This article was first published on APTN News in Canada.
Darryl Leroux, one of the most visible Canadian academics researching the subject of Indigenous identity fraud and misrepresentation (commonly known as “pretendianism”), lost a defamation lawsuit filed against him by a University of Regina literature professor.
In a decision delivered on 11 March, Justice D. E. Labach of the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan, ordered Leroux to pay $70,000 CAD ($87,280 NZD) in general damages (and no punitive damages) after finding that Leroux had defamed Michelle Coupal in three posts on Twitter, in a public presentation and in a text conversation with academic/commentator Niigaan Sinclair.
Leroux, an associate professor in the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies, has been active in research about identity fraud for over a decade and is the author of the 2019 book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity.
He has been regularly featured in news stories about Indigenous identity fraud across numerous media outlets, including APTN News.
According to the court records, on 9 August, 2021, Leroux accused Coupal on Twitter of representing a “latest case of #raceshifting,” concluding, “the grift is mind-blowing.” In the same tweet, he described Coupal as being an example of “individuals running around claiming to be Algonquin based on family lore and these forged documents.”
In another tweet on the same day, Leroux referred to Coupal by describing “a professor in Saskatchewan […] who has leveraged her ancestral relationship with Thomas Laguarde [sic] to become an expert on ‘truth and reconciliation.’”
On 8 October, 2021, Leroux responded to a tweet by a person complaining of anti-Indigenous racism at the University of Regina by saying, “The administration has elected to protect a renowned and well-documented Canada Research Chair pretending to be Indigenous.”
Between the two sets of tweets, Leroux engaged in a text exchange with Sinclair, who is a commentator on various TV networks, including APTN News, and is a professor at the University of Manitoba. That’s where Leroux alleged Coupal attempted to veto some parts of a book Leroux was working on, concluding, “I suppose to hide her own fraud,” the court records said.
Finally, during a presentation at the Robinson Huron Waawiindamaagewin Treaty Governance Forum in Feburary 2022, Leroux gave a presentation in which he showed Coupal’s name on a slide along with two others, all of whom he described as having “built a career around their false claims through the Algonquins of Ontario and have made several millions of dollars in salaries from essentially their fraud.”
Labach found the comments alleging Coupal committed fraud or “grift” were defamatory, along with allegations that Coupal misled others about her ancestry, claimed to be Indigenous when she knew she was not and “made millions of dollars”.
Much of the argument turned around the identity of Thomas Lagarde, an ancestor of Coupal’s and of numerous other people claiming connection to Algonquin ancestry.
Lagarde’s Algonquin ancestry was initially confirmed in 2013 by Justice James B. Chadwick, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, based on an 1845 letter to the Bishop of Montreal.
In 2021, CBC had experts examine the letter. They found that it was likely “not authentic.” APTN News has not reviewed the letter.
No proof of fraud by Coupal
However, Labach found that while the article may have suggested “fraud,” no fraud was perpetrated by Lagarde or Coupal.
“Neither of them created this purported forged document,” Labach wrote.
“Dr Coupal had no reason to believe this document was not authentic; it was accepted as authentic at a hearing presided over by a retired justice of the Ontario Superior Court.”
In a 550-page report delivered in December 2022, Algonquins of Ontario enrolment officer Joan Holmes announced that after a review of all genealogical data, there was no evidence Lagarde was Algonquin.
The judgment turned on Coupal’s awareness of her lack of Indigeneity. Labach found that Coupal had acted in good faith in believing she was Algonquin because, until the CBC report in 2021, the 2013 findings by Chadwick appeared to prove she was a descendant of Algonquins.
In particular, Labach quoted the Algonquin Tribunal’s conclusion that “those who believed themselves to be Algonquin by connection to Thomas Lagarade [sic] […] did so in good faith.”
Labach stated the key to his finding of defamation was that Leroux made public claims that Coupal consciously and deliberately pretended to be Indigenous when she was fully aware she was not, and did so for financial gain.
Labach wrote that while an Indigenous person would have been an ideal candidate for Coupal’s 2012 hiring as assistant professor of Aboriginal Rhetorics and Literatures at Laurentian University, there was no proof she was hired for the professorship based on her claim of Métis ancestry.
“She was honest and forthright with the recruiter who sought her out for the position that she was not an Indigenous scholar and that her Metis connection was tenuous,” Labach wrote.
“They [Laurentian] welcomed her application, not because she was Metis, but because she was able to teach both Indigenous and Canadian literatures. Her application contained one four-word sentence indicating she had some Metis ancestry but at no point in her two-day interview was it addressed or raised.
“I am not satisfied that she was hired for this professorship on the basis of her claim to being Métis.”
According to the court documents, Labach found Coupal never acted in bad faith. He noted that though she at one point identified as Métis based on what her parents and grandparents told her, she has not done so since she learned such identifications by people outside the Red River area were frowned upon by members of the Red River Métis in Manitoba.
