Mixed Race Studies

75 years after Viola Desmond’s arrest, a north-end Halifax group seeks to honour her

CBC News
2021-11-08

Feleshia Chandler, Reporter

North End Business Association announces it will commission a commemorative art piece

It’s been 75 years since businesswoman-turned social justice activist Viola Desmond was arrested at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, N.S., for challenging racial segregation by daring to sit in a “whites only” section.

To mark that anniversary, the North End Business Association in Halifax has announced a new commemorative art piece collaboration set to be completed in 2022.

“We’ve been working on it for the last year,” said Bernadette Hamilton-Reid with the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition (ANSDPAD).

“It’s very exciting to see this come to fruition as to how we can best commemorate Viola for her strong resiliency as a Black woman entrepreneur and setting the stage for many other generations to come after her.”

ANSDPAD is part of the Viola Desmond Legacy Committee, which was established in 2018 in order to see Desmond, who died in 1965, recognized in Halifax, the city where she lived and where her actions in business and civil rights have a lasting impact.

The North End Business Association is collaborating with the committee to have an art piece built on Gottingen Street, near where Desmond’s old hairdressing shop used to be…

Read the entire article here.

How disgraced health expert Carrie Bourassa passed as indigenous for years

The New York Post
2021-12-01

Isabel Vincent, Investigative reporter

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.

A statement from Carrie Bourassa’s team said “she has not falsely identified as Indigenous nor taken space away from Indigenous peoples.”

Bourassa, a professor in the department of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan and a leading expert on indigenous issues, has been exposed as a fraud. A family tree prepared by a group of academics who were suspicious of her ancestral claims shows that Bourassa is of Swiss, Hungarian, Polish and Czechoslovakian origins and has not one ounce of indigenous blood…

Read the entire article here.

[Caroline] Tait said genealogical records show that [Carrie] Bourassa’s supposed Indigenous ancestors were of Russian, Polish and Czechoslovakian descent.

“There was nowhere in that family tree where there was any Indigenous person,” said [Winona] Wheeler.

Tait was so troubled by what she found that, with the support of Wheeler and others, she compiled the information in a document and submitted formal academic misconduct complaints against Bourassa with the U of S [(University of Saskatchewan)] and the CIHR. In her email to CBC, Bourassa said the U of S complaint was dismissed.

“She is not Métis. She is the modern-day Grey Owl,” Tait said, referring to the famous British-born conservationist from the early 1900s who fooled the world into believing he was a Native American man.

Geoff Leo, “Indigenous or pretender?” CBC News, October 27, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/carrie-bourassa-indigenous.

Health scientist Carrie Bourassa on immediate leave after scrutiny of her claim she’s Indigenous

CBC News
2021-11-02

Geoff Leo, Senior Investigative Journalist

University of Saskatchewan, CIHR place Bourassa on leave over lack of evidence

Carrie Bourassa, a University of Saskatchewan professor and the scientific director of the Indigenous health arm of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), is on leave from both institutions following a weekend of online outrage stemming from CBC’s investigation into her claims to Indigeneity.

Bourassa, who has headed up an Indigenous research lab at the U of S and the CIHR’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, has publicly claimed to be Métis, Anishnaabe and Tlingit.

CBC found there was no evidence she was Indigenous, despite her claims many times over the past 20 years. When asked, Bourassa hasn’t offered any genealogical evidence to back up her claims, but in a statement she said two years ago she hired a genealogist to help her investigate her ancestry, and that work continues.

Just last week, after publication of the CBC story, the CIHR issued a statement supporting Bourassa, saying it “values the work of the Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health under Dr. Carrie Bourassa’s leadership.” And the U of S also backed her, stating, “The quality of Professor Bourassa’s scholarly work speaks for itself and has greatly benefited the health of communities across Canada.”

However, on Monday, both institutions announced Bourassa was on immediate leave…

Read the entire article here.

Indigenous or pretender?

CBC News
2021-10-27

Geoff Leo, Senior Investigative Journalist

Carrie Bourassa, one of the country’s most-esteemed Indigenous health experts, claims to be Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit. Some of her colleagues say there’s no evidence of that.

With a feather in her hand and a bright blue shawl and Métis sash draped over her shoulders, Carrie Bourassa made her entrance to deliver a TEDx Talk at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon in September 2019, where she detailed her personal rags-to-riches story.

“My name is Morning Star Bear,” she said, choking up. “I’m just going to say it — I’m emotional.”

The crowd applauded and cheered.

“I’m Bear Clan. I’m Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty Four Territory,” Bourassa said, explaining that she grew up in Regina’s inner city in a dysfunctional family surrounded by addiction, violence and racism…

Read the entire article here.

I’m mixed race, and sometimes I feel like I don’t belong anywhere

CBC News
British Columbia
2021-03-07

Jeremy Ratt, Associate Producer
CBC Vancouver

My mother is Indigenous, and my dad is white. That makes me mixed — two pieces of me, split right down the middle, writes Jeremy Ratt. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

Indigenous people say I don’t look Indigenous, white people say I’m not white. So who am I, really?

