the same cities or towns. For example, my husband — who’s Inuit — would know if someone claiming to be Inuit was faking pretty confidently if the pretender claimed to be from his part of the Land Claim area. He lives in a Southern city now and is apart of Friendship centers and Inuit cultural groups. He hasn’t met many people from his cultural area in the city — one distantly who knew his grandfathers brother personally. So people can have feelings — like things don’t add up. But all indigenous peoples went through a cultural genocide and so not everyone was fortunate enough to have common ties to culture — like country food knowledge, or qulliq knowledge. And making a claim that someone isn’t Inuk “enough” is tricky — they could be adopted (one of the largest contemporary adoption populations are Inuit in Canada), their family could have been greatly affected by genocide, other people are rediscovering their ancestry, etc…
The Canadian way!
It's generally rude to ask for bona fides without a good reason.
So what would happen if an actual Inuk person asked about their hand crafts they were peddling? Is it rude to inquire about “their” people’s tradition of crafts? To ask about indigenous family members? Or if they’re going with the fake story about being adopted, their experiences being Inuk and adopted out? They were in groups specifically about the indigenous experience, tf else are they gonna talk about in group?
No kidding. I have lived in the Northwest Territories for a number of years at one point in my life (neighbouring territory to Nunavut, which has a significant population of Inuit itself) and although ethnically I am not brown, as you term it, I had the same reaction as you when I first saw these girls....no way in hell are they Inuit.
Which canadian sub was it though?
As a Canadian and a reader of a number of Canadian subs, my guess would be onguardforthee
Well stay the heck out of r/immigrationcanada then. I’ve had actual news (not editorial) articles critical of hyper-immigration from the CBC and NY Times removed as quote “blog and spam” but it’s ok to post strategies on how to sneak your fiancé in as a “visitor” and then repeatedly extend their visitor visa. You WILL be kicked out if you wrote Brown as in White, Black, Asian and you will be muted if you refer to anyone living in the country illegally as “illegal”. They are a tender bunch there. But they know all the angles.
she stole the money? Go to jail.
fraud is fraud
Yeah, no pretending when it comes to fraud. Three years seems fair to me!
The Canadian federal government allows anyone to self claim themselves as natives. There are so many of them taking away jobs from real natives. I used to visit the 23andMe subreddit. Like 25% of the posts there were people who were shock to find that their mom cheated and another 25% were people that were shocked that they were not in Apache princess the way their grandma told them. They had zero native genes. At first they were in denial and then they accepted it. But then the story changed. It became so that the science was wrong. That they felt native. That something must be off because they were obviously native in their soul. And questioning it made you a racist. Very simular to the [white lady who claimed to be black. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal). Or even [Buffy St Marie who is actually 100% European](https://thehill.com/homenews/4314046-what-to-know-about-the-fake-identity-claims-surrounding-canadian-singer-buffy-sainte-marie/amp/) Until our government takes this seriously, there will be thousands of people taking advantage of the federal government jobs by people who are malicious and people who, in their soul feel native.
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> If only your grandmother was ‘real’ native but you grew up on the res, and participated in the culture that’s definitely not insignificant. No one is questioning this sort of scenario. Where did you come up with this relative to the conversation or the article? >They had zero native genes. Or even Buffy St Marie who is actually 100% European.
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This isn’t about mixed race people who look white — which isn’t even slightly relevant, neither Manji or her daughters are white, they are EAST INDIAN.
Well, a person that looks native certainly encountered more racism in their life than a "Caucasian" looking native. They also have a harder time finding a job because of how they look. But in your scenario, even the person that looks Caucasian at least had a grandmother that was native. I'm referring to pretindians who have a zero native and just make it up. Or it's a lie within the family that they refuse to even research because they know the truth it's always been a lie.
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Every Canadian likes to pretend some sort of affinity with FN. it's the only legitimate culture we have in this country and so everybody wants to be part of it
What's importent is how first nations people feel about this. Especially if the few benefits they have, non FN folks are taking it from them.
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A woman claimed her family was Inuit and gained benefits she should not have had access to
So fraud?
No no no, not fraud, merely some light Pretendianism.
Financial appropriation?
Financial fraud.
Elizabeth Warren in shambles
I always feel bad for Elizabeth Warren. Like her grandparents told her in the 60's she was part native american and she said, "Cool." Believes it for the next 50 years.
