Canadian university implement first-of-its-kind anti-fraud system to prevent Inuit pretenders

A collaboration with Inuit organization was announced after a woman was sentenced three years in prison for identity fraud in Nunavut. The University of Saskatchewan now hopes their system will attract more Inuit students, vice provost tells Polar Journal AG. 

In Canada, the occurrence of people faking indigenous roots for financial or social gains has increased in recent years, those engaging in the fraudulent practice gaining the questionable nickname of “Pretendians”.

Two weeks ago, the phenomenon reached a new high, when a woman was sentenced to three years in prison in a Nunavut courtroom for faking Inuit roots. The woman, who is not of Inuit origin, had coerced an elderly Inuk woman into claiming they were related. This allowed her twin daughters access to scholarships and other benefits designated for Inuit people.

It is cases like this that inspired a new anti-fraud system at the University of Saskatchewan. The new system, which has been under development for two years, breaks with the previous practice of trusting the students blindly. Now, proof of ancestry from specific indigenous groups are required to access some of the university’s scholarship programs.

“There are individuals who want to gain access to funding, positions, or different programs by saying that they are indigenous. This policy came about because of that,” Dr Angela Jaime, vice-provost of Indigenous Engagement at the University of Saskatchewan told Polar Journal AG.

“It’s the first of its kind in Canada, and our process is quite rigorous,” she said.

Can no longer just ‘check the box’

The process and policy that Dr Angela Jaime and a team at the University of Saskatchewan has developed uses an online portal. Here, all students and staff benefitting from their indigenous roots will have to upload proof that they belong to certain indigenous communities.

The proof will usually consist of ID cards that most members of indigenous groups in Canada have access to. This leaves the verification of family roots up to the individual nation who issue the identification cards, and therefore the University of Saskatchewan will not go through family registries or DNA databases themselves.

For this reason, the recent case from Nunavut would not have been prevented by the new system, Dr Angela Jaime admits. Here, the convicted woman did actually have access to a valid tribal ID card (that she had fraudulently obtained).

Instead, the system is meant to prevent what Kim TallBear of the University of Alberta estimates could be upwards of 25 percent of self-decleared indigenous hirings in Canada that are granted to non-indigenous people.

“What we are able to put a stop to is somebody just saying that they are Métis, First Nation or Inuit without documentation,” Dr Angela Jaime said.

“Over the last 10 years there has been a massive increase in self-declaration of indigenous people across the country, people just checking the box. But now, by requiring proof, we have put a stop to that,” said Dr Angela Jaime.

Agreements with all indigenous groups

While the University of Saskatchewan will not verify the ancestry of each scholarship applicant, a lot of work has gone into securing collaborations with all the different nations whose verification they depend on.

These agreements have been negotiated individually with each indigenous group, and most recently an agreement was announced with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization.

Currently, agreements have been struck with indigenous groups represented among the university’s 3500 indigenous students, staff, and faculty. These include more than 30 First Nations within the province of Saskatchewan, Métis nations from each province, and the Inuit organization.

“At the present time, we only have agreements with those groups that are currently represented at our institution, but what we would like to see is a portal system that would hold all these agreements to be used by universities across the country,” Dr Angela Jaime said.

If this wish came true, the process would be streamlined, and would prevent each university from ‘reinventing the agreements’. Because not all students’ ancestry were or will be easy to verify, she said.

“We know that there are indigenous communities in the world who do not participate in colonial documentation, in Mexico and in Central and South America, for instance. But we have a process for this too,” Dr Angela Jaime said.

Provides safety and security

The University of Saskatchewan has been frontrunners in this endeavor but Dr Angela Jaime hopes they will not remain alone in their fight against “Prentendians”. Therefore, she has already presented the system to more than a 100 different institutions across Canada and beyond.

“We are already seeing the impact of our policy in other institutions. McGill University now has a policy based on ours. Dalhousie University also used our policy for their report, while the University of Manitoba has implemented a policy that’s a bit different,” she said. 

In the future, she hopes that the new system, which has also become official university policy, will become standard in universities across Canada.

Because at the University of Saskatchewan, according to Dr Angela Jaime, they are proud to be front-runners in this pursuit. The university already has the highest number of indigenous students and she hopes that their commitment to verification will inspire even more to apply. This includes Inuit students who are currently only represented by around a handful of students.

“When we have a process like this that ensures that Inuit students will have access to specifically indigenous scholarships that may very well provide the safety and security that indigenous people are looking for. We hope that this shows our commitment to them and that more of them will come to the University of Saskatchewan in the future,” she said.

Ole Ellekrog, Polar Journal AG

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