Nunavut RCMP charge Gill sisters, mother with fraud for claiming Inuit status

Iqaluit RCMP say they’ve charged three women with fraud over $5,000 for claiming Inuit status.

Twin sisters Amira and Nadya Gill, as well as the woman who claims to be their adoptive mother Karima Manji, face two charges each.

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.

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 women, as the twins’ birth mother, the organization said.

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

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