Jaime Arsenault
For over twenty years Jaime Arsenault has claimed to be and has been publicly identified as Metis, Miqmak and White Earth Ojibwe. For example, in a 2001 article from the North Adams Transcript, Arsenault is quoted as claiming “Metis, half Native American, Mikmag tribe.”[1]She is also listed on the Andover Peabody Institute of Archeology, “Meet the Peabody” webpage, under the Board of Advisors as a “Member.” With that listing Arsenault (who at that point recasts her name to Arsenault-Cote) is identified as White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.[2] At still another site, linked to the Channel Foundation on a “Where Are They Now” page—celebrating past recipients of the Channel Foundation’s, Women’s Leadership Scholarship recipients—Arsenault is identified, once again as “Mi’kmaq.[3]” On “Changing the Status Quo: Museum Decolonization Institute,” a webpage belonging to The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience website also identifies Arsenault as “White Earth Chippewa.”[4]Arsenault also left her mark of a false claim at the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute. The content on the website for NNI refers to Arsenault as “Mi'kmaq and French Canadian,”[5] as it cites her co-authorship of an article in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal.[6]
There are many more public sites and records showing Arsenault’s identification as either Mikmaq or White Earth Ojibwe. We’ve listed links to organizations she’s affiliated with, and to videos and documents which show her speaking and representing Native people, among major organizations and institutions with interests in working with American Indian people. At some of those sites her identity claims are a bit more slippery, not directly identifying her as Native, but by extension allowing her name to be associated with White Earth Anishinaabe. Even with that it’s clear that over the course of her career in Indian Country, Arsenault has used Native identity as a false front for entry into key positions of power and influence while garnering grants and resources intended to support the work of legitimate American Indian people.
In her role as White Earth Tribal Preservation Officer Arsenault’s false claims to tribal belonging and overweening posturing have extended and enhanced her influence. She has passed herself off as Native in that position and let the title of that position infer that she is speaking on behalf of Native people as a Native person.
An issue of the Harvard Gazette from 2022 illustrates how egregious and harmful Arsenault’s actions and the work of pretendians can be.[7]Therein, the article states
“As tribal historic preservation officer for White Earth Nation, Jaime Arsenault has been doing repatriation work for nearly two decades. On Wednesday she presided over a ceremony at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology that returned two sacred scrolls and a pipe tomahawk to White Earth, which is an Anishinaabe nation (and its ancestors part of Anishinaabe spiritual and communal life). Arsenault described the process as long, but transformative.”
The irony of Arsenault fatuous posturing aligns with claims of other pretendians; the fact that she “presided over a ceremony” is troubling given her false claims to Native ancestry, as her role in leading a ceremony on the transfer of White Earth ancestral items is deeply unsettling, particularly in view of this quote from the article:
“Arsenault described the process as long, but transformative.
‘At the end I feel everyone involved is a little bit better off. You watch people change for the better, myself included,’ she said.”
Even given the benefit of the doubt for assisting with the return of White Earth items, Arsenault still put herself out front at a key historical moment wherein a dedicated Tribal Historic Preservation Officer might have looked to an array Minnesota Anishinaabe community spiritual leaders to oversee and be part of such a ceremony.
Perhaps, deeper reflection will be required for Arsenault to acknowledge her false claims to tribal ancestry.
We can hope, but the attached list of links (though not exhaustive) will further show that Arsenault sits on and has “served” on several influential boards that sway policy, funding and content development for Native communities. Similarly, she has been included in the work and maintained research profiles, and advisory roles of several highly regarded academic and political organizations nationwide. Those organizations, include The NDN Collective,[8] The Peabody Institute of Archeology,[9] the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,[10]The University of Arizona Native Nations Institute,[11] The School for Advanced Research,[12] and Sites of Conscience, the International Coalition.[13] Arsenault is listed as Jamie Arsenault under “Gaa-waabaabiganikaag White Earth Nation,” in the Truth Project Report developed as part of a University of Minnesota project on relations between tribes and tribal communities in Minnesota.[14] She is also listed as a recipient of scholarship and fellowship funds, at the Channel Foundation[15]and Bush Foundation[16]websites.
She has benefited financially through the grants given to her, through her appointments to boards, through publicity in the press, radio, and internet sites, etc. These have advanced her career and built her reputation up as a “go-to expert" on wrongs done to American Indian people. All of Arsenault’s appointments and publicity have emboldened her sense of power and value. Still, it isn't enough; through embellishment and deceit, she continually seeks more avenues to further advance her career, to open doors to future personally beneficial opportunities, and to create legacies for herself. (In addition, one of Arsenault’s collaborators on the recent disinterment of White Earth remains, T. Gordon intends to garner as much attention and build notoriety from that misguided repatriation work to advance a book he intends to publish, as well.)
