There Are No Fakes (2019) - full transcript

[man] Buying an original work of art,
there's something special about it

because you know at some point in time, that
artist was present with that piece of work.

You are in the company of that
artist's spirit, in a way.

[Norval] Many times people come
up to me and say,

"Norval,
I thank you very much for healing me."

What did it?
That certain painting.

It will be a force that will protect
whatever situation you're in.

[man] Norval Morrisseau,
they call him the Picasso of the North.

[man] Norval Morrisseau is a...
a spiritual supernova. You know, a dynamo.

[man] Where Morrisseau was
trying to lift people up,

but there were people who have
been poisoning Morrisseau's legacy.



[man] I feel in this story, I'm...
I'm just a little like Alice in Wonderland.

I went through the little door,

and it's just opened up to this whole,
like, "Wow."

I just wanted to buy a painting,
really.

[man] Kevin Hearn all of a sudden come
out of the woodwork and decided to sue.

He's gonna be spending a lot of money on
lawyers. But he's got no hope in hell.

Jonathan Somner,
who's his lawyer - he's a scumbag.

- [man] How come?
- Yeah, he's just a sleaze ball.

Part of me's just like,
"Who are these people," you know?

- [man] It's a circus.
- [man] Yeah, it's a circus.

Yeah this is... this is...
this is complicated, yes.

[man] Jim White, he owns, uh,
more contested Morrisseaus

than any other person
in this country,

and, uh, I wish him the worst.



That's when I went into the gallery,
I bought my painting.

I bought my painting.

Okay.

I've never seen anything like
this in my career. Very strange.

[man] The value of a Morrisseau
will only rise to what it was

when all the people involved in
these cases are dead.

Sad, but true.

Norval Morrisseau has huge significance -
he's really a trail-blazer.

[man] He's one of our most
successful Indigenous artists ever.

His significance obviously
expands globally,

to be included in
exhibitions internationally...

[speaking in foreign language]

[Greg] ...to the reports of, uh,
Marc Chagall and Picasso

viewing his work
and commenting on it.

He's the first
contemporary Indigenous artist

to have had a commercial, uh,
gallery exhibition.

[presenter] It's Norval Morrisseau,
a 31-year-old Ojibwe painter

whose works were publicly displayed
for the first time last week.

[woman] What is your...
your name?

Copper Thunderbird.

It's, uh...

But if you want to say it in... in Ojibwe,
Ozaawaabiko-binesi.

- Ozaawaabiko-binesi.
- No.

No. Not even close, eh?

His work is so unusual,
it is, uh, representational

but yet it, uh, kind of plays with these
figures that they've never seen before.

[man] The art public was really
amazed with the idea

that here is an artist from,
you know,

so-called the...
the backwoods of Northern Ontario,

doing something that they could interpret
as modernizing ancient traditions.

[Carmen] To me,
he was a very flamboyant man.

Every woman in the room was
attracted to Morrisseau,

and you couldn't help but be drawn
to him because he was so charismatic.

[Gerald] His art was very much
about his culture,

the representations of stories

of important mythic
creatures and characters

that make up
the Anishnaabe world.

Well,
I do see Morrisseau as an art star.

[man] He was the first
First Nations artist

to get his work out of the gift
shops and into the galleries.

But the people who are receptive to it,
immediately they say, "Wow.

Far out."

Ah. Wow, you know.

Miskwaabik Animikii, Cooper Thunderbird,
uh... grandfather, uh, mishoomis.

He's the founder, man,
he's the godfather of what we do, man.

First you would drive me down to the pits
of the bottom of hell by your missionaries,

and then later on,
you'll lift me up with medals.

And no matter what I want...

He really understood the force and the power
that he had, and... and played with that.

In the same way he was really
pushing art in new directions,

he was pushing the way people thought of
Indigenous people in new directions also.

This booth is, uh, showcasing Norval
Morrisseau and Christian Morrisseau artwork.

We have original pieces, we have serigraphs,
regular prints, T-shirts, for that matter.

We're here just to show him off and, uh,
hopefully attract people to his work.

[man] There are all these claims

that there are a bunch of fake
Morrisseaus floating around out there.

Do you believe that?

It's hard to believe, you know,
and I... you know, it's...

it's not, uh... you know,
there could be or there can't be.

But at the bottom line, the very bottom line,

it's always up to the, uh, buyer,
on who's gonna buy the artwork,

who's gonna fork out the money for it,
you know, do they believe.

Basically, as of right now, that's all
they are considered to be - accusations.

'Cause nothing has been proven
in a court of law.

[man] The painting I bought in
2005 from Joe McLeod

was called
Spirit Energy of Mother Earth.

