Canada: ‘Inconvenient Indian’ author Thomas King says he is not Indigenous

A prominent Canadian-American author, who has long claimed Indigenous ancestry and whose work exposed “the hard truths of the injustices of the Indigenous peoples of North America”, has learned from a genealogist that he has no Cherokee ancestry.

In an essay titled “A most inconvenient Indian” published on Monday for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Thomas King said he had learned of rumours circulating in recent years within both the arts and Indigenous communities that questioned his Cherokee heritage.

In mid-November, he met with members of the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (Taaf), a group based in the state of North Carolina that exposes perpetrators of Indigenous identity fraud. King says this group was the main source of the rumours.

The genealogist working with Taaf told King she fou