It’s hard to be me.

I’m not fishing for sympathy or downplaying the struggles of other people who I recognize have it much worse. I feel safe and loved.

But I have trouble being me, because I really don’t know who “me” is at this moment.

I was born 19 years ago on a cold day at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon. My mother is fully Indigenous, from the Woodland Cree First Nation in northern Saskatchewan, while my father is Caucasian with various ties to European ancestry. This makes me a person of mixed race. Two pieces of me, split right down the middle.

Ever since I could walk and talk, it became apparent that this background was going to be a major part of me. It was clear that I was different and there was no hiding that. “Apitoscan” was a word I’d always heard when it came to the definition of Métis people. In Woods Cree, it means “half-breed” as well as “Métis.”…

Read the entire article here.

Viola Desmond $10 bill wins international banknote of the year design award

CBC News
2019-04-30

Cassie Williams, Reporter/Editor

In March 2018, the federal government unveiled the vertical banknote design featuring Desmond’s portrait and a map of her north-end Halifax neighbourhood. The bill went into circulation in November. (Bank of Canada)

Canadian banknote tops designs from Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Solomon Islands

A Canadian $10 bill featuring Nova Scotia civil rights pioneer Viola Desmond has been named the best in the world.

The International Bank Note Society has announced the Desmond bill won the coveted Bank Note of the Year Award for 2018, beating out top designs from places like Switzerland, Norway, Russia and the Solomon Islands.

In March 2018, the federal government unveiled the vertical banknote design featuring Desmond’s portrait and a map of her north-end Halifax neighbourhood. The bill went into circulation in November.

Desmond played a seminal role in Canada’s civil rights movement when, on Nov. 8, 1946, she went to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, N.S., while her car was getting fixed.

Desmond, 32, was dragged out of the theatre by police and jailed for defiantly sitting in the “whites only” section of the film house. At the time, black people could only sit in the balcony.

Her ensuing legal fight against that injustice helped end segregation in Nova Scotia. In 2010, she was posthumously awarded an apology and a pardon…

Read the entire article here.

Looking white and being Aboriginal

CBC News
2017-06-21

Regan Burden

Regan Burden is from Port Hope Simpson, but now lives in St. John’s. (Evan Smith)

It was a beautiful summer day in downtown St. John’s; my friend was working a food truck and on my way to work, I’d often stop to say hello, maybe grab a poutine to eat on my way to work.

One day, he had a friend with him; he was tall, handsome, had dark hair and a nice smile. He told me he had seen me at a show before, but I couldn’t quite remember talking to him. I met a lot of people that night.

We got to talking about ourselves and he asked me where I was from.

“Port Hope Simpson. It’s a tiny town in Labrador that I promise you haven’t heard of.” I was right about that. I always am.

He told me he was from Gander, but had spent some time in Stephenville. His mother was a judge and she got asked to go to Labrador but didn’t want to.

“Stephenville was bad enough, all those f—ing jackytars stealing everything and sniffing gas. Can you imagine what it would have been like in Labrador?”

I grew up in Labrador and I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t even know what a jackytar was and whatever he thought about whatever they were, I certainly didn’t. I had to get him to explain. “You know, Indians.”

I explained to him that I was an Aboriginal person and I found what he was saying to be really offensive. He just looked confused.

“Come on. You can’t be thaaaat Aboriginal, look at you.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘A dirty deed’: Fort McMurray Métis demand apology after historic eviction of an Indigenous settlement

CBC News
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
2018-04-25

David Thurton, Mobile Journalist
Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada

Moccasin Flats is the unresolved story of how at least 12 Indigenous families were evicted or relocated from a Fort McMurray riverside community in the late 1970s to make way for a city expanding feverishly to accommodate oilsands growth.

That history still pains Fort McMurray Métis president Gail Gallupe.

“It was really a dirty deed,” Gallupe said. “To be ignored and to be treated so shabbily in those days. There was so much discrimination and so much racism.”

On Monday, the Fort McMurray Métis local announced it will commission an academic study that aims to clarify details of the contentious removal of the predominantly Métis settlement for oilsands development…

Read the story here.

New $10 bill starring Nova Scotian will debut in Halifax next week

CBC News
Nova Scotia
2018-03-02

Wanda Robson, the sister of Viola Desmond, smiles as it is announced during a ceremony in 2016 that her sister will be featured on Canadian currency. (Canadian Press)

Viola Desmond’s banknote will be unveiled at Halifax Central Library on Thursday

Canadians will get their first peek at the new $10 bill featuring civil rights pioneer Viola Desmond at an event in Halifax next week.

The banknote will be unveiled Thursday at the Halifax Central Library by federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz…

Read the entire article here.