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Summary
In a press statement released today, Manitoba Metis Federation President David Chartrand denounced a claim made by disgraced Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak to Metis identity. She is said to have made the claim during her cultural competency training last year.
Beyak was suspended from the Senate and ordered to take the training, in part, after refusing to remove racist letters against Indigenous people that she published on her government website.
Chartrand said the ridiculous assertion of Metis status was an attempt to distract from the problems she has created in what can only be described as racist behaviour.
The statement from Chartrand reads:
Beyak is reported to have identified herself as Métis because of her "family’s adoption of an Indigenous child" who became her adopted sister.
"With this weird and strange sudden pronouncement of Métis identity by Senator Beyak, the Métis Nation needs to unequivocally say that this is not how we identify our citizens.
"I want to say in the strongest terms possible that even if she were Métis, the Métis Nation would disavow all of the discriminatory statements and actions that have come from this Senator."