Before I bought the painting, I'd read in
the papers and I'd read online, "Be careful,"

you know, "There's...
there's fake Morrisseaus out there."

The gallery was called Maslak McLeod.
It was in Yorkville.

Not only did he have Morrisseau paintings,

but he also
represented Morrisseau's sons.

And so I thought, "Oh, okay,
this is a safe place."

Little did I know, you know,
the spider web was around me.

Twenty thousand was the price.

Since 1995,
I've been with the Barenaked Ladies.

♪ If all else fails
You can blame it on me ♪

♪ If all else fails
You can blame it on me ♪

[Kevin] We've sold over fifteen
million records.

We were nominated for a couple Grammys.

We also did the theme song for
the Big Bang Theory show.

♪ If all else fails
You can blame it on me ♪

So twenty grand at that time wasn't...
wasn't a huge deal for me.

There she is.

I think I had it about
three or four years.

The AGO,
the Art Gallery of Ontario,

wanted people from the art
community to curate a show,

including works from that
person's private collection.

I was excited to do it.

The Spirit Energy was one of the...
the larger pieces in the show.

A few days later, I got a call.

"Kevin, I have bad news,
we had to take your painting down.

Gerald McMaster, who was the head
curator of Canadian Art at the time,

believes it's a fake."

I threw up cautionary flags and
contacted Kevin,

who I think started questioning
are these works actually authentic.

[man] This is Joe McLeod.

And Joe said, "Kevin,
if I give you your money back,

that will set off a series of events that
will result in the closing of my gallery."

And he said, "Kevin,
can you show me one court case

where they found that a painting is fake?"

I said, "No,
not that I know of."

He goes, "Well, then there's no fakes.
And I'm sorry that I can't help you."

And then he showed me the door.

I felt, "Okay. This guy ripped me off, and
he's probably ripped a lot of people off."

Everything Joe stood for
was his love of art

and his love
of the art of Norval Morrisseau.

He didn't look to gain
financially

from Norval Morrisseau at all,

he only wanted to gain, uh, spiritually
from the artwork of Norval Morrisseau.

[interviewer] Well,
he did sell it.

Yeah, Joe sold,
uh, Morrisseau's art,

but I think it was more
important to him

that he, um,
that he... he...

he had a genuine
love of Morrisseau's art.

And... and yes, he was also somebody who
was trying to earn a living selling art,

and what better way to do it
than to sell art that you love?

The only way for me to now
continue my conversation with Joe

is through legal channels.

Joe and his lawyer
came out swinging.

Kevin Hearn is a very, uh,

well-respected and loved
artist in this country,

and he deserves that.
Um, I've met him, he's a gentleman.

They threatened that if I couldn't prove it,
they would come after me.

[Brian] Because his case was in the paper,
because of who he is,

there were allegations in his
pleading that linked to Joe

as somehow being involved in a
fraud ring.

[man] You can look at this case

as being a simple tale about a
single painting that's fake.

But to tell the story of how that happened,
you have to get into a much bigger story.

Kevin Hearn wanted to find out
the truth

about where the painting came from,
warts and all.

[Kevin] Lots of crazy shit happened here,
though.

This is where I lived a hell
every day for years.

Before I went and met Joe McLeod,
I asked him in writing,

I said, "I really need a list of
the provenance of this painting."

Provenance traces the history of the
painting backwards to the artist,

so you can see who owned it.

So Joe McLeod, uh,
gave me a list of provenance,

so we have Rolf Schneider,
Robert Voss,

and Irving Jacobs.

Rolf Schneider, an art collector,
well-known in the Thunder Bay area,

has never seen this painting,
and he's never owned it.

Robert Voss doesn't exist.

Irving Jacobs?

He's never seen my
painting or owned it.

So now we have this provenance
that is rubbish.

[Brian] I believe Joe
genuinely believed the sources,

but there's no question
that there's controversy

about where they came from particularly,

which is not unusual in...
in the secondary art market

for Picasso, for Dali,
and for Norval Morrisseau.

It's just...
it's a reality of the marketplace.

At some point, somewhere, somehow,
there were a grouping of paintings.

The timeframe when they were painted
appears to be in the mid to late '70s.

And some of that, what I'll call species
of paintings, were not very well done.

And the source of these
paintings are in dispute.

[Jonathan] After we filed our statement
of claim and served it on Mr. McLeod,

the defense, in our view,
showed a new story

about where the painting
came from.

And the defense talked
about Randy Potter

running the auction that the
painting had allegedly come through.

I have fourteen.
Fifteen...

[Brian] I believe that that
painting of Kevin Hearn's

was purchased by Joe McLeod from
Potter Auctions directly.