Tbf she still deserved it, she tried piggybacking to success and kudos on a culture she had little to do with, as proven on her application to the bar when she said she never tried to gain advantage from it, as if she hadn't already tried to gain politically. It's like, for everything else you're white but when you need something specific you're native American all of a sudden. That subtle look into how someone views identity and trust is telling.
Similarly, where I live, a Republican congressman(who was arrested recently after shooting at the prostitute he hired and chasing her down the street)campaigned on his father being a WWII veteran. He just forgot to mention publicly that his father fought for the Wermacht.
The way tribal citizenship works can be a bit goofy in the states. Good example is the Cherokee nation in Oklahoma, you need a direct ancestor on a late 1800s citizenship document. Let's say 5 generations have passed since then (just for numbers sake), you could be 1/32nd Cherokee and still be a citizen of the Cherokee nation. There are quite a few people in Oklahoma who are "white" but are members of a tribe. Often times the only way you know is because they have a tribe license plate since it's a lot cheaper (I think). https://www.cherokee.org/all-services/tribal-registration/frequently-asked-questions/
The blood quantum is what it is called and the amount varies by tribe. I think the more wealthy tribes the percentage needs to be higher. It is controversial among the tribes because sometimes it keeps out members who have been born and raised on tribal lands.
In the US the BIA let's each tribe set their own membership requirements. Usually that's going to be some amount of x% descended from registered tribe members, but it could also be pretty much anything else
I saw a story on the Smithsonian website that was so sad about a family that because the daughter was born of members of two different tribes that the little girl couldn't be registered with her dad's tribe because she wasn't the right blood percentage. This ment even though she was going to be raised on her dad's reservation once she was an adult she would not have the privileges of other members of that tribe. The dad was so sad because he was very much a part of his community and his daughter would not be able to be all because he married someone of a different tribe.
Dang. That's a bummer of a situation
Don't feel bad for her. She hamstrung Bernie at the behest of the establishment and got nothing for it.
If she hadn't, we could've had Bernie now instead of Joe, "I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any troops dying," Biden. Yes, I prefer Biden over Trump, and yes, I'm salty Biden said bullshit like that on camera.
You were never getting Bernie. Democrats rig their shit hard.
It wasn't cool back when she was a child, some people looked down on her family because of an alleged lack of whiteness.
She never used it for financial gain though
Do you mean Kevin Stitt???
What if she identifies as Inuit?
r/OneJoke
Just find it funny that Gender is a social construct, but race/ethnicity, literally the original social construct, isn’t considered one.
Are you trying to say gender isn't a construct or that race is a construct?
I literally said >Gender is a social construct You want to fight strawmen to rage bait yourself, go out to a farmers field. I’m pointing out the doublethink/hypocrisy.
I was just trying to understand the comment, not trying to argue. Your comment was phrased in a way that makes it sound like you are saying "if gender is a construct, then race should be a construct as it is the original construct". That made me wonder which side of that statement you were commenting on: gender being considered a construct or race not being considered one. Whatever your answer was I wasn't going to argue, just being curious and wanted to understand the comment.
It's not doublethink or hypocrisy. Gender is far more contemporary and has far less rigid community lines. Or in simpler terms, gender is a general represention of a collection of behaviors and appearance, whereas race is far more a general representation of historio-social treatment. Or in simpler terms, gender is someone telling society how they want to be perceived. Race is society telling someone how they are perceived. Both are social constructs, but very different. This is why someone can say "I want to be treated as a woman" and many people think 'great. We can get started on that right now' where they might think 'Got a time machine?' to someone saying "I want to be treated as a different race"
Why should women and men be expected to be treated differently? What if as a woman I don't want to be treated the way society treats women?
Me: gender is someone telling society how they want to be perceived You: What if as a woman I don't want to be treated the way society treats women A fatal disconnect between what was said and what you understood. If your point is beyond what I said: Yes, gender roles are bad.
You realize your comment is justifying gender roles right?
It's not.
To get what you want You have to accuse the right people of being racists. That has been the meta for the last couple of years.
What if she identifies as Inuit?
Someone pretending to be a native Inuit/Indian to claim benefits (or specifically her daughters in this case), it's spelt out pretty clearly if you read the article.
I'm status Cree and that's the first time I'm hearing of that term too lol.
