A year after her mother was sentenced to prison for defrauding Inuit organizations to help pay for her education, an Ontario woman went public for the first time about the case — and Jordan Archer’s story has again stirred up anger and frustration among Inuit.
Archer, formerly Nadya Gill, spoke to the Toronto Star earlier this month about her mother Karima Manji’s admission of guilt and conviction in a Nunavut courtroom last year, and how the case derailed Archer’s own life and career.
Archer’s story has aroused little sympathy in Nunavut, however, where many Inuit feel she and her twin sister Amira Gill still owe them an apology. The two sisters had originally been charged along with their mother, but the charges against the twins were ultimately dropped in early 2024 when Manji pleaded guilty and took “full responsibility for the matters at hand.”
Manji was sentenced to three years in prison last summer after admitting to defrauding Inuit organizations of more than $158,000 for her twin daughters’ education. Manji had claimed she adopted her daughters from an Inuk woman, Kitty Noah.
The Toronto Star story describes Archer as a first-generation Canadian, and Manji as an immigrant from Tanzania who had lived for a brief time in Nunavut. Archer’s father, it says, is British and the family has no Inuit or Indigenous background.
In the story, Archer said since the case was first reported she has “abandoned” her law career, lost a contract to play in a professional soccer league, and now works part time at a hockey rink.
Archer told the Toronto Star she was unaware of her mother’s fraudulent claims to secure her scholarship money. She feels she’s paid an unfair price for something she said she had no knowledge of.
She also said she never claimed to be Inuk by blood. She said her mother presented her with an Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) enrolment card at the age of 17, telling the sisters they were eligible to receive the cards, which were for Inuit beneficiaries, because of a connection Manji had had with an Inuit family from Iqaluit.
Archer told the Star she had “no idea” her mother was using the NTI cards to secure tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships for her, though she knew the cards allow the card-holders to receive benefits. She said her mother controlled many of her life decisions, including all her applications, finances and logistics.
CBC News reached out to Archer, along with her mother and sister, several times since 2023, but received no response. In April, Archer refused an interview with CBC News to tell her story.
Noah Noah, son of the late Kitty Noah, said he wasn’t interested in speaking with the Toronto Star about Archer’s story. He feels she’s been unreasonably portrayed as a victim.
“I’m disappointed, I mean, to say the least. To play the victim in all this, it just is… it’s not right,” he said from his home outside Iqaluit.
“[The sisters] should have been held accountable. I mean, I still believe that.”
Asked if he has any sympathy for Archer’s current situation, Noah said he doesn’t.
“I mean, what they did was wrong, and in every sense of the word,” he said.
“So not being able to use what she had stolen [Inuit identities] is just, I think, the way it was supposed to work out.”
Crystal Semaganis, who is Plains Cree from the Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan, has been following the story since it broke in 2023. The Indigenous activist, who now lives in northern Ontario, shared her frustration with the Toronto Star article about Archer earlier this month in a Facebook post that has since been widely shared.
“With this recent article, there was a lot of deflection, a lot of throwing her mother under the bus kind of thing, and not taking any responsibility,” Semaganis said.
“You know, it didn’t shine a light on the actual problem. It totally glossed it over, and it was a total diversion to what the actual issue is.”
To Semaganis, the issue is about exploitation and theft from people who are already disadvantaged.
“First Nations, Inuit and Metis populations are marginalized in this community across this nation and we have very limited resources, especially for the North,” she said.
“You know, my youngest son is Inuk, and I’ve lived in Nunavut. So I know first hand the disparity that exists between settler communities and Indigenous communities.”
Semaganis said it’s time for Archer to accept some responsibility and apologize.
“The truthful way forward would be to say, ‘I did this, this is wrong. Let me make reparations.’ But that hasn’t happened yet.”
Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout also finds Archer’s claims hard to swallow. She said she finds it “quite unbelievable” Archer was duped by her mother.
“As much as I want to be compassionate towards her, she sounds like she’s a smart young lady and to hear the excuses that she gave about trusting her mother, it is quite difficult for me to believe her story.”
Idlout said Manji’s actions “definitely caused harm” because that scholarship money was intended for Inuit, who are already “robbed” of many opportunities because of barriers they face in accessing education.
“It’s triggering as well, because as Inuit, we are given so many barriers to be successful. It’s so hard to complete high school. It’s hard to go to university. It is so hard to access scholarships,” she said.
“To see how NTI’s system was manipulated, when we feel like it’s already challenging enough, it is quite harmful.”
Idlout believes Archer should do her part and learn more about Inuit history.
“We still have intergenerational trauma from residential schools, from dog slaughters. These are very difficult experiences that we’re still being forced to experience through intergenerational trauma,” Idlout said.
“If she genuinely cares about what impact she had on Inuit, I think she should do her research, learn more about Inuit and give that genuine apology.”
James Eetoolook, who decades ago was involved in negotiating the Nunavut Agreement, the largest land claim settlement in Canada which led to the creation of Nunavut, remembers the hard work and sacrifices many Inuit leaders had to make during the decades-long process.
“They had to be away two weeks at a time, sometimes more than that. And if you start doing it every month, it took a toll in a lot of ways,” Eetoolook recalled. “But the end results are still there, in the implementation today.”
But Eetoolook said one of the biggest sacrifices Inuit had to make in order to get the Nunavut Agreement was the much-debated extinguishment clause: surrendering their Aboriginal rights to lands and water.
Speaking from his home in Taloyoak, Nunavut, Eetoolook said Inuit have seen their rights taken away in many ways over the years.
Speaking of Manji’s fraud case, he said people are “always look for loopholes.”
“They used vulnerable people to gain Inuit status to get funding for their education, for their personal upgrade … and I think that that is wrong,” he said.
Noah Noah agrees. He was pleased last year when Manji was sentenced to three years in prison, but he still wants her daughters to take some responsibility as well.
“I mean, an apology would be, at a minimum, a good thing.”
