Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / Author Thomas King reveals he's not Indigenous, despite believing so

Transcript

Author Thomas King reveals he's not Indigenous, despite believing so · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thomas King has long been celebrated for his work as
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: an Indigenous author in Canada, including for his best known book,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: The Inconvenient Indian. But King says he's now learned a
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: shocking truth about his heritage. He's not Indigenous at all.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: CBC's Griffin Jaeger reports he.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Built his career telling Indigenous stories and now Thomas King,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: in an op ed published by the Global Males, says
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: he is not indigenous and has no Cherokee ancestry, despite
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: believing he did all his life. The American Canadian received
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: numerous awards in this country for writing about indigenous life.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Here he is in nineteen ninety three talking about his
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: book Green Grass Running Water.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: In Green Grass Running Water, I'm looking at forming my world,
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: that world that I see around more Native models.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: King maintains that he did not pretend to have Indigenous
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: roots and thought it was true. He says he was
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: three when his father left, and though his mother rarely
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: spoke of him, she said he was part Cherokee. King
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: says he'd heard rumors questioning his indigenity and this year
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: made an effort to check This brought him to the
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Tribal Alliance against frauds. That's an organization that investigates claims
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: of Indigenous ancestry, which looked into his past and found
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: no Cherokee heritage. In his Globe and Mail article, King
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: writes at eighty two, I feel as though I've been
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: ripped in half, a one legged man in a two
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: legged story. Indigenous writer Jesse went He took to his
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: social media to share that this is a familiar hurt.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: This should have been taken care of long ago.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And I don't know.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I can't speak to why people don't resolve these own issues.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: If they're going to represent themselves in ways publicly.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: Look out, Bob shouts, they're Indians flying into the skyscrapers
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: and falling on the sidewalk.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Ah got a mohawk over here.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Others are saying people should take greater care in checking
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: their roots before claiming indigenous heritage.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: It's easy to verify too, so, you know, looking back
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: on Thomas King's claims, perhaps he let it slide for
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: too long and it had hired a.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: King says that he hopes to keep supporting Indigenous causes,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: but he's not sure they'll want to stand beside him now.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Griffin Yeger CBC News Toronto.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Let's discuss this further with Tanya Talaga. She is Anishnabe,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: an author and columnist for The Globe and Mail. She's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: also a member of the Fort William First Nation and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the founder of Makuah Creative, a production company focused on
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: sharing Indigenous stories, and she joins us today from Kitchener, Ontario. So,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: first of all, your reaction to this story, Tanya, Well.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: You know, like many people, I was absolutely devastated to
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: hear that the rumors that we had heard for the
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: last several years were actually true and that Thomas King
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: is in fact not Cherokee at all.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So he says that he did not purposefully pretend to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: have Indigenous roots. Do you believe him?
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: You know, it's really awful. I don't understand how you
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: can live your whole life and just not really.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Know the truth.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is not seek it
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: out in a more folesome way. I can't understand that
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: he believed for a long time that his father, his
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: true father, was Cherokee. But what makes me sad is
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: that there was a lack of extreme curiosity to get
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: to the bottom of the story. Tom King is a
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: historian and so he wrote the history of Indigenous North
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: America since contact in the inconvenient Indian. I would hope
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: that you would if you were a historian, you would
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: also look at your own history and the same thing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: So it's disappointing to see that after all this time,
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: that history was not truly sought after.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a serious topic. I do want to point out,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: as you pointed out to me, you're at the library
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and kitchener next to a coffee machine. So if people
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: hear some sound, that's what's going on close to you.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Back to our topic. King wrote an essay in the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Global Mail and he started it by posing a question,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: when is an Indian not an Indian? How would you
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: answer that?
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: You know, when is an Indian not an Indian? I
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: don't think you're an Indian if you don't have any
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: ties to community, if there is no one that knows you,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: knows of you can claim you. Many of us have
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: auntie's and uncles, grandparents and great parents that live in
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: First Nations communities or adjacent to First Nation communities, or
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: you know, on the side of the road near a
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: First Nation community. This is something that we have. We
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: have these kinship ties and if we don't know who
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: our families are because of displacement, because of colonization, and
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: because of things like the child welfare system, so many
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: of us try and find our belonging, try and find
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: our kinship, and try and find our relations. And Asie
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: is not an Indian, if that doesn't happen, right, if
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: there isn't that tie. And the horrible thing about these
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: stories is essentially that every time these happen, people that
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: are out there are brothers and our sisters, our cousins,
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: our aunties, our uncles that are trying to come home
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: and haven't been able to. They see these stories and
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: then they feel themselves that whole again, and maybe I'm
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: not who I think I am, And that's why stories
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: like this are just so devastating.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: One last question. He has a body of work of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: books so that have been so well respected, and I've
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: heard Indigenous people talk about how insightful those books are
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and in some cases how proud they've made other Indigenous people.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: How should we see those books now?
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: Well, we need to see those books for the truth
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: that they are. They've been written by an ally, but
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: they've been not written by somebody who is first nations
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: and so all of the material that he has written
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: underneath that identity needs to be questioned as to how
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: are you reading those textbooks? They are not from an
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: Indigenous person, they are from someone who is an ally instead.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Tanya Talaga, I know this isn't easy to talk about
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: or to reflect on, and I appreciate you speaking about
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: it with us this evening.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Thank you, MIGRTS, Thank you for having me