February 14, 2021
SHARE
CANADALAND
#359 The Convenient “Pretendian”
Michelle Latimer was the buzziest Canadian director and showrunner of 2020. But it all came crashing down in December when a CBC investigation called into question her Indigenous identity claims.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Andréa Schmidt
Managing Editor, Podcasts

Latimer’s documentary Inconvenient Indian premiered at TIFF and reaped plaudits and awards. It’s now been pulled from distribution. Her series Trickster, based on a novel by Eden Robinson, debuted on the CBC and was slated for a second season. It’s been cancelled.

Why does the Canadian cultural establishment make darlings of figures like Latimer? Ryan McMahon joins Jesse to discuss.

Then documentary filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, who is featured in Inconvenient Indian, considers the ethics and responsibility of storytelling, and why this controversy has been hurtful to so many Indigenous people.

And Steven Lonsdale, whose seal hunt Latimer filmed for Inconvenient Indian, explains what he’d like to see done with that footage.

Correction: In this episode, Jesse says that author Eden Robinson has promised to donate all future author royalties from the Trickster books to the Haisla Language Authority. In fact, Robinson has promised to donate future income from the Trickster TV series to the Haisla people.

Clarification: In an earlier version of this episode, Jesse said, “The CBC dug in to census records that say Latimer’s grandfather was not Indigenous or Métis, as [Latimer] had claimed, but French-Canadian,” a formulation that erroneously and unintentionally implied that the Métis are not Indigenous. We have amended the episode to remove this implication.

This episode is brought to you by the Rotman School of Management, Kilne, Athletic Brewing and Article.

Additional music by Audio Network.

More from this series
What connects Fidel Castro and a stocky Belgian named Georges to the worst campaign of political violence in modern Canadian history?
September 25, 2023
Have the business practices of one of the world's biggest liquor monopolies damaged wine writing? And, is the environment created by this vacuum in the world of journalism being abused by some high profile writers?
September 18, 2023
When some Canadians look south of the border, sometimes all they can think is: thank god I’m Canadian. But can a Coffee Crisp, or the pronunciation of the letter Z, really save us from the rise of fascism?
September 11, 2023
It’s possible that Chantal Hébert’s journalism once held Canada together. She joins Jesse for a discussion about what’s appropriate in political news coverage, and what (if anything) needs to change.
September 4, 2023
Canada’s biggest grocery chains spent nearly 2 billion last year buying up their own stocks.
August 28, 2023
Foreign Interference by the Chinese government into Canadian politics is probably the biggest news story of the year, and yet we know so little about it. What was the interference? Why did it occur? Did it work? Who was involved?
August 21, 2023
What’s it like to podcast in a country where freedom of expression can land you in jail?
August 14, 2023
Jesse Brown might think himself quite the question master, but today the tables have turned and our guest host, Jonathan Torrens, investigates the inner workings of this show's host.
August 7, 2023
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND