Nothing is more entertaining than watching well-to-do white liberals being exposed for perpetuating a racial hoax. If there is a level of outrage that goes beyond simple blackface, this would be it. How many white folks have there been who have claimed to be indigenous or black and have been exposed as frauds? The list is quite extensive—and some are sitting members of the US Senate. Sen. Liz Warren (D-MA) claimed she was Native American. She’s not. As Trump said, I have as much Native American blood as Liz Warren, and I have none. This story comes from Canada, where Carrie Bourassa has been revealed to be the latest race hoaxer.
She has a Ph.D. She’s well-educated, and a noted scholar regarding indigenous peoples’ health. She’s one of the nation’s leading experts. It’s a national scandal. She’s been suspended from her government advisory role and has been placed on paid leave from her teaching position at the University of Saskatchewan. Apparently, in Canada, claiming to be indigenous is mostly centered on self-identification. It’s an honor system—and it’s obviously failed. Bourassa sure put the extra education funds you get from identifying as indigenous to good use, and it could have gone to someone who was actually indigenous.
Yes, she’s whiter than rice. Yes, her parents were white and middle-class. And this whole fraud could have broken wide open if people just asked her sister, who stopped identifying as indigenous after doing her own investigation into her family tree. People didn’t stop to think how this could be…one sister being white and the other indigenous (via NY Post):
Carrie Bourassa’s Instagram page describes her as an “Indigenous feminist” and “proud Metis” with an addiction to lattes.
Only her penchant for caffeine was true.
[…]
“It’s a crazy story,” said Caroline Tait, a Métis professor of medical anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan who has worked with Bourassa for more than 10 years and recently helped expose Bourassa’s origins. “It’s crazy that she got away with it for so long. The whole country is horrified.”
Carrie Bourassa, 48, grew up in a white middle class family in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan with a population of just under 240,000 residents. Her father Ron Weibel was a small businessman who owned car cleaning companies in the city.
“We lived in Regina most of our lives, married young, had two children, started businesses of our own, one of which we ran for over 30 years,” said Weibel on his web site, Berry Hills Estates, which sells custom homes near Katepwa Lake resort, an hour outside Regina.
[…]
Bourassa went on to become one of the most important indigenous health experts in Canada. In addition to her teaching position at the University of Saskatchewan, she was scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, a federal agency that helps distribute millions of dollars in grants for indigenous health research in Canada. Bourassa once bragged that she made nearly $400,000 as an academic, a source told The Post.
[…]
Both Bourassa and her younger sister Jody Burnett began to identify as Métis as young women. The designation came with a few perks, namely thousands of dollars in educational grants that the federal government typically hands out to indigenous Canadians. Both Bourassa and her sister would go on to earn PhDs in their respective fields. Burnett has a PhD in educational psychology, and Bourassa earned her PhD in 2008 in indigenous health.
[…]
Bourassa continued to identify as Métis as she rose in academe. But her sister renounced her own identification. Burnett hasn’t claimed to be Métis since 2014, she told the CBC when her “husband completed a family tree through a genealogical software program. From that point on, I did not feel certain of my heritage and as such, have stopped identifying as Métis.”
Burnett’s decision to stop identifying as Métis angered Bourassa. In a 2018 email to Tait viewed by The Post, Bourassa wrote, “My sister got thousands of dollars in Métis scholarships that put her through her Masters and PhD and I was so proud at first — until she was done and then would have nothing to do with the Métis people who supported her.”
Tait and other academics began to have doubts about Bourassa after a student questioned her background a few years ago, Tait told The Post.
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So, this whole act was exposed nearly a decade ago, but no one seemed to notice or care. I’m glad this fraud is being held accountable, but it was an open secret. Oftentimes, that’s the case for white progressives who are engaging in 'woke' theater.
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