City hires new indigenous commissioner
The city has hired a new commissioner for relations with indigenous communities. Lauréanne Fontaine replaces Marie-Ève Bordeleau, who had held the role since 2019. Previous to Bordeleau, the city had an advisor whose claim to be Mi’kmaq was not well supported.
Interestingly, it seems the new commissioner, Lauréanne Fontaine, described as Innu, is a redhead.
Blork 13:35 on 2023-03-23 Permalink
I suppose the never-to-be-asked question is “how Innu do you need to be?” If one of your grandparents is Innu, is that Innu enough to call yourself Innu?
EmilyG 14:28 on 2023-03-23 Permalink
It says she’s from an Innu community, and I’ve heard that a lot of Indigenous people don’t impose blood-quantum rules on everyone, so for now I don’t have a reason to doubt her indigeneity.
Kate 16:56 on 2023-03-23 Permalink
I’m not sure what to think. A lot of North Americans hold onto a vague family tradition of having Indigenous ancestry which can’t be tested by genealogical methods. We’ve seen numerous cases of people occupying positions that implicitly or even explicitly required a person of Indigenous background, then being dismissed once the claim is shown to be unsubstantiated.
I’m not convinced all these people were consciously lying. Some may have been carrying forward a family myth they had no reason to doubt – but how do you tell? DNA testing seems crass, but it comes closer to establishing the facts than a vaguely remembered famiiy tree does. The problem is that nobody wants to say “Only those with minimum 50% Indigenous ancestry need apply.”
jeather 17:06 on 2023-03-23 Permalink
It’s surely up to the community itself to decide who they claim and who they don’t. Especially with residential schools, which broke a lot of “brought up as part of the community” chains.
This article, about Indigenous vs Pretendian professors at universities, also includes some suggestions.
EmilyG 19:49 on 2023-03-23 Permalink
Yes, a community claiming someone is important.
Yes, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of “pretendians.” I don’t know if this is the case here or not. It does say she’s from an Innu community.
I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’ve learned a bit about Indigenous history. I think that some of the confusion over who is Indigenous might stem from the way the Indian Act and Indian status used to be. Like how non-Indigenous people could sometimes gain status, or Indigenous people could lose status, based on who they married. And I think at one point the Indian Act called anyone of mixed Native and non-Native parents “Metis” (even though this is actually the name of a specific Indigenous group.)
So these things might lead to someone thinking they’re considered Indigenous, when it’ s not the case.
Also, DNA tests, when used to try to to tell what ethnicity someone is, are notoriously unreliable. I’ve heard of the same person getting different results at different times, identical twins getting really different results from each other, and someone sending in a sample from their dog where the testers didn’t realize it wasn’t a human.
Chris 09:14 on 2023-03-24 Permalink
>It’s surely up to the community itself
That’s circular. Who’s a member of the community? Who decides who’s a member of the community?
>Yes, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of “pretendians.”
I can’t help but think a Martian observer would find it odd that we heap scorn on transracialism but heap praise on transgenerism.
EmilyG 10:29 on 2023-03-24 Permalink
Chris, your snark and bigoted sarcasm adds nothing to the discussion.
Kate 10:44 on 2023-03-24 Permalink
Emily, I don’t think Chris is actually out of bounds here, but he should know that the second question has been declared an untenable one in current civilized discourse.
qatzelok 10:50 on 2023-03-24 Permalink
Chris has added another angle to the discussion and a new perspective.
If that “adds nothing” to a discussion, what is everyone supposed to do, agree all the time on everything? Is that what ‘discussing’ means? Read and regurgitate?
jeather 11:27 on 2023-03-24 Permalink
I have no idea what Fontaine’s background is and did not mean to suggest anything about her, I was responding to “how do you know”.
The community decides who is a member. Yes, it’s circular. How do friend groups decide who are friends, how do families define families, etc. Not all groups are defined this way, there are multiple ways to define a group. But this is not inherently worse (or better) than the other ways.
I’m sure you’re capable of googling the differences between being transgender and transracialism.