Sometimes a good shaming is all you've got

It's hard to talk about Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. 

I fully believe that the right thing is happening to her as she is held up to the searing light that the CBC's Geoff Leo has shone on her fictions. Pretending to be someone you're not feels especially egregious when high-privilege people fake low-privilege backgrounds. 

I am completely on the side of the betrayed Indigenous women who have had to experience a champion from within turning out to be nothing of the sort. All the worse that Turpel-Lafond purported to speak for them, and to have walked that same difficult road to success that Indigenous people so routinely have had to walk.

But it's still hard to watch. For a settler like me, it's also hard to talk about with my settler acquaintances. I can feel the grand discomfort we feel at watching a person whose past work we still admire experiencing a profound public shaming. 

We engage on the subject ever so carefully, tip-toeing around the astonishing betrayal and in the end, not saying much at all. I have exactly one non-Indigenous friend who I can fully engage with on the shocking subject of Turpel-Lafond, and we put our heads down and talk in low voices as if to hide that we've got strong thoughts on the matter.

And yet, these modern versions of a public stoning are important things to bear witness to. We do need to publicly shame those who engage in such blatant frauds. We do need to talk about the massive betrayal, and to reflect on and share the pieces that Indigenous women are writing about how this has impacted them.

Humiliation is both the way we punish and the way we deter when it comes to faking. It's literally the only way to punish those who come from privilege and fake an underprivileged back story - surely one of the most offensive kinds of fakery, given that the faker lays claim to space, key positions, prestige, money and air time that are routinely denied to underprivileged groups. 

And aren't there just a lot of fakers? That's what is really sinking in for me lately. Fake nurses, fake experts, fake college degrees, so many scammers. Grandparents scammed by fake grandsons. Whole police departments duped by modern-day snake-oil salesmen selling fake post-traumatic stress credentials.

Not that I think of Turpel-Lafond as a scammer. Her fakery feels so bizarre and recklessly self-destructive that my thoughts go toward her mental health instead. I have met people in both my personal and professional lives who have told themselves a made-up story for so long that they somehow come to believe it. 

I don't know if that's the case for her, but what else can explain the crazy risk she took by creating a persona and credentials that didn't belong to her? Did she think about this moment, when it all would fall apart and suddenly all would be revealed? 

Now we are left to reconsider everything Turpel-Lafond accomplished in her many significant years in high-profile positions. None of it is work that should be discounted automatically now that the truth is out, but I can't help but wonder how all of that work might have turned out had a real Indigenous person done it.

It's obvious that Indigenous people are struggling to talk about this one as well. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs issued a statement last fall confirming their support for Turpel-Lafond, who they described as a “fierce, ethical and groundbreaking advocate for Indigenous peoples for decades.”

They contended that issues of First Nations identity are for Indigenous peoples, families and governments to sort through based on their laws, customs and traditions, and condemned the initial CBC stories as “digging into private matters.”

But as other Indigenous people have repeatedly emphasized, she could have been that same fierce advocate without faking her background. Being a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights does not require that one pretends to be Indigenous.

Which Indigenous people went uncelebrated for their own contributions while Turpel-Lafond was receiving 11 honorary degrees under false pretences? 

Who might have authored the report into systemic racism toward Indigenous people in BC's health care system had that prestigious and well-paid work not gone to Turpel-Lafond? 

Who might have been the genuinely Indigenous representative for BC children and youth in a province where Indigenous children continue to be vastly over-represented in child apprehensions? What might they have done with a decade of their own in that vital position? 

What important perspectives from lived experience have been missed entirely in all of her work? What depths of wisdom went untapped because privileged space was taken up by somebody who hadn't had the life she said she'd had?

These things matter. In an era so fake that we can't even believe the things we see with our own eyes, authenticity of the person has never been more important. 

I feel for Turpel-Lafond in what must surely be an exquisitely painful time. But her deception has shaken the foundations of every good thing she did. We have all been hurt by her fakery, and Indigenous people most of all. 

***

Here's a November 2022 piece from the same CBC writer, this one on the report from Metis lawyer Jean Teillet on another Indigenous faker, Carrie Bourassa. 

