The problem is Russia is run by former KGB operatives that seized power when the USSR fell. They want to return their country to the “good, old days”. We can engage in diplomacy with them, but we should not forget what their end goal really is: moar power.

I didn’t realize snow tires help you see through a cloud of snow and debris. Learn something new everyday I suppose.

You’re probably a giant asshole too.

This needs more Tsars.

I mean, I learned about the Métis in high school so you definitely don’t need to write/research a book to know who they are.

Absolutely! Injun Joe was not a dude hiding his ancestry to pass for white in a time when it would have been easier. Dude was full-out repping the Native stereotypes hard, all the while admitting publicly to not being Native.

It’s because he’s lying. APTN did a thorough investigation into his genealogy and found no Native ancestors.

The problem is not the lack of papers on his part, but that he changed his story several times, claiming to be from several different TriBeCa’s different times.

Well, for years and years people just accepted his claims without asking for any proof. The only reason they do now question him is because his story changed so much over time. people whomclsim to be holocaust survivors have also been investigated after something seemed off and several have been proven to be frauds,…

Cause he doesn’t have it. Like you, I have my treaty ID and my Métis association membership in my wallet- hell, I sit on a tribal committee and I’ve served as an elected official. Have had it since I was born. It’s been whispered for a while that he’s a Grey Owl but no one had come out and said it previously.

He doesn’t have those things. He claimed that an uncle was indigenous (and linked him to one or two nations) but that specific uncle was shown to have lied about his heritage for business purposes. Boyden has claimed a familial link to several different nations on both his paternal and maternal sides, but no…

Suddenly it all seems to be coming together...he has no regard for the actual meaning of the word “two-spirit” and also totally dismissed them in their criticisms of his participation in the Galloway letter because of how it threw accusers and victims of sexual assault/harassment “under the bus.”

I read that he had referred to himself as two-spirited, but I didn’t know that he’d used the term completely incorrectly. That is just... mind-boggling. Did he genuinely not know what that term means (which seems hard to believe)? Or did he feel like it was okay to just make up a new meaning for the word?

Yeah, you can’t write a book on a topic and then claim ignorance of it later. He also called himself “two-spirited” in an interview because he has homes in both Canada and the US. Um...Joseph Boyden...this is for you:

Warren didn’t make millions of dollars or center her career on that false identity, and when called out on it, she said she was wrong. Do you really not see the difference?

I think this raises two very real issues.

Boyden admits that he wrongly identified himself as Métis in the past because he thought it was a general term for someone of mixed European and Indigenous heritage, he didn’t realize it is a distinct identity. The fact that he described himself as Métis for years without bothering to educate himself about what that…

Yes, yes, and yes. I am stunned at the fact that nobody seems to mind that he’s outright lied and made a nice living off an invented personal history. He seems to be getting a pass and winning awards by claiming personal connection to the material, and nobody seems to care. I do not get it.

I love Louise Erdrich’s novels, which deal with Native American and German American characters, in part because she is actually Native American and German.

If anything, the Boyden debate is a reminder of how quickly questions, particularly when posed by marginalized groups, can be perceived by the powerful as persecution.