Canadian University has hired an independent investigator in order to examine a professor who claimed she was Indigenous, while her sister later confirmed that she was White.
Carrie Bourassa – a scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health and a professor at the University of Saskatchewan – is being investigated after her claims to an indigenous ancestry proved false.
The university hired Jean Teillet, a Métis lawyer, to probe Bourassa’s indigenous claims and will mainly focus on whether or not she misrepresents herself, according to CBC. Bourassa was placed on leave this month.
Her lineage was questioned after her colleague, associate professor Winona Wheeler, started researching Bourassa’s heritage after watching her TEDx talk where she claimed to be a part of the Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit tribes and arrived in stereotypical tribal wear.
Bourassa wore bright blue with a red pattern neckline, braided hairrows, and a bright blue shawl.
‘When I saw that TEDx, to be quite honest, I was repulsed by how hard she was working to pass herself off as indigenous,’ Wheeler, who teaches indigenous studies at the university and is a documented member of Manitoba’s Fisher River Cree Nation, told the New York Post.
Caroline Tait said she, Wheeler and other colleagues grew more doubtful when they learned that Bourassa’s sister had stopped claiming Métis ancestry after looking further into her genealogy.
Jody Burnett (Jody’s sister) said Bourassa was inaccurate in her description of the family. It is not grounded in truth and irrelevant to whether Bourassa is a father or a mother. [she] is Métis.’

Carrie Bourassa’s heritage came under question after her TEDx talk where she appeared in a blue shawl with cornrows and accessorized with feathers (pictured)

Bourassa’s coworkers noticed that she worked hard to be portrayed as an Indigenous person.

Bourassa (pictured as a child with her grandparents, middle) claimed she was a part of the Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit tribes

Bourassa, a University of Saskatchewan professor (pictured), is currently out of commission while the university investigates.
Tait, a Métis professor and medical anthropologist at the University of Saskatchewan who has worked with Bourassa for over 10 years, said she began to question her colleague’s ancestral claims as Bourassa began noting ties to the Anishinaabe and Tlingit communities and dressing in more stereotypically Indigenous styles.
Wheeler and Janet Smylie, a Métis family medicine professor from the University of Toronto who also worked with Bourassa, joined Tait in her suspicions.
Tait asked Bourassa what she thought were rumors. Bourassa replied in an email: ‘I have twice done my genealogy and received Métis local memberships and I am accepted in the community.’ She never shared her genealogies.
Rob Ines stated that the Canadian Institute of Health Research only requires members of Indigenous Canada Research Chairs to provide self-identification.
“How many Country Resource Centers (CRCs) are Indigenous? There is no way to know. It is not possible for universities to determine if CRCs they have are Indigenous. They don’t know – they only know they self-identified. Even though universities claim identity is confidential, they don’t know. [but]They also boast publicly about how many Indigenous CRCs are they able to have,” he said in a post on Facebook.
Professors discovered that the professor they were investigating was from Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Her ancestors had been immigrant farmers.
Bourassa claimed that she changed her story when Bourassa was forced to confirm her heritage. She then claimed she was ‘adopted’ into the Métis tribe by a friend and her deceased grandfather Clifford Laroque, the New York Post reported.
She stated that even though Clifford died, the bonds were stronger than death, because her family took me in as their blood relative.
‘In turn, I serve the Métis community to the best of my ability.’
Bourassa said that Johanna Salaba was her great-grandmother and that she married an immigrant. They moved from northern B.C. The couple moved to Saskatchewan from northern BC and had a child.

Jody Burnett (photo) revealed to Bourassa that Bourassa was describing her family incorrectly and the family as white.

Caroline Tait (left) and Winona Wheeler began looking into Bourassa’s heritage in 2019 (pictured: Bourassa (center) and minister of health for the Métis Nation Saskatchewan (right))
She explained that she was first told of her alleged Métis ancestry in 2002 when her sister invited her to a meeting with Larocque when he ‘provided confirmation that our family had [Métis]Lineage in B.C. and insisted on her confidence in representing herself as such.
Jody Burnett (Jody’s sister) said Bourassa’s description of her family was inaccurate and unrooted in reality. It is also irrelevant to whether Bourassa is a good or bad person. [she] is Métis.
‘It makes you feel a bit sick,” said Smylie told the New York Post. Bourassa was also assisted by Smylie in the writing of a book about Indigenous parenting.
‘To have an impostor who is speaking on behalf of Métis and indigenous people to the country about literally what it means to be Métis…that’s very disturbing and upsetting and harmful.’
Bourassa was put on administrative leave November 1 and claimed that she did not need to prove anything. She also accused her tribe of investigating her heritage.
‘It is apparent that I must adhere to Western ideologies, such as blood quantum, to prove something that the communities I serve, the Elders who support me, and myself already know,’ Bourassa told the CBC at the time, referring to the controversial method in which some tribes in the US acknowledge members through DNA percentages.
‘Blood quantums are not our way, but I have been working with a Métis genealogist to investigate my lineage.’
Her own investigation started two years ago, and is still ongoing.
Bourassa has yet to explain why she claimed for the majority of her career that she was born into a Métis family.
Bourassa says that Johanna Salaba her great-grandmother was Tlingit, and that Bourassa married an immigrant. They moved to the northern B.C. The couple moved to Saskatchewan from northern BC and had a child.