Thomas King, Accidental Pretendian?

More than a quarter century ago I listened to a CBC Radio show called the Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour a 15-minute segment (nuck, nuck) that poked fun at cultural stereotypes held by White People and "Indians." It was clever and often biting. 

The show had a number of regular segments, including:

• Gracie's Authentic Traditional Aboriginal Recipes, including puppy stew, fried bologna, and Kraft Dinners
• The Authentic Indian Name generator, featuring three wheels that could automatically create names like "Stewart Coffee Armadillo" or "Rosemarie Clever Tuna"
• Gracie's Conversational Cree, which taught simple but useful phrases, such as, "Please ask the chauffeur to bring the car around" and "How long will we be in port?"
• Recommendations from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples were ironically highlighted.

I liked the show because of its irreverance and because I was doing my best at that time to develop a greater understanding of Indigenous culture and to come to grips with the complicity of Christian denominations in Canada, including the United Church, with the horrors of the Residential School system that did it's best to extinguish Indigenous identity. A lot of that exploration was heavy stuff and the Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour made it's point in a humorous way. 

The host, Thomas King, is an author who went on to write many books including the excellent The Inconvenient Indian, the novel Indians on Vacation, and the Dreadfulwater mystery series -- I've read them all. He has taught Indigenous studies at the University of Lethbridge and received the Order of Canada for exposing “the hard truths of the injustices of the Indigenous peoples of North America.”

A family photo shows Thomas King, far left, and his brother Chris to his left, with their mother and cousins.Thomas King

King has written from the perspective of being part Cherokee, or so he thought. He has discovered that he has no Indigneous heritage and is devastated that the story he was told by his mother from childhood wasn't true. He chose to explore rumours that he wasn't Indigenous and the evidence is clear that he is what we might call an Accidental Pretendian. He just wrote an essay in the Globe and Mail in which he describes being told that there is no background in the Cherokee Nation: 

As you might expect, I didn’t want to believe her. I was sure she had made an error in her research, hadn’t gone back far enough, but as she talked about what she had found, as we matched the pieces of family history that I had with the pieces of family history that she uncovered, it became clear that the one piece missing was any connection to the Cherokee.

It’s been a couple of weeks since that video call, and I’m still reeling. At 82, I feel as though I’ve been ripped in half, a one-legged man in a two-legged story. Not the Indian I had in mind. Not an Indian at all.

I first read an online contention, by a Cherokee researcher,  that King wasn't Indigenous several years ago and commented to Ruth, my partner, that I hoped this wasn't true. Then it seemed to evaporate...until now. 

We'll see where this all goes. I have the feeling that despite the resonance with the scandal around Buffy St. Marie and other pretendians what has unfolded with King may be different, but we'll find out. I know that I benefitted from the insights of The Inconvenient Indian.  

In his confessional essay King reminds us that the sign-off for Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour was "Stay calm! Be brave! Wait for the signs!" My heart goes out to Indigenous people who feel that they may have been exploited and betrayed once more. The sign-off could be a prayer for all of them, but it shouldn't need to be.