Please sign petition here:

English: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-6605

French: https://www.noscommunes.ca/petitions/fr/Petition/Details?Petition=e-6605

Please note: All signatures are confidential. They are not public to anyone, including the signatories of this petition. Once you press the “sign petition button”, the House of Common sends an email where you click on the link to confirm you have signed.

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With the numbers of pretendians ever-increasing across Canada and interfering with the sovereignty of true Indigenous people, one woman has decided to fight identity fraud all the way to the Canadian House of Commons.

Jo-Anne Gould Green, a Nipissing Algonquin Anishinaabe-Ikwe, and member of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation located between Ottawa and Algonquin Park, has started a petition which has collected almost 600 signatures (as of Aug. 8, 2025). It is open for signatures until Sept. 18 and then will be presented to the House of Commons by Jamie Schmale, Member of Parliament for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes.

“It’s gotten out of hand. That’s why this petition is so important,” Gould Green, who lives in Bancroft, Ontario, told JOURNEY Magazine in an interview.

“It’s not just about financial gain. Pretendians are changing our history. They’re changing the lineage lines. There won’t be a history that has the true facts,” she said.

The petition asks Parliament to develop and implement legislation that addresses Indigenous identity fraud with “clear definitions, mechanisms for enforcement and legal penalties” while consulting with First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities “at every step”. 

The petition also asks the federal government to implement standardized verification protocols and practices to authenticate Indigenous identity claims.

The term “pretendian” has come to mean someone who claims distant Indigenous heritage but is unable or unwilling to prove it and consequently enjoys personal and financial gain. Many have been ‘found out” but not before receiving literary, arts and other awards or economic resources and research grants or training and high-profile jobs or honourary positions – all meant for Indigenous people. 

Gould Green’s petition states: 

• Indigenous identity fraud harms the life experiences of Indigenous peoples by depriving them and their communities of opportunities and resources required to achieve a better life;
• False claims of Indigenous identity and/or ancestry result in limited resources being diverted to non-Indigenous peoples;
• False claims of Indigenous identity and/or ancestry result in misrepresentation, cultural appropriation, and false knowledge productions, both cultural and intellectual;
• False claims of Indigenous identity and/or ancestry undermine the sovereignty of Indigenous individuals and/or communities by diluting their political representation and their decision-making abilities; and
• False claims of Indigenous identity and/or ancestry have legal and economic ramifications such as intellectual property theft and the acquisition of government contracts and funding.

“It’s like a genocide, if you want to look at it that way, especially with our family,” said Gould Green, 64, who is retired from Kagita Mikam Aboriginal Employment Services, but still works as a private investigator in work related to her justice path.

For her, the issue of Indigenous identity fraud is personal, as her family has witnessed a woman claiming to be a member of Gould Green’s Indigenous community and has derived benefits because of it.

While Gould Green’s Nipissing Algonquin ancestors originated along the Ottawa River, Gould Green’s families’ people later migrated to the Lake of Two Mountains area in Quebec, and their Indigenous name is Kiche Manitou.

“When the Catholics came over, they called us Baptiste,” said Gould Green.

It is the Indigenous Baptiste family, now living in Bancroft, of which the woman is claiming to be a member, said Gould Green. She identifies as a descendant through her mother of an Algonquin community that lived at Baptiste Lake in Bancroft, about 235 kilometres west of Ottawa, she said. 

The woman served as a paid employee of the Algonquins of Ontario political umbrella organization, according to a CBC news report.

“She has said she’s a direct descendant of our Chief John Baptiste. So we asked her how she is connected. She will not answer, but her saying she’s part of our family has given her benefits,” said Gould Green.

“We have proof that she is not blood. We have proof she is not adopted, nor customarily adopted.”

Gould Green said part of what started the pretendian problem can be traced to the recent self-declaration check-off box on the Canadian census form which opened up a Pandora’s box for anyone to say they were Indigenous.

“It’s easy to check that box and get funded for either training, employment opportunities, or it goes on, there’s arts, there’s music. It’s a very large problem,” she said.

Another example is that some people, calling themselves Indigenous, are selling “status cards” said Gould Green, and it’s happening in Bancroft. 

“I would like to see a committee of people (overseeing the authentication process) that aren’t in the area of the person who needs to be authenticated because, for example, in our area we have self-declared elders saying, ‘yes, this person is Indigenous. I can vouch for this person’,” she said.  

“I call them defendindians. That’s why I believe that a committee would be good with an elder from another area, or a chief of a First Nations.”

Dr Lynn Gehl, Algonquin Anishinaabe-Ikwe is also a member of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation and a long-time advocate on Indigenous issues.

“I’m really grateful that Jo-Anne took the initiative,” she told JOURNEY Magazine. “When she says it interferes with our sovereignty, she’s dead on. And it interferes with our knowledge productions.”

“The biggest thing is that research drives policy, and if research is done by white people, it’s not the same,” Gehl said. “It’d be like women being okay that men were driving the research. We can’t have men driving the research needed for women, and we can’t have white women driving the research needed for Indigenous people, because research is what shapes all these practices and curriculum, and that’s why it’s really important.”

“If they want to help and do really good work, they should stand behind us. Don’t stand in front of us.”

There are five signatories to the recent petition: Ray Sarazin, Eleanor Yateman, Tina Steele, Veldon Coburn and a fifth who did not wish to be named for this article.

After a petition has enough signatures (500), it will be certified, meaning it is admissible for presentation to the House. After an MP presents it, the government has 45 calendar days to table a response.

Petitions are not debated, nor are they binding but are “a vehicle for political input, a way of attempting to influence policy-making and legislation and also a valued means of bringing public concerns to the attention of Parliament”, says a letter to Gould Green from the Clerk of Petitions for the House of Commons.

By Melodie McCullough