I actually sold that painting to
Joe McLeod,

2,500 dollars,
that was the price.

I think I got a deal. 20,000.
What a steal.

In pursuing this litigation,
that cost to Kevin's has been several times

the cost of purchasing the
painting in the first place.

[Kevin] I began to see footage online
of Randy Potter auctioning off paintings

and I began thinking, "Wow,
how many people have bought fake paintings?"

People that probably don't want
me to prove this,

they don't want the
truth to come out,

because then their paintings are
only worth 300 dollars.

[man] Over the years, we'd evolved

from selling quite a few
paintings by Group of Seven

and established artists like that,
and concentrating on, uh,

the best contemporary artists we
can represent.

I felt like a friend to Norval,
a real friend.

And we became his exclusive dealer for,
uh, nineteen or so years, until he died.

I became aware of a large number of
paintings that were being sold at auctions.

They were all from the 1970s, and paintings
by Norval from the 1970s were in fact

relatively rare in the market.

The number of paintings that
came out became suspicious.

Randy Potter here
with my son Jordan,

we're gonna show off this
beautiful Norval Morrisseau.

Okay, come around,
Jordan.

[interviewer] Tell me about
your businesses.

What businesses? All my businesses?
You don't wanna know all my businesses.

Worked at GM for twenty years,
then quit there, became an auctioneer,

and now I just own a restaurant.

The rest is history.

Twenty-five hundred?
And we have twenty-five hundred, right here.

Twenty-five hundred.

The art thing started, basically,
with the Norval Morrisseau stuff.

Didn't know much about him, I heard his name,
and I put him through my auction,

and we did pretty good with him the first...
first day,

and then, once it started getting
decent money for the Norval Morrisseaus,

and sometimes really good money for
the Morrisseaus, and it would catch on,

and so it started turning into more of a
more upper class auction, I guess it was.

[man] Look at the frigging frieze,
get it closer with the frieze.

This thing's awesome, man.

[interviewer] Tell me about how important a
part of your business the Morrisseaus became.

Oh, he probably became eighty percent
of my... my revenue for an auction.

[Don] Every time there was an auction,
maybe every week or so,

I'd count the number of paintings
that were there and made a note,

and after a while,
I got up to 800 paintings.

This is too many and they
don't look quite right.

[interviewer] Over the course of
your auction, your career,

how many Morrisseaus did you sell,
roughly?

Probably 1,500 to 2,000.

In that ballpark area.

We went probably from making two
or three hundred thousand a year

to making, you know,
one to two million dollars a year.

It was the best thing to ever
happen to me in my life.

We decided to really delve into the...
into the whole problem of authenticity,

and in this case,

of the ones from Randy Potter
Auctions.

They did have some unique
characteristics,

which we didn't see in Norval's
originals.

Oh my lord.

[Don] Many of the creatures that
were in the images,

they were very fiery-toothed,
multi-toothed, sharp teeth.

Eugh.

They're creatures eating other creatures,
stuck under rocks underground.

It's what Norval
called lower plane astral work.

It looks like a... an aquarium,
a nightmare aquarium to me. Terrible.

[Don] With the suspicious paintings,

sometimes even the color
schemes didn't seem right.

The colors seemed to be not as bright.
Perhaps muddier.

He never used a green like that.
Isn't that an awful green?

[Ritchie] Norval Morrisseau and I
were working together very intensely,

uh, from September 9th,
1979 until, uh, 1981.

On the first day that I met
Norval Morrisseau, he said to me,

"Stardreamer, where have you been?
I've been looking for you everywhere."

And that was the
name that he gave me.

I mixed his paints. The less white we
could get into a color, the better.

[Norval] To me, I just put the color I like.

If I want to put purple here,
I put purple there,

I want to put blue, I put blue.

You know, I... I just don't say
that's the color I want to put,

I just put the color under.

But these fake
paintings were milky.

White had been mixed in
liberally into the paint.

Norval would do the... the drawing
on a bare canvas, put in the colors,

do the lining on top,
do layers on top of those colors.

For the most part, these guys were
doing their sketch right on the canvas,

doing the black lines, then filling
in the colors on top of the black.

They missed everything, really,
that was Morrisseau, from my perspective.

Eight hundred? Eight hundred?
Seven fifty, eight hundred.

[Randy] For ten years, the Morrisseau
paintings were selling very well.

[interviewer] Who were some of the galleries
and collectors you were mainly dealing with?

Uh, Joe McLeod from Maslak McLeod Galleries,
uh, Jim White.

He was one of my bigger buyers.

[interviewer] When did people first
start talking about fake Morrisseaus?

That was, uh, 2000, 2001.
And all of a sudden, they're fakes.

