I think the entire situation is indicative of what happens when you have absolutely no deterrence to claiming indigenous identity falsely. When you have absolutely no mechanisms in place to affirm these, you have exploitations. I find this to be an exploitation.
It is very common of the cases we research in our volunteer work, and we do this work with no resources. When you have high-placed people making false claims of first nations, Métis or Inuit identity, and they hold significant political power, it makes that exploitation exponentially harmful. It is a trauma for us to uncover these things, to see these things exposed in the media and to go back over that grift. What has this person been involved in? Where did they divert resources that should have gone to our people? Why is this allowed to happen? We need deterrents. We need frameworks too. We need dispute mechanisms in place for when we challenge a business.
We tried to research indigenous procurement. There is very little information, even when researching government databases, that can authenticate these businesses. There are walls everywhere for—