“When I saw that TEDx, to be quite honest, I was repulsed by how hard she was working to pass herself off as Indigenous,” Winona Wheeler, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan told CBC.

“You’ve got no right to tell people that’s who you are in order to gain legitimacy, to get positions and to get funding. That’s abuse.”

“It makes you feel a bit sick,” said Janet Smylie, a Métis family medicine professor from the University of Toronto, who conducted her own research into Dr Bourassa’s genealogy.

“To have an impostor who is speaking on behalf of Métis and Indigenous people to the country about literally what it means to be Métis – that’s very disturbing and upsetting and harmful.”

On Monday the CIHR issued a statement saying it acknowledged “the pain experienced by indigenous people as a result of this matter.” The government-affiliated organisation had initially backed Dr Bourassa. 

The UoS said it suspended her after becoming concerned with her responses to the media. 

Canada’s indigenous population, which makes up around 5 per cent of the nation, has fought with the federal government over historic abuses. 

The debate was fuelled this year by the discovery of mass graves of children seized from their families and sent to state-funded boarding schools, a policy of forced assimilation that stretched from the 19th century into the 1970s. 

Indigenous leaders have cited that legacy of abuse and isolation as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has spoken of the need to face Canada’s history of discrimination, has faced accusations of hypocrisy after his government went to court to reduce the amount of compensation owed to indigenous victims of inadequate social care. 

Dr Bourassa’s curious case is not the first of its kind.

Elizabeth Warren:

The Democrat senator who ran for president said: “Being Native American has been a part of my story, I guess since the day I was born.”

Claiming to have Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage, she repeatedly referenced her roots during the campaign. However, when asked for documentation, she could not provide any and said she had learnt of her past through family stories.

Donald Trump dubbed her ‘Pocahontas’, saying: “Her mother says she has high cheekbones. That’s her only evidence.”

Eventually, she released a DNA test that suggested she has a distant Native American ancestor, possibly from 10 generations ago.