Canada It is a country with a large indigenous populationincluding 70,000 Inuit who live in the Inuit Nunangat, the vast northern homeland spanning more than 3 million km. Inuit is a common name for the various peoples who inhabit the Arctic regions of North America.
Supposed indigenous people
In recent years, Canadian justice has had to deal with many cases of fraud, as people falsely claimed to have an indigenous identity or ancestry to receive the aid that these people receive in the North American countryHowever, cases of Inuit fraud in which people manage to receive official documents are less common.
As for the case of Karima Manji, and her daughters Amira and Nadyais believed to be the first case in which there is a prison sentence for an aspiring indigenous person. Manji was sentenced last Thursday to three years in prison and must return the more than 150,000 dollars that his daughters received as aid for allegedly being Inuit. Manji had pleaded guilty to fraud in February.
The Nunavut judge Mia Manocchio He said the case should serve as a signal to any future indigenous claimants that false appropriation of indigenous identity in a criminal context will carry a significant penalty.
Karima Manji and her Iniut daughters
Manji, 59 years old, began the bureaucratic process for her daughters to obtain Inuit identity in 2016. The woman, a resident of Toronto, I lived briefly in Iqaluit, the territorial capital of the Nunavut region in the 1990s 1990s. But The daughters, Nadya and Amira, were born in Ontario and have no relationship with the Inuit or with the lands of Nunavut.
Karima’s argument for her daughters receiving the Inuit identity was that she had adopted them, that They were not his biological daughters, but their mother was a woman from Iqaluit named Kitty Noah.In this way, Manji intended to deceive the officials who were to review his application.
Surprisingly, the Manji app not the review of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, NTI, which oversees the process and aims to prevent fraudulent registrations.
In these last few months doubts began to arise regarding the veracity of the identity of Manji’s daughters. In fact, on March 30, the NTI released a official statement stating that it was aware of the possible fraudulent registration by Amira and Nadya Gill.
In the same statement, They claimed that Kitty Noah, the alleged biological mother of the girls, was the one who had started the process to have Amira and Nadya removed from the Inuit registration list.
Amira and Nadya, who were 18 at the time their application was approved, wasted no time and as soon as they officially received their Inuit identity, They began to access money from the Kakivak Association, which court documents describe as an Inuit-serving organization (…) that provides sponsorship funding to Inuit on Baffin Island in Canada for education-related expenses.
Both Amira and Nadya They boast a lot about their indigenous identities in their university environments, it is included They started an Internet company, Kanata Trade Company, which was allegedly run by twin Inuit sisters. Their mother, Karima, was the CEO and the company, which sold items designed by supposedly indigenous artisans, was even certified by the Canadian Aboriginal Business Council.
The aid received by the sisters, between September 2020 and March 2023, amounts to the amount of 158,254.05 Canadian dollars, which is approximately 108,000 euros. Another $64,413 (almost 44,000 euros) was waiting to be received by Amira in the first of 2023, but never reached her pocket.
Once the fraud was discovered, the NTI confirmed that it was the first case of its kind, while defending the review process and assuring that his employees made every decision with great care and seriousness, based on reliable evidence.
Trial and sentencing
In In September 2023, the Iqaluit RCMP charged Manji and her daughters with fraud worth more than $5,000For its part, the crown, after Manji pleaded guilty in February, dropped the charges against Amira and Nadya, something Manocchio did not agree with.
The judge, during the sentencing last Thursday, He rejected the recommendations of the crown, since only a prison sentence would be fair. for a fraud of this magnitude. Ms. Manji has victimized her own daughters, who have been seriously compromised by her crimes, Manocchio said. Following the sentence, Manji has had to return 130,000 dollars (88,000 ) and still owes 28,254 dollars (almost 20,000 ) to the Kavikak Association.
During the sentencing session, Manocchio was particularly harsh with Manji. The judge recalled that Amira and Nadya’s mother She had already been convicted of fraud while working for a charitybut had never served a prison sentence before. He said it was a good sign for other frauds, because frauds pay attention to what happens to other frauds.
Also He declared that the real victim of this crime was none other than the Inuit people. The son of Noah, the alleged biological mother of Amira and Nadya, told CBC News that he was very satisfied with the outcome, as he felt better and that he considered the sentence as a message sent to anyone who tries to defraud indigenous people, Inuit, First Nations
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