NDP MP Rom\u00e9o Saganash\u00a0has apologized for plagiarizing parts of a recent op-ed column he wrote about why he, and many other Indigenous people, would not be celebrating Canada’s 150th\u00a0anniversary.<\/p>\n
Saganash\u00a0lifted paragraphs, nearly verbatim, from a speech delivered by\u00a0student Erica Violet Lee at an event called Reckoning with Canada at 150\u00a0at Carleton University in March. Some of her\u00a0words were later republished under the MP’s name in a column titled “150 Years of Cultural Genocide: Today, Like All Days, is an Insult.”<\/p>\n
Lee first flagged the issue on her Facebook page after she read Saganash’s column in the\u00a0Globe and Mail.<\/em>\u00a0“I saw an excerpt from this GM article<\/a> quoted on a Facebook status today, and I thought the language sounded\u00a0too familiar to my work,” she wrote. “I’m not sure what to do about this.”<\/p>\n APTN\u00a0reported Tuesday that Saganash, a Cree from northern Quebec,\u00a0then reached out to Lee after her post\u00a0circulated on social media, sending her a message promising to speak with his assistant \u2014 who he said wrote the first draft of the piece \u2014 and make adjustments.<\/p>\n A further analysis of the op-ed by CBC News revealed at least one other passage\u00a0was apparently lifted, this time\u00a0from a different source. One paragraph was copied from a piece first published in February 2013<\/a>\u00a0by Eric Ritskes, a student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, on the\u00a0now defunct website New Left Project.<\/p>\n “Settler colonialism demands Indigenous erasure for the purpose of claiming Indigenous land, it is the\u00a0symbolic and real replacement\u00a0of Indigenous Peoples with settlers who attempt to claim belonging,” Ritskes wrote. Saganash\u00a0used the exact same sentence in his piece, though with corrected punctuation.<\/p>\n Saganash apologized to Lee in a statement sent to CBC News Tuesday morning, and later modified his comments when asked\u00a0about the other example of apparent plagiarism that was not initially addressed.<\/p>\n “In drafting my letter on my thoughts on Canada 150, a mistake was made by which ideas that were expressed by someone else were not given proper credit. I take full responsibility for this omission and have taken steps to correct this,”\u00a0Saganash\u00a0said.<\/p>\n “An important lesson should be taken from this. We should all make every effort to ensure that we give full credit for ideas. For too long, Indigenous people have been without a voice, and therefore I apologize for not giving the authors the credit they are due.”<\/p>\n Lee said in an email that she was “thankful for Mr. Saganash’s honesty,” calling him a “friend and a great advocate for our people in a place that is still so hostile to us.”<\/p>\n2nd instance<\/h2>\n
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‘Thankful for Mr. Saganash’s honesty’<\/h2>\n