And really killed the market.

Don Robinson started it.

Well, his prices say he was sold the painting
for 30,000, and I'm selling them for five.

Now, people are gonna come to my
auction and buy paintings

before they're gonna go to his
place and buy retail.

Who's gonna spend thirty grand when you can
buy six of them at my place for thirty grand?

- [woman] Yep!
- Thirty five.

[man] So Robinson goes to the National Post,
gives his bullshit story.

"Oh, I've discovered this auction house
selling Norval Morrisseau paintings,

but I wouldn't buy there.

Because they're, you know, only we are
the authentic one for Norval Morrisseau.

And the National Post does this article with
images of Jim White's Morrisseau paintings.

[interviewer] Tell me about Kinsman
Robinson and the competition.

I'm sorry, who?
This is where this is going?

[interviewer] I'm sorry, no,
I'm just...

No. Who?
That's as far as you'll get.

[interviewer] I see.
You don't want to tell me about...

I'm sorry, what?

Don Robinson was a greedy,
greedy man.

[interviewer]
What was he trying to do?

He was trying to corner the market.
He was trying to basically corner the market.

The white man.

You know, where Morrisseau
always talks about the white man

and the white man
ripped him off.

It was basically one person who
ripped him off more than anything.

And that was Don Robinson.

It's a shame.

Everything they say about me, basically,
is... it was... it was just... just not true.

I started really getting
the sense

that there was a real ongoing
feud with different factions.

[Jonathan] There is a huge cast
of characters

who appear at the
court dates who write blogs,

um,
who will viciously attack you online.

[interviewer] When you say,
"We took them on..."

Well, the people that,
like Joe McLeod, Joe Otavnik, um,

Jim... Jim White, um, the Goldis,
John Goldi and Joan Goldi.

They fought back.

Keep your fucking
camera off me.

[man] Oh, sorry.

I think they're just people who
have financial interests

in the
authenticity of these paintings,

that may be indirectly
implicated in these lawsuits.

[interviewer] What proportion of your
business does Morrisseau represent?

I would say approximately a hundred
percent of my business is Morrisseaus.

I've dealt in approximately
189 Morrisseaus.

But who's keeping track.

I gave some money to help with the lawyers
and stuff like that, yeah, we all did.

It was just a little group of us that used
to give out money to help the other guy.

I guess it was only a fair thing to do,
right?

Well, the feud, what's fascinating about
it is that it involves so many characters.

Good, back, ugly,
there are lots of them.

There are people
like Ritchie Sinclair

who has brought a lot
of controversy to the table.

What about Ritchie Sinclair?

[interviewer] Can you tell me about what
he tried to do to the... to the market.

No.

[interviewer]
You don't want to discuss that.

There are matters
before the court.

I said, "Did you buy this fake
Morrisseau painting from Mr. White?"

My first impression of Ritchie was, "Is this
guy a nut, or, you know, what's going on?"

So, but he had come prepared,

and he had things to show me
that were solid ideas.

I saw some inferior Morrisseau-esque
paintings on the internet

that I knew weren't
done by Norval.

A dozen or more
legitimate Canadian galleries,

some of them top flight galleries,
were carrying them.

A dozen or more galleries,
quote gallery... eBay channels.

Some people contacted me,
hassled me for being quiet about it, uh,

"Stardreamer, the silence is deafening,
why won't you say anything?

Why won't you stand up for your
friend?"

Once I decided I was gonna do something
about it, I wasn't gonna screw around.

And then, I proceeded to upload
more than a thousand images

Inferior,
counterfeit Morrisseau painting number one.

Number two. Number three.
Number four.

I think the man's mentally
unstable.

Like I'm gonna set up a website
and call Picasso's work fake?

They're all... they're all fake.
I mean come on.

I... I just thought it was a joke and nobody
would take it seriously, and I was wrong.

Well, it devastated the market.

All the art dealers were saying,
"Oh, Joe, you gotta do something."

[Ritchie] One month after I
started putting them up,

I was sued for seventeen million
dollars by nine plaintiffs,

of which, uh, five of them were...
were galleries.

And this Joe Otavnik, even though I had
the seventeen-million-dollar lawsuit,

he also sued me.

[Joe] My family came from nothing,
from a little country called Slovenia,

and we were given the privilege
to live in this country

and what else can you
ask for?

He has no connection with the art world,
he said he was a risk management specialist.

But I also diversified into generators
and combined heat and power systems.

He claims under oath that he has
more than fifty Morrisseau paintings.

And here's your typical
Spirit Bear.

Young Thunderbird, exoskeleton style.
Come on, I'll show you some more.

I have probably around 35
Norval Morrisseau paintings.