Labach also noted that Coupal told the CBC that if her Algonquin status were to change, and she were found not to meet standards for Algonquin identity, she would adjust how she identified.
“Dr Coupal did not create her [I]ndigeneity out of thin air,” Labach wrote.
“There has never been a suggestion that she was not descended from Thomas Lagarde, only that Thomas Lagarde is not Algonquin and therefore, Dr Coupal is not Algonquin.
“There is no evidence that Dr Coupal came to represent herself as Algonquin dishonestly or by making any false representations.”
Two lines of defence dismissed
Labach rejected two defences offered by Leroux. The first was “the defence of justification,” whereby Leroux made his statements because they were true, and not simply because he believed they were true, but because they could be proven to be true.
“The gist is that Dr Coupal is dishonestly or fraudulently holding herself out to be Indigenous and is contemptible,” Labach wrote.
“Thus, the onus is on him to substantially prove the truth of the facts that Dr Coupal was being intentionally dishonest. He has not done so.”
The second defence, of “fair comment,” required Leroux to prove that he was making a statement of opinion, not motivated by malice but based on fact, which was nonetheless “recognisable as comment”.
Labach noted a “fair comment” defence required the test of “could any person honestly express that opinion on the proved facts?”
“For a statement to constitute fair comment,” Labach found, “the statement must be one that would be understood by a reasonable reader as the subjective expression of opinion in the form of a deduction, inference, conclusion, criticism, judgment, remark or observation which is generally incapable of proof.”
Accordingly, Labach found that Leroux failed to meet the standard of “fair comment” required for that manner of defence.
“A fair-minded person knowing the true facts, and with any modicum of common sense,” he wrote, “could not honestly express an opinion that Dr Coupal had committed or participated in a fraud, nor that she was trying to hide a fraud.”
Judge: Leroux’s actions were not malicious
Labach found Leroux had not been motivated by malice in his statements. He stated that Leroux’s decision to accuse Coupal of fraud or dishonesty may have stemmed from too cursory a read of the CBC articles about Lagarde, but there is no evidence that Leroux knew his statements were false, acted with reckless indifference to the truth or sought to injure Coupal out of malicious intent.
“Just like Dr Coupal did not make up her Indigenous ancestry but had an honest belief she was Algonquin, neither did Dr Leroux make up his claims that she was not Indigenous,” Labach found.
“Based on his academic work and his research for the APFN [Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation], he was satisfied that there was a factual basis for his claims. In other words, he had a subjective honest belief that Dr Coupal was guilty of ethnic fraud.”
Labach expressed disbelief that, given Leroux’s vast experience in the subject of ethnic fraud and raceshifting, as well as his familiarity with the Algonquins of Ontario, he chose to address his concerns about Coupal in what Labach called “the court of public opinion” rather than waiting for the Algonquins of Ontario Tribunal to work through its membership processes.
“If his research and the CBC’s suppositions were as unassailable as he believed them to be,” Labach wrote, “I would have assumed he would simply have let the Tribunal do their job and the public draw their own conclusions based on the Tribunal decision as to whether Dr Coupal was culpable of ethnic fraud.”
Leroux told APTN that under legal advice, he is not currently making statements to media, though he forwarded a statement from his lawyer Yavar Hameed, which expressed disappointment in the court’s finding and confirmed that Leroux will appeal the decision.
“Ultimately the Court’s decision did not focus on the evidence of whether Dr Coupal is an Indigenous person,” Hameed wrote.
“Instead, it based its conclusions on whether the Plaintiff subjectively felt that she was Métis, and then later Algonquin, at various points in time in her academic career, based on things she understood or was told.
“The decision establishes an untenably high standard of requiring public commentators to peer into the mind of a person claiming to be Indigenous to assess whether they subjectively felt that they were Indigenous at a certain point of time.”
Hameed said the ruling created a chilling effect against public intellectuals working in the domain of family history and identity.
“It will be a barrier for speaking about the identity of persons who occupy space in positions or opportunities where priority is given to Indigenous persons,” wrote Hameed.
“The public discourse around the appropriation of Indigenous identity by non-Indigenous people in Canada is a fundamentally important one.”
Coupal declined to comment pending appeal, but forwarded a statement from her lawyer, Paul Harasen.
“Dr Leroux was not found liable because of his statements that Dr Coupal isn’t Indigenous,” Harasen wrote.
“He was found liable because he went much further and repeatedly stated that she committed fraud. Those are two very different things.
“Dr Leroux suggested that Dr Coupal was a con artist who had obtained millions of dollars through her fraud. Fraud involves intentional, calculated dishonesty. Dr Coupal was never dishonest about her ancestry and the decision clearly and overwhelmingly found that to be the case. She was found to have had numerous, strong grounds for asserting that she was Indigenous.”
By Jesse Staniforth of APTN News.
