It wasn't that long ago that top-tier university staffers had it way better. Why, it's not many years past that an extremely white woman could claim to be a Native American, throw some faux-Indian crabcake recipes in an ad-hoc cookbook, and support an entire family on that income alone.
Alas, the tide has turned, and now any caucasian lady who claims to be a Sioux or a Choctaw just doesn't have it as good:
Memorial University President Vianne Timmons decided to go on voluntary paid leave after she became engulfed in a scandal surrounding her claimed Indigenous heritage. ...
The controversy stems from Timmons claiming she has never benefited from her Indigenous ancestry, which she maintains is different from Indigenous identity.
"Indigenous ancestry ... is different from Indigenous identity"? Is that right? Am I reading that right?
Well, we'll take her word for it! And all these words, too:
"While I have shared that I am not Mi'kmaw and I do not claim an Indigenous identity, questions about my intentions in identifying my Indigenous ancestry and whether I have benefited from sharing my understanding of my family's history have sparked important conversations on and beyond our campus," Timmons conceded.
Truly stirring language here, right up there with some of the greatest oral traditions of the Indigenous communities.
To be fair, Ms. Timmons has apparently not been 100% honest with how she's gone about this whole thing. She claims that she only claimed her identity "for a brief time around 2009," according to the Post, yet that was evidently not true:
However, public documents, including a CV as recent as 2016, show she claimed membership in the tribe over a longer period of time and CBC News found references as late as 2018.
But of course she's making the necessary groveling apologies:
"I have been reflecting on this feedback from the Indigenous community, and I sincerely regret any hurt or confusion sharing my story may have caused. That was never my intention and I deeply apologize to those I have impacted," Timmons said.