In a recent sign of her creating a bigger profile and a greater sense of self-importance in Indian Country, tragically, Arsenault used the remains of children from the White Earth Nation for her benefit as she created a poorly informed narrative of tribal history and carelessly fast-tracked disinterment and repatriation processes to enhance her reputation in repatriation and to meet a publicity deadline. (The bones of the boys were disinterred and reburied, just before the National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools on September 30th.) If the young people whose remains were disinterred had been at the heart of Arsenault’s work, the focus would have been on them and their lives. It was not. At best, Arsenault listed four names of children from over 130 years ago, with no biographical information provided (after, by her claim, years of research). She garbled information about the youngsters (a name in one case, age in another). Her poorly informed work on that disinterment speaks not only to levels of incompetence but to Arsenault’s desire for publicity, pointing to attention given to her work, after the children’s remains were taken and reburied. Families are interconnected, the children likely have many, many relatives, but most were not part of the process or the decision-making, in the actions that Arsenault’s carried out in her lead role in the disinterment of remains. (In addition, one of Arsenault’s collaborators on the recent disinterment of White Earth remains, T. Gordon intends to garner as much attention and build notoriety from that misguided repatriation work to advance a book he intends to publish, as well.)
We offer here, just some of the ways that JA has benefited financially and professionally from her false claims to being Native. Through all these activities, through years of falsely identifying as Native, she has created personal monuments to claiming Native ancestry as she has built up her status as being "invaluable" to White Earth and all of Indian Country. Would her work have advanced if tribal and institutional partners were truthfully informed about her false claims? Would she have been so well connected with these impressive institutions and have all the "credentials” she has garnered in her association with those institutions, if she had been forthright about her tribal belonging? We may never know. But we see this moment as opportunity for truth telling and reconciliation on her part and on the part of the people and institutions she has worked with.
Ø Multiple grants and scholarships
Ø Wages as White Earth THPO for 7+ years
Ø Benefits from White Earth for 7+ Years
Ø Consultant fees from WE prior to full-time status
Ø Mileage, travel and stipends from WE
Ø Speaker honorariums
Ø Education/Conference fees paid by White Earth
We must also consider the harms of identity theft in review of Arsenault’s claims to Native identity and her work under those false claims.
Identity theft steals voices from those historically silenced and a seat at the table f from those historically excluded
Identity theft steals decision-making over important matters affecting tribal nation
Identity theft steals employment from qualified tribal members and descendants
Identity theft undermines the trust of funding agencies once they learn they've been duped
Identity theft helps the false claimant gain entrance to homes, offices, centers, gatherings, and to resources intended for tribal members and descendants as "inside" information and access allow the fraudster to underhandedly build relationships while allowing them to continue to their ruse.
Along with footnoted and additional links, we have posted a genealogical report on Arsenault. That report shows no evidence of Miqmak or White Earth ancestry. Nor does it show that she’s half indigenous or Metis, as she claimed in 2007. As with so many pretendians Arsenault has forged those claims to falsely live and work as a Native, to make a name for herself and to profit from trying to be “Indian.”
In view of all this, in the spirit of “truth and reconciliation,” we believe Arsenault needs to come clean about her pretendian past, and present, by making a truthful public statement about those false claims and by informing all the institutions she remains affiliated with that she is not Indigenous, not Native, not Mikmaq, not White Earth Ojibwe. If she chooses that more ethical route of self-representation TAAF will assist her in walking a more honest path toward truth telling. Otherwise, we will continue to address her fraud (and the undue power and privilege it has garnered for her,) with more evidence of her fraud, with additional uncovering of her unconscionable claims, even if she has purportedly acted and worked in the “interests” of Native communities.
For further information on Arsenault and her work, reach out to TAAF. We have additional documents and genealogical information to support the documents we’ve posted at this time.
[1]North Adams Transcript. North Adams, Massachusetts. Sat, Feb 17, 2001Page 1
[2] https://www.andover.edu/learning/peabody/peabody-people
[3] https://www.channelfoundation.org/impact-stories/where-are-they-now-wls-recipients/
[4] https://www.sitesofconscience.org/2019/07/musedi/
[5] https://nni.arizona.edu/news/new-journal-publications
[6] Rainie, Stephanie, Jorgensen, Miriam, Cornell, Stephen, Jaime Arsenault, “The Changing Landscape of Health Care Provision to American Indian Nations.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 1-24.
[7] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/for-museum-an-end-and-a-beginning/
[8] https://ndncollective.org/newsletters/november-2020-newsletter/
[9] https://www.andover.edu/learning/peabody/peabody-people
[10] https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/anthropology/programs/repatriation-office/repatriation-review-committee/committee-members/jaime-arsenault
[11] https://nni.arizona.edu/news/new-journal-publications
[12] The School for Advanced Research, Annual Report, 2022 to 2023. https://sarweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/SAR-AR-FY22-23.pdf
[13] https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sitesofconscience.org/2019/07/musedi/__;!!HXCxUKc!zL-jvfnBqrCSnWQ_QHff_UEg7kA95r3-rnD_MN0j-Jc6J4Ptj601bhcbDhrP1oBszspTnOwbs_OBEL6of-Pl$
[14] https://mn.gov/indian-affairs/assets/full-report_tcm1193-572488.pdf
[15] https://www.channelfoundation.org/impact-stories/where-are-they-now-wls-recipients/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0xlF7oDBjsPd6-PeZtWJ_9_46sxnJ0ZVg7Xkl35QgFoW16meIeQBjSTWY_aem_ab6hH4RN35tjszABTV7GJg
[16] https://www.bushfoundation.org/learning-logs/jaime-arsenault-2023-05
