But it’s their idenniny! You can’t say it’s not their idenniny! If they say they are Inuit they are Inuit!

Three women in Canada have been criminally charged after allegedly pretending to be Inuit to receive benefits from indigenous organisations.

According to police, two 25-year-old sisters committed fraud by posing as adopted Inuit children. Both sisters and their 59-year-old mother are facing two counts of fraud each. One Inuit group called the alleged deception “flabbergasting”. The defendants are due in court in the city of Iqaluit on 30 October.

In a statement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that the sisters – Amira and Nadya Gill – and their mother, Karima Manji, defrauded two local organisations of “funds that are only available to Inuit beneficiaries by obtaining grants and scholarships” between October 2016 and September 2022.

If people say they are Inuit then they are Inuit. That’s how idenniny works. It’s forbidden to question anyone’s idenniny, let alone deny it. Unless the anyones are Karens, of course – Karens are the one kind of people not allowed to have a sacred indisputable idenniny.

The woman named by the Gills as their birth mother, Kitty Noah, said before her death in July that she was not related to the twins.

In 2021, the Gill sisters – both graduates of Queen’s University in Ontario – launched an online business selling face masks featuring designs by indigenous artists.

Ahhhhh of course they did. Appropriators gonna appropriate.

In an interview with Canadian broadcaster CBC, NTI President Aluki Kotierk said that “at a minimum”, the Gill sisters and their mother should return the money they received from Inuit associations. He added that the NTI would conduct more training for enrolment committees in the future.

Mr Kotierk characterised the alleged fraud as “another form of colonisation” and part of a wider trend of non-indigenous Canadians claiming indigenous heritage. “You’ve wanted to take our language away from us,” he said. “You’ve wanted to take our culture away from us. Now you’re trying to claim our identity? It’s just flabbergasting.”

Talk to some women to find out what it’s like.

Some Canadians have referred to those falsely claiming indigenous ancestry as “pretendians”. But Jean Teillet, a member of the Métis indigenous community, told Global News that the term downplays the severity of the issue because it “sounds harmless”.

Hi, yes, I know what you mean. Women could tell you a lot about that.