I've worked in three universities. In every single one there have been ethnic identity frauds and race shifting. Every year I have sat on admissions committees and hiring committees, I see increasing evidence of ethnic fraud and race shifting in Canadian universities.

It is largely white folk pretending to be Indigenous. It is wrong. The moves are predictable. They are recognizable. And it needs to stop.

Structurally it means the practice of self-identification as currently envisioned within HR practices in academic institutions are inadequate to establish credibility. And while administrators are mostly afraid to go here, it is shortsighted.

In the long term, law suits are going to happen and this will have massive reputational damage to universities with Indigenous communities will be significant. It will undermine any supposed "progress" on Indigenous education.

A few starting assumptions: Colonialism is not the same thing as racism, although the two overlap. Racial coding is a thing in Canada, and that includes white, brown, and black coded Indigenous peoples. There are also white people who are frauds and fakes, pretending to be Native

White coded biracial and multiracial Indigenous faculty do exist (my cue hello, it's me) but have an obligation to make clear their relations. They also need to quit the racist performativity and address whiteness. It stinks.

These relations need credibility. Facts are fact America. There are lots of folks that have Indigenous ancestry or understand themselves as decedents of Indigenous peoples. Okay. That does not make you a spokesperson nor should it qualify you to occupy BIPOC focused positions.

You might also have a fraudulent family story. There are lots of possibilities. Why occupy space in the absence of credible information? White coded people claiming to be Indigenous who cannot answer this are in denial of their own racial privilege.

Yes yes yes, because of the history and present of colonialism in Canada, many Indigenous peoples are marginalized from their own community, culture, and connections. And university education is often a catalyst to reconnection.

There are many paths to reconnection, but their are few of authentic value that come without reckoning with the structural power of whiteness.

We don't need to shame Indigenous people for living diverse lives and experiences, but the insistence by some white coded folks on a single Indigenous rhetoric is ironically and obviously racist.

I am suspicious of white coded folks who "Indigenize" in their BA/MA/PhD but who adopt the rhetorics and narratives of those who have lived their entire lives under the threat of white supremacist racist violence.

I have talked with white-coded Indigenous colleagues who speak as if they experience racism in the same ways as black- and brown-coded folx. It leaves me uneasy and causes me to question how they understand themselves in the world.

I am suspicious of it not because it often indicates fraud, but also because it is indicative of a lack of reflection on how racist it is to mimic the rhetorics of oppression while ignoring the ways ones own life has benefited and been privileged by the structure of whiteness.

I am a white coded person in most (of course not all but most) contexts. I am the son of a white man, who was a British immigrant to Canada. The last name "ansloos" is my father's and it comes from Belgium and is flemish origin.

My mother is variably coded as white and brown depending on context. My mother is nehiyaw iskwew, as was her mother, and her mother's mother and father, and so on... She is also the daughter of a white man.

We were both raised (for different reasons) as diasporic citizens of Fisher River Cree Nation (Treaty 5). Residential Schools, the 1960s Scoop, and a high school romance with a Euro immigrant teenage are all part of that story. Our family ties in Fisher River are the Stevensons.

I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Treaty 1). My mother with her adopted Christian-White family in southern Manitoba. Neither of us are Cree speakers, although for the better part of my childhood, I was always in community with Cree, Nishnaabe, and Metis peoples.

In my childhood, my mother and I were reunited through a sequence of what I can only describe as blessings with my mothers maternal family of origin. And later in my early 20s, with mothers paternal family of origin.

There has never been a moment of my life, in alienation from culture or in close connection to it, that I didn't know I was Cree. It wasn't a discovery. Reconnecting to our culture and community was a journey, but not a discovery.

I know this is not everyones experience, but I do wonder about the veracity of people "discovering" they are Indigenous... and what that actually means. Also DNA testing is a fucking farce. Nope. That does not make you Indigenous.

As an Indigenous academic, I often feel asked to perform a version of Indigeneity that is a fundamentally racist because of it's refusal to acknowledge pluralism in Indigenous lived experience. I refuse.

I know I have said things to Deans and Provosts and colleagues that Black and Brown coded Indigenous women have said and been denied tenure for... if I equate my experience of the academy to theirs, that's a fucking problem. It is the violence of whiteness.

I've struggled with how to make sense of all this in a time of supposed hiring and advancement of Indigenous academics in Canadian institutions, while continuously encountering verifiable frauds. It is upsetting and I feel sick about it. Tricksters in our midst.

And what a shame... just think of what more could be possible if we were all just a little more honest about where we start in the world and how we move through it?

1: Indigenous faculty working in Canadian higher education need to ask each other how they have come to understand themselves as Indigenous people. How do you know who you are?

These conversations can be rich and beautiful. And for Indigenous people, it will weave you closer together as colleauges, and to your communities.

2: Verify.

3: If you can't verify your own history, and others struggle to understand your claims, maybe re-evaluate why your claim seems necessary in the first place. You can do meaningful work that advances justice for Indigenous peoples from a position of under-identification.

4: Unapologetically, carefully, and care-fully, address fraud and race shifting when it emerges. I have cared deeply for people who did wrong things. We can care for frauds. And renounce their falsehood at the same time.