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Criminal charges announced in Indigenous identity fraud case
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Indianz.Com
Criminal charges have been laid against three family members who lied about their Indigenous identity for personal and monetary gain, authorities in Canada announced.
Karima Manji, 59, and her twin daughters, Amira Gill and Nadya Gill, both 25, committed fraud while claiming to be Inuit, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The family members are accused of defrauding Inuit organizations of money to which they otherwise would not have been entitled, the law enforcement agency said in a news release on Thursday.
“The women used this Inuit beneficiary status to defraud the Kakivak Association and Qikiqtani Inuit Association of funds that are only available to Inuit beneficiaries by obtaining grants and scholarships,” the release from the RCMP in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, a self-governing Inuit territory in Canada.
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![Amira Gill](https://indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/22/AmiraGillCTV.jpg)
Stories in the Nunatsiaq News underscore the close nature of the community. In early April, the publication identified the Inuit family to which Manji claimed her daughters were connected. The son of the Inuk woman who was said to be the biological mother of the Gill twins later posted a public statement that supported the investigation into the alleged fraud. “It is harmful to Indigenous communities to claim and benefit from falsely claiming Indigenous identity,” Noah Noah said in the April 4 statement. Noah described his mother as being a “vulnerable person who may have been exploited” as a result of the situation. He further pointed out that while Manji was known to his family, they had no knowledge of her daughters. The primary language of Nunavut is Inuktitut, which is one of the Inuit languages spoken in Canada, Greenland and Alaska in the United States.A statement from the Noah family re: Gill twins. pic.twitter.com/UqoFxyAf59
— Noah Noah (@northsnoahnoah) April 4, 2023
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