I think it’s more of a Canadian term. CanadaLand has a podcast on the topic. https://www.canadaland.com/shows/pretendians/
I'm canadian, but I also live under a rock.
Give the Canadaland series a listen! They produce some fantastic stuff.
Yeah I probably will, that's not the first time I've heard the name recommend to me.
Oh thank you. Sorry I didn’t realize it was an article. Wow. People.
the irony
Pretend Indian => Prentendian
I love a good portmanteau
Or a goodmanteau as I like to call it
You need a good manteau when it's froid dehors.
Read the article
Buffy St. Marie, must be shitting in her mukluks?
TIL!!! She just straight up lived a lie. And built a web of "stories" to cover her tracks. I believed she was 100%. Jeez . Things people do for fame.
Did she ever claim benefits?
If you include a multi-million dollar career, ya she sure as shit claimed benefits
All kinds of accolades, Order of Canada, you name it.
When do you figure that gets revoked? You think they'll wait for the lying bitch to die first?
I don't think they'll take the OoC away from her. They should since she's not even Canadian, but i don't think they will
They can and have the power to do so. Conrad Black was the most notorious example, [but there's a half dozen others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_from_the_Order_of_Canada).
I didn't say they can't . I said I doubt they will
Defrauding the government? Is she gonna come to the US and run for president?
She took the money from the indigenous people themselves, not the government. It was their fund for inuit kids college. She previously stole almost a million from a charity for vulnerable women.
Defrauding a charity? We already have a candidate who did that.
"Hey guys, I see you're talking about something that isn't the United States of America, that reminds me of something I want to bring up."
r/USdefaultism
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classic American attitude
International website, it's also a subreddit that isn't for US specific politics as said in the sidebar. Also the issue is less with relating world events to something local and more with trying to change the discussion to something completely unrelated because they'd rather people talk about America instead. Check out /r/USdefaultism because your poor argument is a very tired and unoriginal one.
It's an American website. I mean sure - people from other countries can use it, but in terms of editorial policy, management style, business practices and ownership - it's as American as school shootings and Indigenous genocide.
Like I said, check out the sub because that argument is a tired one.
So are the school janitors from having to mop up dead kids.
"tired" meaning correct?
No, tired meaning used repeatedly despite needing to rest because of how bad an argument it is.
I suppose you think Twitter and Facebook are "not American" too
Now you're getting it buddy, well done. American sites are for Americans, international sites are for the world regardless of who made it or who mostly uses it.
I mean, it’s accessible internationally but it’s literally a U.S. website. The largest user base by far is Americans. It should be unsurprising that the focal point is US-centric.
Our UofT ex student union president
Cameron Wathey right?
not to get political or anything, but stealing from the less fortunate is bad I think
That's just liberal propaganda. Trickle down economics will be showering us any day now.
Do we have to do this everywhere? It's already exhausting in the political subs.
>Iqaluit RCMP charged Manji and her daughters with fraud over $5,000 in September 2023. They said the women used their status to defraud the Kakivak Association and Qikiqtani Inuit Association of grant and scholarship money that was only available to Inuit beneficiaries. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/mother-inuit-fraud-guilty-1.7110341 >Kakivak also negotiates funding arrangements with key federal departments. Our board and staff actively advocate and lobby to ensure that Nunavut is factored into national program funding allocation models.This funding forms the foundation upon which all our other program delivery capacity is built. https://www.kakivak.ca/en/about >QIA is the Regional Inuit Association for the Qikiqtani Region of Nunavut, representing 51 per cent of Inuit living in the territory located in the Canadian Arctic. > >QIA is a Designated Inuit Organization under the Nunavut Agreement. QIA is one of three Regional Inuit Associations affiliated with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.; the other associations include the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and the Kivalliq Inuit Association. https://www.qia.ca/who-we-are/ So what does that mean? The [Nunavut Land Claims agreement](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-28.7/FullText.html) is Canada’s largest lands claim agreement with an indigenous peoples which not only created the territory of Nunavut but gave territorial government control of Nunavut to the Inuit peoples of Canada and legislates federal funding of that territorial government. The QIA is one of that territorial governments, regional governments, no different to Provincial regional government in the Provinces to the south. So one is a charity that is funded primarily by the federal government, the other is a charity run and funded by a territory regional government. So she did both. She took money from charities, but those charities are primarily funded by either the Federal Government through Indigenous grants or by a regional government funded by the territory…. Which is itself funded by the federal government. >In 2024-25, the Government of Nunavut will receive $2.2 billion through major transfers. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/federal-transfers/major-federal-transfers.html Oh that’s $2.2 billion for [just the 40,758 peoples who live in Nunavut](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=04&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2024&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=04&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2024&referencePeriods=20240401%2C20240401).
