Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Over the summer, o we're bringing you some of the highlights of our 2025-26 season, which wrapped up in mid-May.
Speaker: We're going to be back with our brand new fall season in September. Our first live radio broadcast will be on September 19th on Vancouver Cooperative Radio CFRO 100.5 FM and streaming live at coopradio.org slash redeye.
Speaker: Podcasts and interviews from that show will be posted the following week. On the podcast today, Professor Debbie Martin of Dalhousie on who gets harmed in the rush for Indigenous identity policies at universities.
Speaker: The practice of people self-identifying as indigenous has come into sharp focus after a number of high-profile cases of pretendians claiming to be indigenous without evidence.
Speaker: However, far less attention has been given to indigenous people wrongly labeled as pretendians. In a recent article for Policy Options, Debbie Martin argues that the rush for indigenous identity policies at universities has led to people with legitimate claims to indigeneity being swept up in policies that will cause lasting harm.
Speaker: Debbie Martin is Inuk, and a member of Nuna Tuchabut. She's a professor in the School of Health and Human Performance at Dalhousie University and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples' Health and Wellbeing. And she joins me this morning from Halifax. Hello, Debbie.
Speaker: Hi, good morning, Jane. Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure to have you on the show today. In your article, you say that your university is one of several that's moving too fast in its efforts to create policies that will deal with the issue of pretendians. What did Dalhousie do to address this issue?
Speaker: I think there's been sort of a race, I guess, between universities to come up with policies that would address what I think is a very intractable issue within Indigenous communities and within ah university settings as well to determine who is and who is not Indigenous. And I think this has come as a result of the identification of some individuals who've been identified as what is, I guess, colloquially termed pretendians or people who are claiming to be indigenous but do not have proof to back up their claims. And so because this has happened within universities, there's been a fairly strong group of indigenous faculty, staff and scholars within those institutions that have indicated that there needs to be something beyond the idea of self-identification at universities. And so what's happened is that universities have taken on this role. I think a lot of them have committed to addressing the calls to action that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that specifically address education.
Speaker: And they want to do good. They want to, you know, respond to communities and respond to Indigenous concerns around the Indigenous identity policies. But in doing so, I think that they've jumped the gun and rushed towards implementing policies that have actually, in fact, hurt Indigenous peoples that are working at those institutions or studying as students at those institutions. And so in the case of Dalhousie, for instance, what's happened is that there were a group of individuals that were tasked with creating a report that resulted from consultations that occurred within Mi'kma'ki,
Speaker: That's here in Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. And the result of that report included recommendations on how to address and go beyond the issue of self-identification.
Speaker: The report was critiqued by two Mi'kmaq legal scholars from Dalhousie Schulich School of Law. What did they say about that report by Dalhousie? Yes, when it came to the attention of Naomi Metallic and Cheryl Simon, they took, ah I guess, a human rights lens to the report. And they decided that some of the concerns that they had warranted sort of a rebuttal the the proposed identity policy at Dalhousie. And in their report, I think they used the phrase, it was too blunt an instrument to actually deal with the issue of Indigenous identity. so They highlighted a number of concerns in in their report, most of which were around the idea that when we are using verification systems that rely on federal verification, we're ignoring the self-determination of Indigenous communities to determine who is and who is not Indigenous. And I think that fundamentally means that there are many Indigenous communities and groups of people, and individuals even, who are faculty, staff, and students at various institutions across the country, Dalhousie being one of them, who don't fall within state-sanctioned federal verification, but whose lineages, their family ties, their cultural connections are are all very much indisputably connected to Indigenous communities across Canada.
Speaker: So who gets left out? Well, I think there's a number of people that get left out. And I think Naomi and Cheryl did a great job pointing out who those individuals are. One of them would be, for example, Indigenous peoples that were part of the Sixties Scoop, where they were adopted out of Indigenous families and raised in non-Indigenous families. And many have had a lot of trouble, I guess, reconnecting back to their birth families. And so those people are very much Indigenous.
Speaker: But the means to prove that is made very difficult by sealed records and difficulties connecting with those families and finding out exactly who their family connections are. And so, you know, that's one example. I think there are other examples of Indigenous collectives across the country. Ngunituwa, which is the community that I'm from, is one example of those. where even though we have federal acknowledgement of the fact that we have the historical rootedness and the cultural connections, the genealogical roots that determine that our families and our ancestors were very much indigenous and that we are Inuk and Inuit, we are left out of that because we do not have federal recognition at this time.
