Reflections on Vancouver, British Columbia and other topics, related or not
No wonder UBCIC members
claim that white lady is indigenous
For 24 years, the best native leader they could find
has been “grand chief” Stewart Phillip
Greg Klein | December 15, 2022
Left: Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the UBCIC’s great native hope.
Right: Stewart Phillip, the UBCIC’s great native dope.
Wow, this is getting serious. If multiple universities don’t rescind that supposed native’s unearned degrees, some apparently real natives are threatening to return theirs.
Of course there’s a limit to their outrage. They’re not threatening to give up their own grants, sinecures and other remuneratively racial entitlements. Still, they’re pretty pissed off at that pretendian.
That’s not surprising. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is probably the most stubborn hold-out of the fake abos who’ve so far been exposed. As CBC recently reported, the Ottawa Citizen noted pertinent allegations against her back in 1995. But only after UNDRIP escalated the outpouring of native-only grants, degrees and appointments, and genocidemania pushed the give-away to potlatch proportions, did journalists—that is to say, non-natives—challenge the white opportunists poaching indigenous privilege. Finally, last year, CBC followed up on native-generated tips about Turpel-Lafond.
CBC might not score high on credibility itself, but the alleged fraudster has failed to refute the network’s reports of Turpel-Lafond turpitude.
Yet she still has the backing of some native groups. Most notable is the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. (Warning to whitey: Only Indians are allowed to call Indians “Indian.”) No small outfit, the UBCIC represents all B.C. native tribal leaders and, by extension, all B.C. natives.
It’s led, however, by Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, currently sitting through his eighth consecutive three-year term. In all that time, what has he accomplished?
Turpel-Lafond, on the other hand, is “considered to be one of the most accomplished and decorated Indigenous scholars in Canadian history,” as CBC stated.
She came to national prominence during the mid-’90s constitutional talks, acting as grand vizier for National Chief Ovide Mercredi. From 1998 to 2007 she served as a provincial court judge, the “first treaty Indian” in Saskatchewan to hold the position. In 2007 she became B.C.’s first Representative for Children and Youth, staying on until 2016. Other appointments include the first director of UBC’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, a position she held between 2018 and 2021. As a “native” and “activist” she’s wracked up 11 honorary university degrees. Her name has been popping up as potential Supreme Court material since at least 2005.
“Grand Chief Stewart Phillip”: Four words
that reveal B.C. natives’ leadership void.
Even if some or most of those “accomplishments” resulted not from merit but her supposed race, Turpel-Lafond still outclasses Phillip by far. Now into his third decade as a high-ranking non-achiever, he’s shown no sign of improvement since I heard him deliver a “five-minute” speech about 16 years ago. He droned on and on for over 20 tedious minutes without making a point or drawing to a conclusion. He wasn’t the only speaker at the event with nothing to say. (Betty Krawczyk was there.) But he was the only speaker who took nearly so long to say it.
Non-native Canadian politicians can be equally stupid but none of them, not even Elizabeth May, has held a leadership position for 24 years, let alone a position as “grand” leader among lesser leaders.
Has the B.C. Indian chiefs’ grand chief ever proven himself to be anything but a dolt? Sure, he got rich by being native. But that just makes him the aboriginal equivalent of an upper-class twit.
With an all-around nonentity as their long-time leader, it might be natural for UBCIC chiefs to bond with someone like Turpel-Lafond.
Their most recent statement of support came in October. The press release asks whether “Turpel-Lafond’s outspoken advocacy has unfairly made her a target.” It’s hard to tell whether Phillip and the other co-signers can grasp this concept, but her advocacy was pure political correctness. Such ideological conformity would hardly draw flack from establishment servants like the CBC.
The chiefs also insist that only natives can determine who’s native and only natives can define terms referring to kinship. The argument, egocentrically facile as it is, ignores natives who’ve spoken against Turpel-Lafond.
Instead, the UBCIC screed attacks media with loose reasoning and emotive terms like “colonialism,” “racist,” “sexist” and “violence.” But again, all that’s directed at news outlets without mentioning Turpel-Lafond’s aboriginal critics. Were it not for them, Canada’s courtier media would never have taken up this issue. Even so, the UBCIC accuses journalists of “divide and conquer public investigations,” implying that any native concerns must result from media manipulation.
There’s even an insinuation—sneaky and vague, but offensive—that media are trying to “erase Indigenous women.”
Whether it reflects the chiefs’ actual level of intelligence
or a cynical play on woke confusion, the UBCIC’s statement
of support contains nothing but emotional bullshit.
(Click the image to read the document.)
Cheap as it is, the rhetoric evades the issue of Turpel-Lafond’s supposed accomplishments and race. With far greater caution than the network treats real dissenters or even the most innocent “transgressors,” CBC presented what appears to be accurate, objective evidence. Neither Turpel-Lafond nor her supporters have refuted any of it. Even if the UBCIC claims “her integrity to be beyond reproach,” she appears to have been a long-time and extravagant liar about her upbringing, social background, education and career, as well as her lineage.
But again, the Phillip/Turpel-Lafond contrast stands out—not as an isolated case but as a microcosm of a larger phenomena. Accomplished natives are really hard to find. The legal profession provides a stark example.
That’s despite the fact that Canadian universities have been churning out native lawyers since at least the early 1990s, when a social engineering program offered a simplified native-only law curriculum, free tuition and expenses for natives, and often a salary for native students. The result was a plethora of native lawyers.
Yet how many of them actually practise law? How many have articled, been called to the bar and conducted actual legal work on the same level expected of non-native lawyers?
How many natives have done the actual work that’s made them Canada’s most powerful ethnic groups? Blockades (essentially hanging around and doing nothing) typify native political action. Meanwhile non-natives, mostly whites, have pursued the court cases, policies and programs that granted natives extraordinary power over vast territories, privilege in law, priority in all government services and special status in just about everything else.
Other non-natives, usually whites, push the native agenda in government, academia, education and media. Further intensifying native privilege is the “mass graves” hysteria, sparked by a white archeologist and taken up by non-native, mostly white journalists.
No doubt native dependency on non-native activism can be explained by colonialism, racism, sexism and violence, to use UBCIC terminology. But what explains Phillip’s 24-year tenure as the UBCIC’s “grand” chief?
No wonder they want to claim Turpel-Lafond as one of their own.