Questions raised about celebrated Métis healer's Indigenous identity
Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital shutters program, director retires amid allegations over his heritage
In the summer of 2019, the Bear's Den All Nations Traditional Medicine Sweat Lodge opened with great fanfare. Ontario's lieutenant-governor was on hand for the celebrations on the lawn outside Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital. So were the federal minister of Crown-Indigenous affairs, two local Liberal MPs, a representative from the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, and members of the Juno Award-winning rock band, The Arkells.
After the prayers, speeches and ribbon-cutting, they all gathered together for a photo with the eagle-feather-toting guest of honour, Ernest Matton, the Métis elder who also goes by the Mohawk name Atheshsa Niohkwa:rita:a — Little Brown Bear.
Almost three years later, all that's left of the sweat lodge are a sign with the words "Thank You" and some orange ribbons tied to a chain-link fence. The hospital has shut down its Aboriginal healing program.
And Matton, Michael Garron's director of Aboriginal education, programs and culture, has disappeared, too, having abruptly retired at the beginning of May — after members of Toronto's Indigenous community started raising questions about whether he is actually who he claims to be.
The 64-year-old Matton first started working for Michael Garron as a certified addictions counsellor in 2012. Over the course of a decade, he helped the hospital expand its outreach to the city's Indigenous population, taking over as program manager in 2018 and being promoted to director in 2020.
He collected accolades — winning an Order of Ontario and a Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers, even starring in a documentary. And he earned a spot on Ontario's Sunshine List of public employees who are paid more than $100,000 a year.
But as Matton's profile grew, so did the chatter in Indigenous circles, where many came to question his potpourri mix of First Nations teachings, and even his background.
Unanswered questions, raised suspicions
Deanne Hupfield, an Indigenous educator and powwow dancer, first encountered Matton a number of years ago at a Toronto YMCA, where he was giving a lecture on the Seven Grandfather Teachings of her Ojibway nation.
"He was teaching a bunch of non-Indigenous people about my culture," Hupfield recalls. "And then I saw his [ribbon] shirt, with his little Métis sign on it. And I was like, 'That's interesting. Who is this person? I don't know who this person is.' And I had been in the Native community for many years and I'm pretty connected across all of Canada."
Last year, after two friends raised their own concerns about Matton, Hupfield began to reach out to her extensive Facebook network to see if anyone else knew Elder Little Brown Bear, and where he came from.
"No one knew who he was. The Métis community couldn't place him," said Hupfield.
Now harbouring suspicions that Matton was "self-Indigenizing," Hupfield wrote to Michael Garron Hospital to ask what steps had been taken to verify his identity before putting him in charge of their healing program. She received an initial form response from the hospital, but heard nothing else.
CBC News spoke with three other community members who also expressed their concerns about Matton to the hospital, to little apparent effect.
"I'm not happy. They swept it under the rug. They never followed up with me," said Hupfield. "I think that's really convenient that he's retiring now."
When reached by CBC News, Matton declined an interview, citing family health concerns.
Sarah Downey, the president and CEO of Michael Garron Hospital also declined an interview, but did provide a detailed statement after obtaining Matton's consent to share his personal information.
"When we first learned about the concerns of a few community members regarding Elder Little Brown Bear's Indigenous identity, we took the matter very seriously," Downey wrote. "We immediately pursued a path with him to investigate the situation and take the necessary steps to verify his ancestry."
Matton supplied the hospital with a copy of a citizenship card issued by the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) and letter from the Barrie-South Simcoe Métis Council, attesting that he currently appears on their registry list and acts as their elder.
However, Downey acknowledged that the proof provided was not clearcut. That's because Matton has yet to officially verify his claims of Métis heritage to the satisfaction of the MNO.
'Incomplete' file with Métis Nation
In 2017, the Métis Nation of Ontario began a process of vetting its 24,000 members in preparation for self-government, requiring that those who claimed historic links to the community document those ties with things like birth certificates, marriage licences, census records and Hudson's Bay Company records.
Some 5,400 members were judged to have "incomplete" files — Matton among them, according to the hospital statement.
Five years later, 5,300 of those people have still yet to establish a paper trail and obtain the new MNO membership cards that entitle them to receive benefits that have been negotiated with the government, or hold elected positions within the organization. This summer, the MNO will debate its next steps, including possible expulsion of those who remain unverified.
Margaret Froh, president of the Métis Nation of Ontario, wouldn't speak specifically about Matton's case, but told CBC News that cleaning up the membership list is "a major issue" for the organization.
The MNO has tried to make the verification process simple and painless, she said, by establishing a database of genealogical information that traces more than 100 recognized family lines flowing from communities that came into being in the mid to late 1700s.
