Indo-Canadian twin sisters and their mother were charged with fraud for claiming native status to get benefits reserved for the native community. Amira and Nadya Gill have been charged with fraud over $5,000, along with the woman who says she is their adopted mother, Karima Manji for claiming Inuit status.

By DESIBUZZCanada Staff With News Files

NUNAVUT – Indo-Canadian twin sisters and their mother were charged with fraud for claiming native status to get benefits reserved for the native community.

Amira and Nadya Gill have been charged with fraud over $5,000, along with the woman who says she is their adopted mother, Karima Manji for claiming Inuit status.

The allegations are that the women used their status “to defraud the Kakivak Association and Qikiqtani Inuit Association of funds that are only available to Inuit beneficiaries by obtaining grants and scholarships.”

As first reported by Nunatsiaq News in March, the twins have claimed to be Inuit, though Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) confirmed to CBC that neither they nor their adoptive mother had received funding from NTI. NTI is responsible for overseeing the enrolment of Inuit under the Nunavut Agreement, reported CBC News.

NTI launched an investigation and said it removed them from its enrolment list, and RCMP confirmed at that point they had opened an investigation into the matter as well.

In a news release Thursday morning, Iqaluit RCMP said an investigation found that between October 2016 and September 2022, the women applied for and obtained Inuit beneficiary status for the Gill sisters as adopted Inuit children.

That appears to line up with dates from NTI, who said the sisters were added to the Inuit enrolment list in 2016 after Manji applied on their behalf. Manji had identified Kitty Noah, an Inuk woman, as the twins’ birth mother, the organization said.

But Kitty’s son, Noah Noah, has said Kitty isn’t related to the twins.

Speaking to CBC News last week, before the charges were publicly announced, Noah Noah said police had just told him that charges would be laid against Manji and the Gill twins.

“I honestly didn’t know how it was going to play out. So, I mean, the fact that [they’re] being charged makes me very, for lack of better words, happy,” he said.

Noah said his mother Kitty died a couple of months ago.

NTI president Aluki Kotierk told CBC News that if the Gill sisters and Manji are found guilty, they should, “at a minimum,” return any funds they received from the Inuit associations.

To Kotierk, the case involving the Gill sisters and Manji fits into what she sees as a larger trend, beyond just Nunavut, of non-Indigenous people claiming Indigenous identity.

“It’s just another form of colonization,” she said.

Manji and the Gill sisters are all scheduled to appear in court in Iqaluit on Oct. 30.