In an agreed-upon statement issued late last week, the Law Society of B.C. reprimanded Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and fined her $10,000, after she admitted she had made a series of false public claims about her accomplishments and history.

At the same time, the lawyer, former judge and academic suggests that a DNA test referenced in that agreement confirms the truth of her Indigenous ancestry claims.

(The) geneticist (who reviewed the DNA results), Simon Gravel of McGill University, told CBC when reached by phone that he was asked to review DNA results provided to him by Turpel-Lafond’s lawyer from a test that had been conducted by U.S.-based Nebula Genomics.

“I also, myself, did not verify whether this report is from [Turpel-Lafond],” he said. “This is something that they’re claiming.”

He said the test results are similar to what the public would receive from an Ancestry.com or 23 and Me test, where a percentage of DNA ancestry is assigned from the various regions of the world.