People who pretend to be Indigenous feed off the ignorance of the non-Indigenous population, notes Teillet. "The fraudsters enact stereotypes they know will be recognized by the non-Indigenous audience. There is often silent and resentful recognition by Indigenous people that the performance is a stereotyped image of themselves."

Manitoba chief's blockade threats may be best strategy
June 22, 2007

Calls for a coast-to-coast railway blockade by aboriginal leader Terrance Nelson couldn’t be more un-Canadian.
We like things settled without conflict. We’re particularly loath to engage in it right out in the open, the way Nelson likes to do it.
The chief of Manitoba’s Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation says some outrageous things when he gets heated up about the grim struggles of Canada’s aboriginal population.
And he’s just about at the boiling point these days. The Assembly of First Nations is organizing a “day of action” next week for the nation’s aboriginals, and Nelson wants to see a blockade so big that Canada’s economy will still be reeling from the shock months from now.
“There’s only one way to deal with a white man. You either pick up a gun or you stand between him and his money,” Nelson most famously said a month ago in a media interview.
In a follow-up Globe and Mail profile this week, he reiterated his hope that aboriginals use the June 29 day of action as an opportunity to disrupt Canadian National railway shipments across the country.
On first blush, there’s no way to defend a guy like Nelson. What do racist comments and blockaded trains have to do with the problems of Canadian First Nations?
But viewed as a strategy, Nelson’s call to action is more understandable. And while the whole thing may seem just a little too angry for Canada’s tastes, in fact he’s got history on his side in advocating economic protest.
Maybe Nelson has even read Poor People’s Movements, the 1979 book that identified economic protest as one of the most important factors in determining whether anything actually changed for a particular sub-class fighting for its rights.
Authors Frances Fox Piven and Richard Coward looked at movements like American civil rights, welfare reform and workers’ rights. The issues are different again for Canada’s aboriginals, but they’ve certainly been stymied by many of the same things that got in the way of those earlier movements.
The Piven/Coward book found self-interest to be one of the most powerful motivators in prompting social change.
The “elite” who control society tend not to respond to the needs of poor people until their own interests are compromised. Economic disruptions get their attention.
Of course, a whole lot of other factors have to be in place as well. The authors documented the efforts of countless hard-working believers who played vital roles on the front lines of each of the movements.
The twists and turns of history also set the stage for change. The high unemployment rates of the Depression, for instance, primed the public to accept the need for benefits for unemployed workers.
So change isn’t only about applying economic pressure. Nelson needs a plan that’s far broader than a single day of railway blockades if he hopes to help aboriginals see a brighter day.
But I’d have to concur with him that it’s time to quit waiting for the nice people in charge to set things right.
As Nelson knows all too well, everything that goes wrong in this country goes wrong way more often for aboriginals.
They live in far greater poverty. They die at a much younger age, and endure challenging health problems more often. They drop out of school at alarming rates from Grade 8 on.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. On any social front, from homelessness to addiction to foster care, aboriginals lead the downward curve. They’ve been leading it for as long as I can remember, and for several decades before that.
“Look, I’m 53,” Nelson told the Globe in defending his call for a blockade. “We have done everything we can to wake up Canada. . .”
I suspect it must be hard to get aboriginals mad enough to rise up, because I would have expected rioting in the streets by this point.
You need only think of smallpox, land appropriation, cultural extermination, residential schools, the Indian Act and our complete inability to negotiate a treaty to know that history has not unfolded particularly well for Canada’s aboriginals.
At 53, Nelson has lived long enough to see any number of grand promises to Canada’s aboriginals wilt on the vine. Money changes hands and great wads of it seem to be spent in pursuit of a solution, but it never seems to trickle down to the people who need it most.
Can you get to the bottom of a problem like that by orchestrating a 24-hour national railway blockade? Probably not.
In fact, Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine is already playing down any suggestion of genuine confrontation, and is instead promoting June 29 as a day for Canada to educate itself about aboriginal issues.
That’s a nice Canadian-style compromise. But people like Nelson have figured out what that actually means: Nothing will change. In terms of really getting Canadians’ attention, a day of education doesn’t hold a candle to a day of railway blockades.
Peaceful, dignified solutions - yes, I still hope for that. But sometimes protest is all you’ve got left.