This is your typical Norval
Morrisseau style too.

There's the bird protecting
the nest from the evil snake.

He gives all these paintings away to family
and friends to be used as tax benefits.

I just, uh, bought,
it could be a K-mark special, for all I know.

And this here is my favourite one,
Maurice "the Rocket" Richard.

He sued me for putting an image
of his painting on the internet.

Anybody who has called my works fake,
I've taken to court.

[interviewer]
So how many times...

Oh, let's see, uh.

Ritchie Sinclair,

Kinsman Robinson I settled out of court,
maybe two or three others.

And I think I sued Ritchie's roommate, too.
I believe.

He sued my best and oldest friend,
Mr. Garth Cole.

- [interviewer] And wasn't that his lawyer?
- Well...

Then he sued my lawyer,
who represented me in federal court.

Well, yes, well, his lawyer...

his lawyer, uh, Zak Muscovitch, yes.
Yes.

A lawyer by the name of Zak Muscovitch
called me and hired me to be his lawyer.

He was still going into court knowingly
knowing that what he was representing was BS.

Then he sued my lawyer's wife...

- [interviewer] And Muscovitch's wife?
- I believe so, yes.

For no legitimate purpose.

[interviewer] And how did you
come to understand the law?

Oh, it's very simple. You call something
fake, you have to prove it's fake.

I don't have
to prove it's real.

And those were settled for two dollars,
ultimately.

When you go into court, you assume that
people there know what they're doing,

and this judge didn't know that.

I don't mind saying that. If you wanna
record this and have him sue me, go ahead.

'Cause you are wrong.

Really,
it was... it was a harassment campaign

that eventually became a
character assassination campaign.

[Joe] Anybody who thinks that
Ritchie Sinclair

is an expert in Norval
Morrisseau is just ridiculous.

"I was his protégé," and I'm like,
"Yeah, okay, sure, whatever."

I mean, how do I know?

[Randy] Ritchie Sinclair is a
wannabe Ojibwe artist,

or Ojibwe person - he's a white man
who likes to pretend he's an Indian.

[interviewer] Are you
Indigenous?

Um, I'm Scottish,
born and brought up in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

He knew Norval Morrisseau through...
from what I've heard,

he was Norval's lover for a little while.
I heard two weeks.

[Joe] Norval Morrisseau used to put
personal ads in the Toronto Star,

looking for young men -
'cause Norval was bisexual.

Ritchie answered
one of those ads,

and Norval and Ritchie,
you know, did their business.

Norval and I were never lovers.
You know?

But meanwhile,
these guys will do anything,

so as far as they're concerned,
I'm an art terrorist.

I'm guilty of
cultural genocide.

I've been in court a hundred times
at least with these gentlemen,

and, uh,
it's a moment when worlds collide, really.

One of the issues that came up today
was that, uh, during the morning,

uh, Ritchie Sinclair, uh, said that
he'd been approached by Joseph Otavnik.

I tend to feel, on our side,
we're very calm people,

pacifists,
I'm a pacifist by nature.

[Jonathan] And Otavnik made
some comment to him

about how he was sucking
cocks or something,

like, this is what he said.

Twice I was walking with my partner,
right in the courtroom,

and, uh, he followed me around till he got a
moment where he could get close enough to say

the usual things that he would say to me,
like, uh, uh,

"You're still sucking cock,
Mr. Sinclair," for example, you know?

I decided not to bring that to the
attention of the court at that point,

but then it
happened again later on.

[Ritchie] "Still sucking cock,
Sinclair,"

uh, "Ricky, you wanna go suck some cock?"
that sort of thing.

Ugh. That's all they do, is Ritchie,
that's all Ritchie does, is...

is "This person harassed me,
that person harassed me..."

[Jonathan] So at that point, I had Ritchie
speak to the court about what had happened.

[interviewer] Did you
tell him to go suck a...

God, no. Why would I bother?

I mean, the fact of the matter is,
that's already been testified to,

that he was basically one of
Norval's boy toys.

I mean,
why is it relevant to this case?

Over at City Hall, he put me in a headlock
on the front steps of criminal court.

So this guy is, you know...

[Jonathan] We felt it was an important
thing to bring to the court's attention,

just to illustrate the...
the weirdness of this landscape.

[Ritchie] Certainly their
motivation became very clear.

They couldn't get rid of the truth of
the matter, so they had to discredit me.

Uh, here we go, here.

[interviewer] How do you know
this is a real Morrisseau?

Well,
all the colors meshing together.

And the theme is consistent with
Christianity, smallpox and all that.

[interviewer] Was this the color scheme
that he was using in this period?

Well,
I... I can't... I'm... I'm not an expert.

