The “pretendian” phenomenon in Canada refers to people who claim to be Indigenous, but aren’t. These imposters range from academics to judges and even musical icons. Sarah Treleaven’s latest tale of fraud and grift centers around three women: a mother and her twin daughters. After the mother, Karima Manji, falsely claimed that her daughters Amira and Nadya were Inuit, the trio benefitted from their “pretenduit” identity for years.
For years, Manji had been over-ordering anything and everything—Christmas turkeys, supplies from hardware stores, refrigerators—so she could return the extras and keep the cash. The organization also discovered she’d been bullying tenants to pay for repairs and other necessities that the organization was supposed to cover, and then keeping the money intended to pay those bills. Over the years, she’d bilked the organization not for $25,000, as originally estimated, but for $800,000.
There are two kinds of fraudsters, according to Teillet: fabricators who invent Indigenous identities whole cloth and embellishers who exaggerate some perceived connection. Some embellishers bolster their claims using the results of DNA tests showing small percentages of Indigenous heritage. Others exploit unverified family stories about a distant Indigenous relative. Whatever kind of identity fraud they’re engaging in, they generally lie to get ahead professionally.
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