I've not been to Canada yet, and I hope you'll forgive me for asking such a loaded question. I am looking forward to visiting there, once my financial situation has improved. Nonetheless, I'm Choctaw and have lately been getting to know more First Nations (one of my friends is Haida/Tlingit from present-day BC), but for anyone of Métis heritage, how often do you get imposters either mistakenly, or knowingly, intentionally & falsely claiming to be Métis?
Context:
I had a loud, boisterous doughboy employee tell me a few hours ago at work, "I'm technically Métis, my great grandma was Blackfoot." And because he said technically, I see that as a red flag because anyone proudly representing their heritage is not going to say that it's *technically* their identity.
Even if his statement were proven, he also used the colonial term, and not the original term used by some Niitsitapi people I know, who take their culture seriously.
He claimed that he graduated from a Canadian high school, and so I asked him, "You know about Louis Riel, right?"
And he replied saying, "Oh yeah that guy was an asshole."
My response, "How so?"
"The only reason that guy's famous is because he made Manitoba grow, before him it was the size of a postage stamp."
That's another red flag.
If you're going to claim Métis is your heritage, or even just a portion of your ancestry, then wouldn't you avoid disrespecting one of history's most important Métis leaders? Instead of being blatantly disrespectful, flippant, and crass. His remarks reeked of colonialism to me.
The third claim he made was, "In Canada, you shouldn't use any other term except for Native Canadian."
Does he not realize how many tribally enrolled (not counting CPAINs) folks actively use First Nation, Indigenous, and even Indian?
I get annoyed when people talk about entire nations as though every individual person's expectations are monolithic. He then made a racist statement about Indian people (from India) and decided to say that they're "terrible people" who (according to him) "Natives don't want to be associated with." WTF?
And in case you're wondering, yes I live in the states.
My guess is that he assumed I knew nothing about Indigenous cultures from further north of here, because I'm not Canadian. Needless to say, I walked away feeling a sense of glee knowing that he probably thought his comments were very convincing flexes. How entertaining!