But if you just look at it, you say,
"Okay, this painting just makes sense."

That's how you can know.
It's like a cover band.

Anybody can play a Rolling Stones
song after it's been created.

But before that, who can do that?
That's the genius of Norval Morrisseau.

The controversy lays primarily in,
they are all signed on the back

by Norval Morrisseau in English,
in dry black brush.

[Jonathan] Which is where the
artist takes a brush that has paint

that's kind of been dried and wiped off,
and they then write on the back

with that dry brush.

So here we have the, um,
dry brush signature.

See, this looks weird to me.
No. No.

So if you look at the
well-established,

good provenance paintings of Norval's
that are in public institutions

that have been there since the
'70s or the '80,

the signature he would apply to
them was a syllabic signature.

[Don] Which consists of eight
syllabic characters on the front.

It signifies Copper Thunderbird

and it was the way he signed his paintings,
uh, on the front.

[Ritchie] Norval hardly ever signed the
back of his paintings at all, with anything.

Norval never did this.

He...
he did not do this black dry brush thing.

Oh, I see. Oh, no, no, no.

[Ritchie] So when you see these paintings,
that is someone trying to say,

"This is a really lousy painting on the
front, but you better believe it's a Mor...

'cause people don't know the syllabics, the
general person that's gonna buy it. Right?

Wow. It's just a fake,
there's no... no mistaking it.

[interviewer] What is a black
dry brush painting?

Oh. I'll show you.

This is what they mean.

And that one there,
you see how it's dried and faded.

Well, it's faded because
it's thirty-year-old painting,

forty-year-old painting,
which would make sense, right?

It's a canvas painting -
makes sense.

And then there'll be,
typically, a title...

The Jesuit, 1977...

Often there's a copyright symbol,
and sometimes there'll be some little symbol

like a thunderbird,
for example.

And that's a little mini thunderbird,
so...

[man] When, uh,
Joe was selling me the painting, he said,

"When Norval found a painting

to be special or of
significant worth or value,

he would draw this
thunderbird on the back."

And I thought, "Wow, well,
that's cool."

[Joe] 'Cause he was called the Copper
Thunderbird, that was his name.

This is a very good piece, this is a very
strong piece and this is what people want.

Pieces like this.

And they say that all of those are,
uh, frauds.

We went to almost every major
public art institution

across Canada, so,
all the major museums

that have Norval
Morrisseau collections.

He never signed anything in
black dry brush in the back.

He didn't sign it in black dry brush,
he didn't sign it in red dry brush.

It simply didn't happen.

Guess how many more thunderbird
drawings we found?

The answer is none.
None more thunderbird drawings.

[Kevin] Originally, Joe McLeod told me

that the painting came from
this fellow David Voss,

in Thunder Bay, who had a huge
collection of Morrisseau paintings

stored in a warehouse for years and years,

since the '70s,
and he's just released them

and they've come through Randy
Potter Auction house.

His name was David Voss,
he showed up one day,

and then we were sitting on a picnic
table eating hamburgers and French fries.

And he walked in and mentioned
he had some art for me to sell.

And the first to enter my mind was,
"Oh, more art."

Because it was just,
mostly art's not worth nothing.

So then he mentioned the word...
name Norval Morrisseau.

I went outside with him and he
had eight of them in...

in the trunk of his Cadillac,
all rolled up, nice and pretty.

He was happy with the prices,

and so, uh, he started sending me down
sometimes a whole bunch and sometimes a few.

But he used to phone up and
we'd talk a little bit.

He was usually too drunk to talk.

David.

In case he sees this. But he was, uh,
he's a character, put it that way.

[interviewer] So you never had
to go there...

[Randy] I've never been
to Thunder Bay.

He's invited me up a million times,
never went up.

Never once.

And I say, "David,
get this fucking thing straightened out,

I can start making some
fucking money again."

Oh, yeah.
But I, he just drives me crazy.

Fucking tequila means more to
him than anything else, right?

Ugh, I don't know.

That's why I never went up to
visit him,

'cause I knew it'd just be a big
fucking drunk fest.

I'm not into that shit anymore,
man.

Fuck. Fucking squaws all weekend.
Anyways, let's do it.

[interviewer] And where did David
Voss get a thousand Morrisseaus?

[Kevin] He used to fly into the
Aboriginal reserves...

There's tons of them up in Thunder Bay area -
there was, anyways.

[Jonathan] So one of the stories
that we'd heard

was that at some point in time,
in the '70s,

Norval was in the prison in
Kenora.

And this prison guard,
known as Dieter Voss,

had then acquired a bunch of
Norval Morrisseau paintings.

And that his collection had been
stored for a long time

and eventually made its way
through the auction houses.