Speaker: Is there, in fact, any kind of easy mechanism to distinguish between a pretendian and someone who is Indigenous? The easy answer to that is no, I don't think there is. i think the issue is incredibly intractable.
Speaker: I don't think there's a way to determine this. i think one of the concerning things that I see is the rise of other Indigenous communities and organizations that are unwilling to acknowledge that their neighbors and friends and sometimes cousins are in in fact Indigenous. And so there's organizational politics at play that prevent one Indigenous organization from receiving the support and encouragement and acknowledgement of other Indigenous organizations to identify as Indigenous. So there's a lot of ah lateral politics, I think, that goes into determining who is and who is not Indigenous. And that plays out when we start to see universities reaching out to Indigenous communities to actually ask the question of who is and who is not Indigenous. But, you know, I don't think you can look at somebody and tell that they are. i don't even think blood quantum is a good measure to determine if someone is or is not Indigenous. I think it has a lot to do with community connection, family connections, rootedness, and your kin acknowledging that you are part of that community. And so I feel like that is not something that should rest in the hands of academic institutions to determine.
Speaker: You mentioned Nunatukhavut and you're a member of Nunatukhavut, which represents 6,000 self-identifying Inuit in South and Central Labrador.
Speaker: What did Memorial University say about Nunatukhavut earlier this year? So Memorial University undertook a similar process that was also undertaken here at Dalhousie University in that they did consultation sessions. um I participated in one of those as an alum of Memorial. And in those consultation sessions, they wanted to sort of ask questions around what constitutes an indigenous person within the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. They hired an external consulting group to do that work.
Speaker: The external consulting group produced an interim report that was released. It was released to the public for comment. And when I read that report, I felt as though my voice and the voice of many of the people that are from Nunatuavut was entirely erased from the report in the sense that they were recommending that Nunatuavut not be included by nature of the fact that our neighbors, Nunatiavut government, had indicated that unless a group has federal recognition and or their neighbors acknowledge them as such, that they should not receive a status at a university as indigenous. And so for me, that was incredibly concerning because we know that there's a whole series of politics, I guess, between Nunatsiavut and Nunatuavut.
Speaker: But we do know that there's brothers and sisters, some of whom are Nunatuavut and some of whom are Nunatsiavut. And yet that politics is playing out now at the university level. I want to go to the University of Saskatchewan now because they commissioned a report three years ago and they listed some red flags to help figure out, they said, if someone is Pretendian. What were some of the issues that they identified?
Speaker: Yeah, so when I read their report, it was one of the first actually that had come out after universities really started to try to address this issue. And the report listed a number of red flags. I think there were eight. But in my mind, there were a few that were incredibly concerning to me because... They really, in my mind, they list things that individuals might identify with as someone who's reconnecting to their community. So if they had been forcibly removed or not connected when they were born or as they were raised, there's a number of things that they
Speaker: would be doing as maybe young adults or as they explore and want to reconnect to their own culture. And so, for instance, one of the red flags that was identified was vague claims of identity, such as not being able to explain who your relatives are. And as I mentioned, if someone was forcibly removed from their birth family and don't have that connection, then not being able to explain your relatives is also, in fact, a characteristic of someone trying to connect to their identity.
Speaker: Another example of a red flag that was used was relying heavily on family trauma as a reason for not knowing one's indigenous family. And to me, there are very legitimate reasons that have a lot to do with historical colonial trauma that would be, i guess, very much a reason why someone is unable to connect to their family. and to their Indigenous identity and heritage.
Speaker: And to me, that doesn't mean that someone should not be able to do that. And I think, in fact, it does harm to suggest that someone who's experienced trauma and who is now trying to reconnect could be considered a pretendian.
Speaker: You know, i sometimes I think the, um what is it they say, the solution is worse than the problem when we try to impose these colonial terms, I guess, on on Indigenous people.
Speaker: I guess a third red flag that they identified was adopting a relationship with an elder to learn about your culture. And again, i feel like if someone is trying to connect to their culture and has met an elder who's able to do that, that shouldn't be considered to be elder grooming. it should be someone who's reconnecting. And a fourth thing that they had indicated was stories that conflict or change over time. And I think, you know, as people learn more and as they learn more about their own identity and they dive into their family histories, just like anyone, I think they should be allowed to indicate who they are. And if that changes over time based on greater knowledge, and then that should be something that's encouraged and not discouraged.
