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Awkwardly for me, the story presents an encumbrance in telling it straight that I need to get out of the way.

Like Boyden, I come straight up from what he calls a “Celtic” ancestry, with one-eighth derived elsewhere.

In Boyden’s case, he has variously described or is reported to have described that eighth, from which he derives and asserts his identity as an aboriginal person, as Metis, Mi’kmaq, Nipmuc, Anishinabe, Ojibwe, and Wasauksing. Since the whole thing blew up, he’s explained that eighth this way: “Nipmuc ancestry on my father’s side, and Ojibwe ancestry on my mother’s.”

In the unglamorous eighth of my own case, it’s a great-grandmother on my mother’s side—an Englishwoman. This isn’t the encumbrance.

It’s that the guy who started it all is Robert Jago, “the most dangerous blogger in Canada,” as Maclean’s called him, owing to his penchant for sleuthing that cost several Conservative party contenders candidacies during last year’s federal election.

Robert is a Kwantlen and Nooksack tribe member. His genealogy bears mention because among Jago’s aboriginal forebears, a great-great-great-great grandmother was the notable Sto:lo woman Katherine Kwantlen, who happens to have been my wife Yvette’s great-great-great-great grandmother as well.

To make things slightly more complicated: To the degree that there is an argument at all among and between aboriginal people about Boyden’s authenticity as an aboriginal person, you could put Jago in one corner, and most prominently in the opposite corner you might find Ernie Crey, chief of the Cheam community, Pilalt tribe, Sto:lo Nation. A tireless campaigner for the cause of off-reserve and urban aboriginals, Ernie is a dear friend.