So much for white privilege. Or maybe the privilege is being able to make up a fantastic story about your life that gets you university professorships because you claim to be from a native tribe.

If you thought Elizabeth Warren was bad, then meet Carrie Bourassa, who apparently took the “I’m indigenous” claims to a whole new level in Canada.

This story apparently broke in Canada about a month ago, but has just now filtered down past the border into the United States. At least Elizabeth Warren, as bad as her claims of native ancestry were (and she obviously used them to gain an advantage), never went out dressed in full native regalia. (Though could you imagine the campaign ads from 2020 if she had???) Carrie Bourassa, though, got tripped up the more she embellished her native cred – which led to her colleagues becoming suspicious.

With a feather in her hand and a bright blue shawl and Métis sash draped over her shoulders, Carrie Bourassa made her entrance to deliver a TEDx Talk at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon in September 2019, where she detailed her personal rags-to-riches story.”

“My name is Morning Star Bear,” she said, choking up. “I’m just going to say it — I’m emotional.”

The crowd applauded and cheered.”

“I’m Bear Clan. I’m Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty Four Territory,” Bourassa said, explaining that she grew up in Regina’s inner city in a dysfunctional family surrounded by addiction, violence and racism.”

In addition to claiming Metis and Anishinaabe heritage, Bourassa has also asserted that she’s a descendant of the Tlingit, a small group of Indigenous people from the Yukon and British Columbia.”

But some of her colleagues, like Winona Wheeler, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan, say Bourassa’s story is built on a fundamental falsehood.”

Wheeler, a member of Manitoba’s Fisher River Cree Nation, says genealogical records show Bourassa is not Indigenous at all, but rather of entirely European descent.”

“When I saw that TEDx, to be quite honest, I was repulsed by how hard she was working to pass herself off as Indigenous,” Wheeler told CBC. “You’ve got no right to tell people that’s who you are in order to gain legitimacy, to get positions and to get funding. That’s abuse.”

But when pushed, Bourassa’s defense sounds more like Rachel Dolezal than Elizabeth Warren.

Bourassa didn’t offer any genealogical evidence that she is Métis, Anishnaabe or Tlingit. Instead, she said she became Métis in her 20s, when she was adopted into the community by a Métis friend of her grandfather, Clifford Laroque, who has since died.”

“Even though Clifford passed, those bonds are even deeper than death because the family has taken me as if I was their blood family. In turn, I serve the Métis community to the best of my ability,” she wrote.”

She says she has been adopted into five other communities as well. She didn’t offer any explanation as to why she claimed to have been born into a family with Métis, Anishnaabe and Tlingit roots.”

You have to admire the committment to the story, even if it is completely made up. The honest truth is that Bourassa made her lie too big. If she had simply stuck with claiming Métis heritage without going full native dress and calling herself “Morning Star Bear” (I’m cringing as I type that), Bourassa could have gotten away with the grift. She had cushy jobs at the University of Saskatchewan and as the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health. Both her jobs were connected with serving the native populations of Canada, and of course, being of native heritage likely helped secure her those positions. At the time of the CBC’s report on her background, she indignantly rejected the whole story as a “smear campaign,” while at the same time admitting that her claim to Métis heritage was via adoption, but she was getting a genealogist and says the CBC’s tracing of her genealogy is “inaccurate” – though she doesn’t detail how. Convenient, right? Well, now she no longer has those jobs.

A Canadian medical researcher who rose to become the nation’s top voice on indigenous health has been ousted from her government job and her university professorship — after suspicious colleagues investigated her increasingly fanciful claims of Native American heritage and learned she was a fraud.

Carrie Bourassa, a public health expert who served as scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, was suspended on Nov. 1, five days after the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a lengthy expose on her background.

While the temptation to shake your head, roll your eyes, or point and laugh are all honest reactions, let’s take a second to really consider the implications at play. WHY is it seen as desirable to pass yourself off as someone of a different race? Until just recently, until the backlash against CRT began in earnest, all white people were supposed to be sitting in struggle sessions and examining their “systemic white privilege” that supposedly allowed them to succeed where minority groups failed. Then why would a person like Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, or Carrie Bourassa exist? Surely their white, European background gave them more “privilege” than they knew what to do with, right?

The dirty secret is that this is not about “white privilege.” This is about being “special” in a system that rewards people who are different, special, or are able to collectively represent other groups, and wanting that so badly for yourself that you are willing to lie for it. Liars are the same in both Canada and the United States. They lie to feel important. And if they get caught, maybe – like Elizabeth Warren – they’re able to deflect and dodge and spin their way out of it. How did Carrie Bourassa get this far? Likely because white people didn’t dare ask questions because that would have been RACIST. Political correctness kept the grift going.
Remember, it was other native colleagues who caught the lie and started investigating.

So, congratulations, Canada. You’ve been had by a liar. It wasn’t the first time. But perhaps we should think about why it won’t be the last, too – and it has nothing to do with “white privilege.”

Featured image via toptop54 on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license