Speaker: Do any of the institutions that we've been talking about acknowledge the place of colonialism in the situation of indigenous people today? Do they make a specific, well, we know that happened and these may be some of the consequences or or do they just start from where we are now?
Speaker: I think that's the really interesting thing. I think the the history of colonialism is used as a means to justify the creation of the policy in the first place.
Speaker: In other words, I think there's an acknowledgement of harm that's been caused by educational institutions right across the country. You know, we have history of residential schools, and I don't think anybody would agree that anything good came from those. And so I think in reparation for that, people are acknowledging that absolutely there's a colonial history here that we need to try to address.
Speaker: But I think what's being misplaced or maybe not acknowledged is that many of us still have very complex identities that can't be pigeonholed into checkboxes that can satisfy the requirements of an academic institution in terms of determining whether or not someone is or is not indigenous.
Speaker: What should universities be doing to deal with this issue in a way that doesn't threaten ah and alienate indigenous students and and faculty?
Speaker: Well, I think that's the million dollar question. I think, i you know, if I had the answer to that, I think a lot of these issues would probably go away. But I think, you know, for me, one thing is to go back to Indigenous communities themselves and use them as a starting point for trying to understand the issue more deeply and recognizing that academic institutions aren't a place, in my opinion, at all,
Speaker: for these sorts of discussions to take place. Many indigenous communities historically have operated on very much principles of acceptance. They operated by the idea that people should be included, that you know family ties and cultural connection, when they're disrupted, that people should be extended grace to be able to reconnect. And I think that that approach in and of itself is based in many different types of diverse Indigenous teachings related to acceptance and respect for diverse identities. And so when we do anything, I think that tries to restrict and categorize who someone is or isn't, that's fundamentally you know a colonial tradition.
Speaker: process. And so I'm not sure that universities play a role at all in these things. I think we have in place, if people are committing fraud, that's academic fraud, or they're pretending to be somebody that they're not, to me, there's already processes in place to deal with that. I guess the issue is determining who those people are. And and I'm not sure how to do that. But that's certainly not an Indigenous issue. That's a non-Indigenous issue of non-Indigenous people who are claiming to be something they're not. It's not an Indigenous issue, and yet we're the ones that are suffering as a result of it.
Speaker: Do you think there's a connection with the kind of hyper-nationalism MAGA politics that we're seeing in North America right now, this intense focus on identity and and who is who?
Speaker: I think that's a really great question. And I think you're really getting at something that I've been thinking a lot about. I think we're living at a time right now when being unapologetically who you are is really raising the ire of people whose conceptualizations maybe don't include that level of diversity. And I think that, unfortunately, that narrative is really extending into not only academic institutions, but it's also extending into Indigenous communities, whereby there's becoming a more...
Speaker: I guess a narrow conceptualization of who is in and who is out. And I think that that ultimately stems not from a place of indigeneity, it stems from a place of colonial politics, because what it means At the end of the day, is that if we have more Indigenous peoples within Canada, and we recognize more peoples who are Indigenous within Canada, then that means that there's more Indigenous peoples that we have to provide resources and supports and programming and so on for.
Speaker: And I think that that makes it really difficult for those Indigenous communities who are already facing incredible underfunding. They're facing, they're putting up fires literally in their communities day to day. And now to see that there's other Indigenous peoples out there that might start to claim a part of that pie, i think that's really troubling for them. But I think what's really important to consider when Indigenous we see that type of politics playing out is to recognize that there are many indigenous peoples and that have strength and knowledge and contributions to make to their communities. And so if we're able to celebrate that rather than deny it, I think we would be better off
Speaker: generally as indigenous peoples right across this country to accept and celebrate and and lobby for more funding from, you know, there's more of us, there's more of us to actually make an argument that we need to receive equitable funding related to programming policies and education and justice and all of those things. So to argue that we're going to be splitting the pie even further, I think,
Speaker: displaces the argument. It really misplaces it and points it at indigenous peoples rather than at the federal government who should be on the hook for addressing this issue in the first place. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me this morning, Debbie.
Speaker: My pleasure. Debbie Martin is Inuk and a member of Nuna Tuchabert. She's a professor in the School of Health and Human Performance at Dalhousie University and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples' Health and Well-Being.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