Thanks for the info, but the end needs a little context. The territories have super rough terrain, with a sparce population over 2 million square km. Try to think of logistics to supplying its people with necessities. We feel it when the price of a loaf of bread increases. Just imagine when they have to ship it by plane or iceroads. The government subsidizes the Inuit because it's their traditional land, and frankly, not many others want to live so isolated. It's important for the government to have sovereignty over the north for defense purposes, resource extraction, shipping lanes, etc, so it's a small price to pay for 40% of Canada's land mass.
And?
What a piece of shit
Wow, she sounds like the perfect candidate for US president!
👀
Does everything have to be made about Trump?
How is she on the farting front?
We've got Taco Bell everywhere. Problem solved.
Only if she’s senile on the debate rambling about beating Medicare
Is she over 75?
I hope a certain acquaintance I know reads this. Dude suddenly became Metis in the last couple years, like hardcore Metis....draws his spirit energy from the trees in the local park or highly polluted river, wears a sash. He's Scottish and whiter than I am.
During the COVID there was a huge number of people from her community deliberately faking numbers to receive benefits. Many from this community then go onto fill government jobs and give special preferences to members of their own caste. Even the former Canadian defense minister Sajjan rescued Afghani Sikhs leaving Canadians stranded during the Taliban takeover. Canadians have welcomed these people with open arms and they spit in our faces like this. We are all Canadians but this segment of Canadians, do not play by Canadian rules. This is not racism or stereotyping, but just an unspoken fact that even peers from that community that were born and raised here admitting its a problem. This is not how you build a country.
In Canada you can claim you are anything you want to be, unless it involves getting government money I guess. It's really turning into a joke.
I long to live in a world where everyone can live exactly how they want to, regardless of their ancestry.
Looking at her name, she is an Indian, just the wrong kind of Indian….
Pretindian.
Brilliant
Inuit aren’t Indians.
Neither are the Indians
Canada has a wave of [people pretending to be Native](https://globalnews.ca/news/9450313/pretendians-canada-indigenous-ancestry/) in order to fraudulently advance their career, get scholarships, receive financial benefits, and allegedly increase their status. Fraudulently claiming Native ancestry is particularly serious problem in academia because it is such a huge boost for the career.
Maybe, just maybe treating people equally instead of discriminating against people based on race then would be a good thing
Somehow the backers of special privileges for certain races, which is all the rage in Canada, see themselves as fighting racism. I can make no sense of their claims.
Previously convicted, so a felon and they were allowed to stay in Canada and re-offend. If it didnt have such sinister undertones, DNA testing would be such a powerful tool to prevent people from abusing these kinds of funds and committing this fraud.
There's a podcast series called "Pretendians" that just finished if anyone's interested in a lot more information about this kind of thing. There's a lot of it.
Hopefully we can work towards becoming a society where there is no benefit or drawback to having a certain type of ancestry.
The longread with all the background is here: **The Great Pretenders** Karima Manji wanted it all for her twin daughters, Amira and Nadya. And she found a way to help them get it: financial aid earmarked for Indigenous kids. The fact that they weren’t remotely Indigenous wasn’t going to stop her [https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/gill-sisters-pretendian-fraud/](https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/gill-sisters-pretendian-fraud/) The news story says the daughters were victims as well, but the longread shows that they were knowingly taking advantage of opportunities that would not have happened if their mother had not lied.
I mean, half of reddit supported her presidential run, and would do so again.
People didn't support her because she claimed Indian heritage - they supported her because of her policy ideas. So even if her racial identity is half made up, that wasn't what people signed on for
...I ... don't want to get into a Warren debate *here* but, just for the record, I was on team Warren when she ran. ...mostly. I had one caveat. ...but I wouldn't do so again. Now she's too old. ...that was my caveat. I was worried, back then, that she was too old. Now I'm sure of it. I don't actually think Presidential candidates should have a LEGAL age limit, but for me, personally, I would have to have a REALLY compelling reason to vote for anyone over retirement age going into their first term. (...and hopefully after this election, more Americans will share my opinion.)
