Mtis leadership says rise in 'race-shifting' threatens future of the Mtis Nation

Mtis Nation leadership says the rise in people falsely claiming a Mtis identity is dangerous because it threatens the future of the entire Nation.

David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Mtis Federation and vice-president and spokesperson for the Mtis National Council, said his temperature started to rise reading aboutBreanne Lavallee-Heckert's experience at the Senate.

Lavallee-Heckert, a citizen of the Manitoba Mtis Federation (MMF), told CBCNewsshe felt she had no choice but to resign from her job in the office of Sen. Marilou McPhedran over the handling of a complaint she raised alleging a coworker was falsely claiming to be Mtis in the workplace.

"What if somebody came and said they're Canadian and they're not?" said Chartrand.

"How would you act, senator? That's how we feel. You cannot just come in here from anywhere in the world and say you're Canadian unless you go through a process;the same thing with us."

Chartrand said the MMF will be asking Lavallee-Heckert if she wants to take further action with respect to what happened and that he'll also be personally following up with the Senate.

"We have a lot to lose here," he said.

His argument is that if hundreds of thousands or millions of people start self-identifying as Mtis without repercussions they will outnumber the Nation's citizens, start re-writing the Nation's history and could eventually "assimilate our very existence as a people."

"In our process of our constitution, self-identifying is only one segment of it. You've got to prove your historical connection to the Mtis Nation and its homeland," he said.

'We're struggling to make sense of what to do'

There's a lot to lose, saidChartrand, because of the scope of how many people have started to self-identify as Indigenous. It's atrendthat academics have described as 'race-shifting' or 'self-Indigenization.'

Darryl Leroux, an associate professor ofsocial justice and communitystudiesat Saint Mary's University in Halifax and author ofDistorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity,said the situation that unfolded at the Senate is common.

He said 'race-shifting' has become "quite widespread" in the public service, in academia and elsewhere.

"As a society generally we're struggling to make sense of what to do when white people are claiming to be Indigenous because that's not what we have come to think of as a possibility over time," he said.

Leroux said that historically it hasn't been beneficial to people to identify as Indigenous but he said this started to change with the legal recognition of Aboriginal rights. He said most often the 'race-shifting' groups claim a Mtis identity, but some claim to be First Nations.

Leroux said the phenomenon is problematic at a systemic level,in terms of eroding Indigenous sovereignty. He said institutions need to be equipped to respond if they're serious about supporting Indigenous people.

"If you work at an institution and you are bringing in initiatives related to Indigenous people, you are inevitably going to have to tackle this," he said.

"We're literally talking about hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are taking up Indigenous space."

Grassroots movement of verifying claims

Where institutions haven't been tackling this question, it's left a gap where grassroots people have organized around investigating people's claims.

Robyn Lawson, a Nehiyaw-Mtis activist in B.C., said she got involved in the movement a few years ago in response to the "enormous issue of thousands of false claims of Indigeneity across Canada" and how that translates to lost opportunities for Indigenous people.

Over the years she she's been involved in looking into hundreds of people claiming an Indigenous identity. She said formost of them research revealsno legitimate claim to being Indigenous.

"I don't know how we're going to get past all of this," she said.

In the recent situation at the Senate, Lawson said she too had looked into the Senate stafferLavallee-Heckertraised concerns about. Like Lavallee-Heckert, she too determined the person's claims to Indigeneity were problematic based on the Eastern organization of which they were a member and she wrote to Sen.McPhedranwith the information she'd come across.

In her email correspondence with the senator, shared with CBC, Lawson said it seemed the senator was missing her point. Insteadof directly addressing the issues, she asked Lawson if she were insinuating that only Indigenous people should work on certain issues in the Senate.

"I thought her response was steeped in an arrogance that was infuriating," said Lawson.

Lawson said the situation at the Senate emphasizes, to her, the importance of Indigenous Nations being respected in defining who is and isn't part of their Nation.