And I do know that David Voss's
father was a jail guard in Kenora.

And a lot of the jail guards had
paintings from Norval Morrisseau.

The guards used to get Norval to
do paintings while he was in jail.

And he'd paint for, you know, five bucks,
a bottle of whisky, whatever.

And of course, obviously, the guards
would probably take them and sell them,

whatever there was, right?

So that's the source of the paintings
from Potter Auctions, that I know of.

[Jonathan]
We wrote to Corrections Canada

and asked them whether in fact
there was a Voss,

a Dieter Voss who had been, um,
a guard there,

at any time
during those years,

and they responded and said that
there had not.

[interviewer] There were some rumours that
guards had stolen stuff he painted in prison.

I don't know where that
came from.

Morrisseau would've said that to me if,
uh, if it had happened,

because I did see him and...
and he did trust me at that... at that time.

You know,
it's just... it's not possible.

Norval Morrisseau spent six
months in jail in Kenora

when I was there,
and I got the painting material for him.

It would've been 1970,

around then, I, uh,
I had just gotten to Kenora.

There was a domestic
dispute with his wife

and he ended up going to jail for,
uh, six months.

[reporter] Formerly,

any Indian arrested for drunkenness
spent his time here in Kenora jail.

[Bob] In Kenora,
he had his own personal cell,

and there was a
cell for his supplies.

He would paint and do his wash
and all that in the range.

And he was one of the prisoners
that they didn't lock his door,

so during certain hours,
he could go in and out of his, uh, cell,

and it was, like, free range.

Well, I'm sorry about the look,
I don't know what to say.

If you're gay or bisexual,

it's not a bad place to be if
you're in range in...

in the range in Kenora to, uh,
so that kind of stuff went on, too.

And it was all very open, it was very
odd for me to see that, so, um, anyway.

That's another strange thought I
haven't had for a long time.

He was king of the range.

He did spectacular paintings in prison,

he'd been sober and straight for a long time,
and those... those paintings

I ended up selling and, uh,
ended up using them to buy a house for him.

He did about thirty.

And I ended up selling them
to a doctor in Toronto.

- [interviewer] Were those all the paintings?
- Ah. Good question. Yes.

And he could not have done more than that in
that time, in the space that was available.

Apparently, there are literally hundreds
of other ones that are signed on the back.

And there you go.
Norval Morrisseau.

They did not come from him at that era.
I'm sure.

[interviewer] How are you sure?

I was there, I was there weekly,
and I saw what he painted.

And it wasn't anything that was
signed on the back,

and it wasn't anything that,
uh, had English on them.

He did sketches on this green
prison paper,

sometimes both sides,
and they were spectacular sketches.

His intention was to
actually paint them

when he got out and he had
supplies and space.

The painting that Kevin
bought did not look

like any of those drawings that
Morrisseau had done.

Not even close.
Nothing close.

[Brian] Morrisseau probably
couldn't care less about this.

He probably had no interest in whether people
thought a painting was authentic or not.

He painted it.
It fulfilled him in some way.

And if some of them aren't his,
he'd probably say,

"Okay, some of them aren't mine.
Just... some of them are.

Some of them aren't.
It is what it is."

I believe that that's what his approach
would've been to this whole controversy.

[man] I met Norval in, uh,
in Vancouver, spring of '87.

He was, uh, yeah, he was down and out,
living... living on the streets.

I, I lost a bottle, too.
I don't know where I put it. Forty ounces.

I was quite wayward and life was
very distressing,

and, uh, he said to me, he says,
uh, "I'm gonna sober up."

We were very,
um, very connected,

you know,
he considered me his... his son,

and I considered him my father,
my father figure.

And I'm like,
"I can do anything you want me to do.

Just tell me what you need done
- I will do it."

And then I
became his manager.

It seems like at a point,
I think it was maybe 2000, or 2002,

the fakes started coming,
and proliferating,

and just started popping up here,
and there.

It was, like,
getting right in our face,

and now we have computer and
we're able to look online.

He's like, "I didn't paint that.
I didn't paint that. I didn't paint that."

And it's like, "Wait a minute,
there's something wrong."

Like, there's a major strategy,
or a major network

moving a whole bunch of shit
right into the marketplace.

And then,

"What are
you gonna do about it?

What are you gonna do about it,
Gabe?"

I'm like, "Okay. I know what I'll do.
We'll go see lawyers."

I'll make the arrangements. Let's go do
what we need to do. And he was all for it.

No one's ever proven to me one
Norval Morrisseau fake.

No one can ever say Norval
Morrisseau said this.

Wh... When he wasn't sick.
And that's... that's... that's terrible.