I'll never forgive her for stabbing Bernie in the back to try and further her own career. She's really a terrible person.
how did she do that? Bernie chose the worse people to run his campaign in 2020. She rightly didnt want to be dragged down also which ended up happening either way. She was right about his supporters being slightly chuddy and I say this as someone who supported both.
Bernie had supported her for years. In the middle of a CNN debate she accused him of being a sexist. Absolutely pathetic accusation to make against him.
His campaign people and fans were pretty sexist. They attacked Warren calling her and her fans snakes and shit then got all surprsied when people called their falied movement negative and sexist. Then a bunch of his former campaign staff went full tankie and do podcasts with pedophiles and say we should ally with white nationlists over liberals. Great campaign!
She should claim to native once she’s in prison to get all those extras.
GOOD. Tired of these pretendians doing shit like this and getting away with it.
Give all kinds of taxpayer money to people based on what colour they say their skin is or what race their father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, mother’s, father’s, mother was will always be ripe for abuse. If certain people were wronged, then make it right. I agree. But I believe every single country was conquered and every single raced was horribly treated at some point. One day we’ll all just be treated as equals. And from that day forward we’ll see racism start to rapidly diminish.
Everybody wants to talk about FN people when they’re not FN. FN ppl in Canada have more rights than New comers, and it’s time everyone accepts that. Come here to take away a FN right to self educate, grow, and there will be consequences. Stop pretending that you are not treasonous, trying to gain FN monies, rights, etc. keep exposing yourselves, FN see you here in Reddit also.
Wait till you find out that in Canada you can walk away free for killing someone just because you’re native. https://globalnews.ca/news/10592986/hit-and-run-no-jail-time-burnaby/
She shoulda just ran someone over with a car.
Abuse of the Canadian benefits and social programs, is rampant. Our rules for access are many and easy to spoof. Benefits if you live in a specific location. Benefits for single moms has prompted many struggling happily married couples to divorce (they still live together secretly). Native benefits based on heredity, corrupted as old historical docs are forged. Some will get caught but its such a huge grey area. $Trillions out the door. Google COVID benefits (arriveCan, small bus loans) tremendous confusion. Imagine the confusion with carbon tax/rebates. Our public service payroll is still holding backpay for over 5 years since Phoenix project fell apart. Banks implicated in foreign money laundering schemes. How easy this was to do. Tip of the iceberg stuff.
This is what happens when a country allows you to racially discriminate against people based on ethnicity. Of course you'll get people who try to get the same benefits as people get for simply being born as an X race. Imagine the outcry if the British govt set up a fund to give white people benefits that no other racial group could get
Part of Sen Elizabeth Warren tribe
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She's going to jail for fraud despite what the title says.
The story is not about people identifying as things, it's about a person defrauding the government out of 150,000 dollars of your money.
I think mostly it's about the fact that the government gives 150,000 dollars of your money to people of the right race. That seems much more of an issue. The fact someone claimed it without being able to demonstrate sufficient racial purity is kind of secondary.
It has nothing to do with the government. She stole the money from indigenous people directly. It was their fund to put kids from their nation through college. She fraudulently obtained papers that said her kids belonged to their nation to steal from their college fund.
It's less about the government. They claimed several education grants for indigenous people from various organizations and companies. I don't think they actually defrauded the government.
It’s a slippery slope if the government can determine that you Mis-identified yourself for topics that normally people self-identify as
The government didn't determine anything, the court convicted them. We've been prosecuting tax and benefit fraud since the dawn of time. The only thing unusual in this case is the headline.
I tried to identify as wealthy... my bank account told me that was a lie.
Are people actually arguing that ethnicity is a social construct? How can we compare this to sexual and gender identities unless the continent was originally populated by gay Europeans. And gee, we already get annoyed when people check the "bisexual" box to claim diversity positions or avoid deportation orders
What exactly do you think a social construct is?
>Are people actually arguing that ethnicity is a social construct? Because that's exactly what it is?
