Jen Gerson: The problem of white people
Here's a sort-of defence of Canada's latest Pretendian, Randy Boissonnault
In light of recent events, I was inspired to dig through Hansard for the musings of now-former Liberal cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault in regards to claims, implicit or otherwise, about his Indigenous heritage.
I found this:
"Mr. Speaker, miyotôtâkewin tatawaw. That is Cree for ‘Guests, you're welcome, there's room here.’ If my great-grandmother Lucy Brown Eyes, a full-blooded Cree woman, had been able to be elected to this place, she may well have extended the same greeting in the House from the peoples of Treaty 6.”
And this:
"I'm non-status adopted Cree from Alberta, my great-grandmother Lucy Brown Eyes, was a full-blooded Cree woman. Everybody thinks my mum is Mexican because she goes out and tans for a half hour to two hours and it's like she's been outside all summer. She's one-quarter Cree."
Oh, and this:
"I can see her at 85, with gnarled hands, making an apple pie because she married a Dutchman. She never lived on reserve. She once said to me: ‘Randy, we come from the land. We will someday go back to the land, and one day we will all be one people again.’"
As has recently been discovered — all of this is bunk. Boissonnault’s adopted great grandmother was not, in fact, a full-blooded Cree woman. However, no malice was intended on Boissonnault’s part, we’re told. This was a simple case of mistaken self-identity: a terrible error that Mr. Boissonnault innocently believed thanks to his own misapprehension of his family heritage. The now-demoted former cabinet minister was forced to confront the truth in "real time" when the National Post found the records not of "Lucy Brown Eyes," but rather a "Lucy Brenneis" who was listed, along with her husband, as German in census documents from 1931. Boissonnault now claims that Brenneis was not Cree, but, rather, Metis.
Okay.