Thomas King revelation ‘a blemish on the entire Canadian literary industry,’ says Niigaan Sinclair

LISTEN | Full interview with columnist and scholar Niigaan Sinclair: As It Happens 6:35 Thomas King revelation ‘a blemish on the entire Canadian literary industry,’ says Niigaan Sinclair

For Anishinaabe writer and scholar Niigaan Sinclair, the revelation that author Thomas King is not Indigenous is a painful one.

King is an award-winning Canadian-American author who earned his living writing about his complex relationship with Indigenous identity, most notably in his 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian .

But on Monday, he revealed in a Globe and Mail editorial that he is “not an Indian at all.”

King wrote that he’d always believed his mother’s story that he was part Cherokee on his estranged father's side.

But recently, he wrote, the Tribal Alliance Against Fr