Fake Indigenous woman resigns from Montreal city reconciliation job after family history revealed
A Montreal city councilor has just stepped down as the city's reconciliation advisor. The problem? She could be Canada’s Elizabeth Warren.
Marie-Josee Parent was elected to Montreal City Council in 2017 as the first indigenous woman elected to hold such a position. She has said publicly that she is Mi'kmaq on her father's side and Acadian on her mom's.
Except, as it turns out, at least according to genealogical research conducted by Eric Pouliot Thisdale, she may not be not indigenous at all. Pouliot-Thisdale used church records to trace Parents genealogy and found that she had no indigenous ancestors on her father's side.
A separate genealogical examination done by Dominique Ritchot came to the same conclusion, however, he did find an indigenous ancestor on Parent's mother's side.
But before Parent puts her moccasins back on, this potential maternal Mi’kmac relative is some 12 generations back in the family tree, which makes any DNA contribution less than negligible. And this person is someone that Parent didn't even know existed when she was first staking her false claim to Indigenous ancestry.
For context, Fauxahontas Democratic presidential wannabe Elizabeth Warren may (or may not) have an Indigenous ancestor 6 to 10 generations back - making her maybe 1/1024 Indigenous. Parent is even less than that, with a potential Indigenous ancestor 12 generations ago.
Parent, and other ethnicity pretenders like her, from Elizabeth Warren to Rachel Dolezal to Maryam Monsef, are the end product of left-wing identity politics; the opposite of meritocracy. Parent's scandal is borne of an ideology that says who and what you are matters, rather than what you’ve done and what you're doing.
Parent, it seems, may just a regular ol’ white lady, just like me. But she has accomplished a lot. She had a lot to be proud of. She has done a lot for Indigenous culture. And that should have been good enough for her without a fabulous backstory.
When society makes being oppressed a form of virtue that garners special treatment and accolades, more people are going to take short cuts and claim it as theirs.
And the people that get hurt when this happens are the ones who have actually overcome real oppression, poverty, discrimination, and bigotry.
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