Thomas King, the Canadian author who had identified as part-Cherokee throughout his celebrated career, said on Monday that contrary to what he had believed his entire life, he has no Indigenous ancestry.
Mr. King wrote in The Globe and Mail that his mother had told him that his biological father was part-Cherokee, but a genealogist working with an organization that aims to expose claims of false Indigenous heritage found no Cherokee connection. Mr. King said the findings were shared with him this month.
“It’s been a couple of weeks since that video call, and I’m still reeling. At 82, I feel as though I’ve been ripped in half, a one-legged man in a two-legged story. Not the Indian I had in mind. Not an Indian at all,” Mr. King wrote.
The revelation adds to a list of prominent figures in Canada and the United States whose Native American heritage has been questioned in recent years. In Canada, the challenges have prompted a national conversation about Indigenous identity and how to prevent fraudulent claims to it. They have included the award-winning folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, Randy Boissonnault, who had to step down as Canada’s employment minister last year, and prominent academics.
Mr. King and his agent could not be reached for comment. His publisher, HarperCollins Canada, and the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Born in the United States in 1943, Mr. King was raised in Roseville, Calif. His father left when he was 3 years old and when he tracked down his aunt decades later, she also told him that they had Cherokee ancestry, Mr. King wrote on Monday. But several years ago, he said, he became aware of rumors that he was not Indigenous.
While trying to find the origin of those rumors, Mr. King said he said he got in touch in October with the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, an organization based in Cherokee, N.C., that seeks to stop people from falsely claiming Native American identities and profiting from them.
This month, the organization arranged a video call with Mr. King, which also included a genealogist and a professor of Indigenous studies. The genealogist had found his father’s side of the family and traced it back.
“And it didn’t lead to the Cherokee,” Mr. King wrote. “No Cherokee on the King side. No Cherokee on the Hunt side. No Indians anywhere to be found.”
Mr. King’s writing career started after he moved to Canada in 1980 to teach at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. His fiction and nonfiction, focused on the history and experience of Indigenous peoples in North America, brought him critical acclaim and multiple awards.
In 2020, Mr. King was named the Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors. The citation said his work “exposes the hard truths of the injustices of the Indigenous peoples of North America,” and “has changed our perception of Canadian history.”
In his article on Monday, Mr. King said that he would now have to deal with questions about whether he benefited as a writer because he identified as Native American and if that came at the expense of other Indigenous writers. But apologizing would not be appropriate as it would assume a misdeed or crime, he wrote.
Mr. King expressed the hope that he would be able to continue supporting Indigenous causes and artists while acknowledging that they may not want to associate with him anymore.
The Edmonton Opera said on Monday that it would cancel its planned production of a work developed from Mr. King’s 2020 novel, “Indians on Vacation.”
The company did not mention Mr. King or his article on Monday, but said it had consulted with Indigenous Elders and others “who shared concerns about how presenting this work at this moment would impact their community.” A representative for the Edmonton Opera did not respond to a request for comment.
Qasim Nauman is a Times editor in Seoul, covering breaking news from around the world.
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