"I know there've been lots of folks writing and talking about First Nation ancestors in the 1600s. Those wouldn't count," said Froh. "You actually do have to show a Métis ancestor in the historic record.
"We are a distinct Indigenous people. We have a unique history, culture, language, traditions," she added.
WATCH | MNO president discusses the impact of fraudulent claims of Indigenous identity:
Along with his claimed Métis heritage, Matton has at various points spoken of a grandmother who had Cheyenne blood from Oklahoma, and frequently invokes "Dahajee," a Mohawk elder from Wahta Territory, near Bala, Ont., whom he says adopted him into the Bear Clan and became his spiritual mentor.
Matton did not respond to written questions about those aspects of his heritage, and attempts by CBC News to independently verify those claims were unsuccessful.
At present, Matton still serves as an elder and adviser for the Barrie-South Simcoe Métis Council, a chapter of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
"Elder Little Brown Bear is an accepted individual in the Barrie community, and he does a lot of good," said the group's volunteer president, Roxanne Shank. "He's a Lieutenant Governor Award-winner, among other things, for his community service."
Shank said Matton's name remains on the citizenship lists she receives from the MNO, and that she considers him a full-fledged member until that changes. Given that status, she said she questions why his position at Michael Garron Hospital ever became an issue, raising the spectre of anti-Métis bias.
"I think people think that somehow Métis status is derivative. It is not," said Shank. "I think it's important to stress this point. We're not Miller Lite-anything. We're not 'pretendians.' We are Métis and we are unique."
Indigenous identity has become a complex topic in recent months, with a number of high-profile figures facing allegations that they have exaggerated, or even fabricated, their ties to First Nations, Inuit or Métis communities.
Help needed in verifying identities, hospital says
Downey, the Michael Garron Hospital CEO, says employers need guidance and help from those communities when it comes to verifying applicants' heritage.
"Private- and public-sector colonial institutions could greatly benefit from Indigenous governing bodies that set out clear standards and due process to determine proof of Indigeneity," she wrote. "We would welcome these policies and processes to support the vetting of Indigeneity in our recruitment and hiring practices."
But Pam Palmater, the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, says the problem is a long-standing one, fuelled largely by institutional indifference.
"Indigenous people have tried to get government departments, universities, awards shows to deal with this. But they've always refused," said Palmater. "They've always been like, 'Oh, well, anyone can identify however they want.' And that's simply not the case."
The harm done by imposters can be real, said Palmater, especially in sectors like health care.
"You're getting people at their most vulnerable. They're looking for a Native adviser or a Native patient advocate, or someone to talk about spirituality or Native medicine," she said.
"If you bring in a fake, you're not getting any of that. At best, you're getting a really problematic mishmash of Wikipedia, Google Search and generic, stereotypical things about Native people that don't actually match with a specific culture or a specific practice."
(Michael Garron Hospital closed its Aboriginal Healing Program space on May 1, the same day Matton took retirement. The hospital says it was concerned about ventilation and the potential for COVID-19 transmission and is now "seeking a new arrangement and partnership for Indigenous programs and services.")
Palmater's thoughts are echoed by a Toronto woman who was trying to reconnect with her own Ojibway heritage when she sought help from a healing circle that Matton oversaw at Michael Garron Hospital.
Melanie Bartel is an Ojibway artist, originally from Lac Seul First Nation in northern Ontario, who was adopted in the 1970s and raised by a white family.
Matton was the first elder she had ever dealt with. She found him to be gentle and caring, and quickly came to trust Matton and rely on his counsel. But as she became more active in the community and discovered how few people actually seemed to know her mentor, doubts began to creep in.
The relationship turned sour after Bartel sought Matton's blessing for an art project that she hoped would honour Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people, but actually ended up hurting some of the families she had sought to comfort.
"The advice that he gave me really contradicted with advice that I got later on from elders that were more connected to the Indigenous community, and were more in tune with what was culturally acceptable," said Bartel. "It actually did me personal harm and made me retreat from the community, and made me second-guess everything that I had been taught from him."
It was a blow, she said, that means she won't soon forgive the man she called Elder Little Brown Bear — or the institution that put him in a position of responsibility.
"I would say that I personally don't trust Michael Garron Hospital anymore," said Bartel. "I think they owe us an explanation.
"How many years was he teaching things to people and having people trust him, only to turn around and find out that he may not be who he said he was?"
Jonathon Gatehouse can be contacted via email at jonathon.gatehouse@cbc.ca, or reached via the CBC's digitally encrypted SecureDrop system at https://www.cbc.ca/securedrop/.
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