Blazingcatfur

Vancouver arts curator’s Indigenous ancestry claims panned as ‘pretendian’

Recent revelations that a Vancouver arts curator’s claims to Indigenous identity may be fraudulent adds to growing concerns about race-shifting in the arts and academic communities, where false claims of Indigenous identity can reap rewards and leave real Indigenous community members out in the cold.

Cheyanne Turions, a curator at SFU galleries, was outed as a “pretendian” last week after @nomoreredface published a Twitter thread that included screenshots of grants that Turions received from the Canada Council that were intended for Aboriginal curators, and worth $73,000, and another for $30,000 from the Ontario Arts Council.

This is the most pale-faced Indian ever. Her “apology” leaves me without pity

“I remain committed to pushing the work of dismantling supremacies within an ongoing settler colonial project further and making this work more precise. In part, this means figuring out how to work in a way that doesn’t detract from the urgent labour of Indigenous self-determination, and to figure out how I might use the privileges I am afforded in service of these decolonized futures.”

Why is it primarily Crazy Lefty white woman pulling this crap?

Check out the @nomoreredface twitter account.