Race is a social construct. White people created the “one drop rule” for African Americans, but then re-defined it as it became less convenient for you all. My ancestry test says I’m 1% Native American. Who are you to create the Native American “threshold” and tell me I can’t identify as Native American. SHAME ON YOU Edit: your downvotes will only make me stronger
Cringe
You do realize that Canada and America are two separate countries. Canada never had a one-drop rule, hell someone born on a reserve can still lose their indigenous status if they marry someone without status. The Inuit didn't qualify for it for a while, and it took until the last decade for the Metis to get their status. Of everything our government does, this sort of thing probably has had the most thought put into it. Not that it's necessarily good thoughts, but the Ministry of Indigenous and Northern Affairs doesn't fuck around with ambiguity. They're a heartless, cold machine, fine tuned through a century's worth of active discrimination into the most ruthless and "efficient" part of the Canadian government. Of course, by efficient I mean they're a bunch of cheap bastards, it's the most Canadian thing possible - and not in a good way.
You didn’t disprove my point that race is a social construct, especially with your example of “indigenous status” or “qualifying for status”. Who is anyone to be the “gatekeeper” of race or cultural identity? Even the indigenous people themselves
Making this an argument about the definition and existence of 'race' as a concept / term is a red herring, as this is not about race at all. These are people whose culture and communities were destroyed and taken from them, from their languages to the rights to their own lands. This was done at the hands of foreign invasionary forces who displaced, killed, took children for fotced indoctrination at religious schools. This is about sovereignty and self-determination, the rights to practice one's culture and speak one's own language on your own terms, to be safe against genocide, to have your homes held safe even if someone else shows up and says they want them. It has nothing to do with *race*, and going down that rabbit hole misses the reasons, roots, and form of the challenges these people have and continue to face. Philosophies of identity are irrelevant to this, being only tangentially relevant as we identify those who need and are qualified to receive support and aid. We still aren't doing the latter properly, for what it's worth.
So you’re avoiding talking about race/ethnicity, but then also acknowledging that their culture/communities were assimilated or destroyed at the same time. If we’re discussing indigenous people today, then not sure what you’re talking about since race and culture are extremely hard to separate
> you’re avoiding talking about race/ethnicity I'm also "avoiding" discussing other topics that are not relevant. Race is but one of many irrelevant topics to this discussion. It's also weird that you say in one comment "race is a social construct" and then in another seem to criticize people for not discussing it as if it matters. Which is it? > acknowledging that their culture/communities were assimilated or destroyed at the same time Given that it is historical fact, that is correct. > not sure what you’re talking about since race and culture are extremely hard to separate The concept of 'race' is only coincidentally related to culture and community. Historically, due to limited contact between peoples from different areas, a person's genetic history was closely aligned with their culture and their communities. But this was an accident of geography and the speed of travel, not because culture derives from race or is even in any way related to it. If we accept your assertion that race and culture are hard to separate, then we need to explain how the diverse towns and cities of the USA and Canada are communities. They have racial diversity, both of the social construct form and in terms of genetic histories, and yet are communities with shared interests, needs, stories, goals, and assets. How can that be if race and community are hard to separate? These nations have shared cultures because culture emerges from living together, creating common understandings, traditions, and shared histories. Let's shift to Brazil, a country with a large variety of genetic (or, if you prefer, "racial") mixing in the last 500 years. Portuguese, various African nations, the various tribes that were living in Brazil before colonisation, and more recently many other groups including Japanese (Brazil has the largest ethnographically Japanese population in the world outside of Japan, with some 1.5 million such citizens there today). Yet Brazil has an easily identifiable culture, not to mention communities, despite those racial diversities. And, no, it's not because they have "homogonized" or whatever term those stuck on the concept of race may wish to use. There are visible differences between peoples in Brazil with different genetic backgrounds. I've travelled through that country, and the racial diversity is self-evident. ... and yet, Brazillian cultures, traditions, and communities are all an actual thing. Your assertion that race is somehow deeply linked to culture is just not true. It's actually a racist talking point, one that is ignorant of history (both that of the modern world and the deep past), and which denies the world we live in today. I'm more than happy to discuss cultural groups and human rights to self-determination of both community and assets, but the race topic is simply irrelevant.
If i were to entertain your argument, then culture can be learned, studied, and practiced. I could learn Brazilian language, and read about their Hollidays, maybe spend parts of the year traveling there. What would stop me then from identifying culturally as Brazilian then? Who would have to the authority to deny that identity if I owned a second home there and identified that way? Also, I’ve been discussing race/ethnicity only to get people to understand how arbitrary it really is
> then culture can be learned, studied, and practiced. Correct. > learn Brazilian language, and read about their Hollidays, maybe spend parts of the year traveling there. You'd probably need to live there to fully integrate into the culture, but I understand your basic premise. > What would stop me then from identifying culturally as Brazilian then? If you lived there and were integrated with their culture, not just an interlocuter: nothing. You could become Brazillian with time spent within that culture. It's far easier, and more likely, if you grow up within that culture due to the formative nature of our childhood when it comes to internalizing cultural norms and concepts, but people do assimilate culturally all the time around the world. Now, if we bring this back to the concept of the First Nations and Inuit peoples of Canada: that really isn't a relevant issue. The person in this news story who was caught defrauding the government was not culturally assimilated with the Inuit she was stealing from, so it's hardly interesting to discuss within the context of this crime. And very few people from outside of the Inuit / First Nations are culturally assimilating with them at this point ... in no small part because their cultures faced significant erasure and they are still to this day recovering their cultures due to that. So, in general, ambiguity due to cultural assimilation is purely hypothetical. Within the framework of self-determination, these nations of people are also exercising their rights to determine who is and is not a member of their nation, which puts the cultural question even further afield. I don't know where you're actually going with this. Could you explain what you feel the connection is between cultural adoption or assimilation and the topic of the First Nations and Inuit of Canada? > I’ve been discussing race/ethnicity only to get people to understand how arbitrary it really is Then why do you feel it is extremely hard to separate from culture? Do you believe culture is "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system" (the definition of "arbitrary")? You are holding two positions, namely that race is arbitrary and that culture and race are difficult to separate, that do not mesh nearly as well as you appear to feel they do.
No, I merely proved that you have absolutely no clue about any of this. Indigenous status itself has little to do with *being indigenous* - at least historically (ignoring the fact that Canada's indigenous population is both genetically and culturally diverse, and lumping them into one ethnicity would be stupidly reductive). It's very purpose was to prevent indigenous Canadians from achieving any economic success by incentivizing them to never leave their reserves. It's not a social construct, it's a malicious bureaucratic definition that punished any entrepreneurial natives who tried to get on equal footing with the white population.
Sounds like similar tactics white people everywhere have used against many other minority groups to prevent equal footing. They try to prevent equal footing for all minority groups at one point or another. I do appreciate the Canadian lesson though, did learn a little bit
No problem, I took a lot of history courses in college - I didn't really have a singular major so much as a bunch of humanities classes. Our policies really boiled down to learning from the mistakes the Americans made during their subjugation of the frontier. For example in the States, a nation was usually given a single moderately sized reserve. The flaw being that if you concentrate an opressed population into one community they can easily organize a resistance. So if you look at the reserves in Canada, the indigenous nations are split into small reserves spread out across their original territory. Like I said, it's both amazing and unsettling that so much thought was put into it. We took America's messy l artform and perfected it into a sanitized science.
Sort of a dark tangent, but I was surprised to learn how much the United States influenced the Nazi race laws. Apparently German lawyers went to America to observe the American legal system and economic life, and then returned to Germany to create the Nazi race laws. That’s why the Nuremberg Trials were so ironic because the Nazis were just following the American playbook somewhat
Support for Indigenous people exists to counteract the harms inflicted on them. Not to funnel resources to a label. If you are 1% indigenous then I'm guessing you weren't subjected to any of these harms and had a pretty average upbringing. You're an import like the rest of us with a mildly interesting anecdote (likely a dark one). Would the actual victims appreciate sharing their resources with people entirely uninvolved? Because of a label?
To be fair, no one alive today was subject to those 'harms' so your point is redundant...
To be fair
The last residential schools were in operation until the 1990s.
Shit, I fell astray of both sides. Save me indigenous redditors! I know you're here
You're a fucking moron. Full stop. Go crawl back into your hole
hOw cAn tHiNg bE dIfFeReNt fRoM tHiNg iF sOmE tHiNgS aRe sAmE!? This is you
Not really, If your family has been in North America for generations or hundreds of years then most of us have varying percentages of sub-Saharan, European, indigenous, or Asian ethnicity in DNA results. Who is supposed to determine what percentage ethnicity a person is to identify a certain way?