Indigenous identity researcher loses defamation case in Sask.

A Saskatchewan judge has awarded an academic $70,000 in damages, ruling she was defamed by statements that she was pretending to be Indigenous to further her career. 

Michelle Coupal, an associate professor at the University of Regina and Canada Research Chair in Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Literatures sued Darryl Leroux for defamation over a number of statements he made between 2021 and 2022.

Leroux, an associate professor in political studies at the University of Ottawa, researches the phenomenon of false claims to Indigenous identity and runs the website Raceshifting. 

According to Judge D.E. Labach's ruling on March 11, Coupal began identifying as French and Métis in 2010 based on what she was told by her family about their heritage.

The ruling said in 2013 she learned Red River Métis objected to use of the term Métis to mean simply mixed heritage. She reached out to the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, a non-status Algonquins of Ontario (AOO) community near Ottawa, and applied for membership in 2014. 

According to the court document, she was told she was eligible for membership on the basis that her grandfather's father's ancestral line could be traced to Thomas Lagarde, a man born in the early 1800s near Montreal, who was believed to be Algonquin.

In a 2021 CBC News investigation, experts suggested a letter produced as evidence by some AOO members to show Lagarde was Algonquin was highly suspicious and likely not authentic.

Following the story's publication, Leroux said on Twitter that there were people claiming Algonquin ancestry based on family lore and forged documents and that one of them was Canada Research Chair in Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Literatures. He said on Twitter that professor had "leveraged her ancestral relationship" to become an expert on truth and reconciliation.

Leroux also referred to Coupal as "pretending to be Indigenous" in a different Twitter conversation.

In a text thread with Niigaan Sinclair, he texted that Coupal had previously reached out to his publisher to try to veto a section of his 2019 book Distorted Descent that discussed the Algonquins of Ontario, "I suppose to hide her own fraud."

In a 2022 presentation by Leroux at the Robinson-Huron Waawiindamaagewin Treaty Governance Forum later posted on YouTube and Twitter, a slide named Coupal and two others and Leroux said they "had no Indigenous ancestry but had built a career around their false claims through the Algonquins of Ontario and have made several millions of dollars in salaries from essentially their fraud."

Coupal sued Leroux for defamation in March 2022.

In 2023, the Algonquins of Ontario Tribunal removed Lagarde from the AOO's ancestors list.

In the decision, Labach ruled the statements made by Leroux were defamatory and neither the defence of truth nor the defence of fair comment applied.