There have been several discussions in recent years about the growing phenomenon of settler Canadians falsely identifying themselves as Indigenous (Andersen, 2014; Couturier, 2020; Donovan, 2018; Gaudry & Andersen, 2016; Gaudry & Leroux, 2017; Leroux, 2019; Pedri-Spade, 2022; Sturm, 2011). This phenomenon is often labeled “settler self-indigenization” or a form of “race-shifting” akin to the Rachel Dolezal case, in which a white woman claimed to be of African American descent. While self-indigenizers may come to associate their newly acquired Indigenous identity with any of the Indigenous peoples of North America, in the Canadian context specifically, when settlers shift to an Indigenous identity, they often claim to be some kind of “new Métis” (Leroux, 2019).

The goal of this paper is to propose a characterization of the concept of settler self-indigenization and to consider some of the injustices that are generated by settlers identifying as Métis in the process of self-indigenization. Our aim here is to focus on injustices that come into view through employing an epistemic injustice lens. In the context of this paper, such a lens focuses on how deficient conceptual resources in the Canadian public’s social understanding of the Métis are exploited by self-indigenizers as part of the rationalization of the process of self-indigenization. Achieving these goals, we believe, contributes to a growing understanding of self-indigenization as a contemporary dimension of settler colonialism.