[Jonathan] Norval then,
through a number of lawyers,

signed a whole series
of sworn declarations

identifying specific fakes

in the specific catalogues of
different art galleries,

including Joe McLeod's gallery,
Maslak McLeod.

"No, I did not paint these things.
They are not to be in the marketplace.

They are not
representative of my work."

Morrisseau's sworn statements
were all over the place.

And I think he signed statements
because he was asked to sign statements.

But if you take those actual
statements and compare them,

there's so much contradiction
between them

that it renders his
statements useless.

[Jonathan] The story that's been
told many times by the other side

is that at the time that he signed these
sworn declarations identifying fakes,

that he lacked mental
capacity,

or that he was being
forced or pressured to do so

by unscrupulous persons
who were controlling him.

[interviewer]
So you don't think he was...

- No.
- Mentally...

Oh, God, no. God no. That's probably be from
2001 and so that he's not doing very well.

So I wanna be clear, without anybody
fucking around with the cameras and...

and the voice and stuff.

His mental capacity was
always there.

Even though he may not verbalize things,
and the manifestation of Parkinson's,

it never stopped him from thinking
and being as sharp as a pencil.

He knew what he wanted.

He knew what he wanted to express.
Right until the end, he was completely sharp.

What do you think? Is that good?

The man was far beyond

what you and I would call normal
ability to recognize life.

A shame.

[Joe] And I know from my conversations
with Christian Morrisseau

that his father was very sick,
and even in 2000.

And he was in a... he was in a
nursing home in Nanaimo, I know that.

[interviewer] What kind of
shape was he in at that point?

Uh, mentally he was well, full aware
of what was going on, who was were,

'cause soon as I walked in,
his eyes just lit up right away,

he realized who I was,
and, uh...

[interviewer]
What year was this?

Uh, that was in, uh, 2006.
Yeah, not long before he died,

'cause he passed away in 2007,
right?

The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society,
NMHS,

is a group of curators and
scholars

who came together at
Morrisseau's invitation in 2005

to find a way to authenticate
his work,

which Morrisseau by
then realized was being faked.

[Greg] The importance of him
as an artist is his legacy,

and for that to be tarnished by the very
poor quality works that were put out,

basically an abomination,
you know, of... of, uh,

in comparison to... to works that he
actually painted. It was a travesty.

[Ruth] Some of the fakes were laid out
on the floor, and he was looking at them.

[Don] And Norval was asked whether
they were his paintings or not,

and his answer was, "I've never seen
these before. They're not my paintings."

"This one, this one, this one,
this one are fakes."

[Ruth] He was perfectly lucid.

And shortly after that meeting,
he sent us letters,

which he signed, commissioning us to do
the work that we had outlined for him.

They're trashing Norval
Morrisseau's legacy.

I mean, that's pretty clear.
And it's just... and it's just for greed.

All of us are, were and are,
and have always been, unpaid volunteers.

[interviewer] If they're trying to trash
his legacy, what are you trying to do?

I'm just trying to tell people,

if you have a Norval Morrisseau,
it's a real Norval Morrisseau.

And there are no fakes out there.
And all this stuff is a bunch of nonsense.

I mean, Norval was a great artist,
and the real deal, and...

Yeah.

Here's a great Canadian
artist, being trashed.

It's funny.

People are questioning the
authenticity of his work,

when it shouldn't be an issue at all.

- No.
- That's basically what it is.

Yeah.

[Ruth] A man named Joseph Otavnik,
who was totally unknown to me,

emailed me,
emailed all other members of the Society,

and emailed their, uh, bosses,
complaining

that we were defaming Morrisseau and we were,
basically,

ignorant people who
were involved in mischief.

It was a... a direct threat that we
could be sued for what we were doing.

- It's a shame.
- Yeah, it is, it is.

We've been fighting a long time over this.
A lot of years, a lot of money.

In addition to that, um,

there are other people who have,
uh, developed a blog,

in which we are accused of
being like Nazi book burners.

Instead of burning books during
the Nazi period,

we're burning original
Morrisseau paintings.

And sending horrible
messages about me,

with links to this website,
the Norval Morrisseau Hoax blog,

which was just ramping up,
and saying more and more unsettling things,

particularly considering I'm of
Lakota ancestry...

Nothing like this had ever
happened to me before,

I'm a kind of quiet academic in
the ivory tower...

[man] There is a couple by the name of
John and Joan Goldi, who run a website.

Virtually anybody
who stands up and even suggests

that there might be a problem
with fakes

can expect to be viciously
attacked by these people.

[man] Those with a vested interest in selling
what I consider to be fake Morrisseaus

will contact any company or
organization I work with,

and threaten them with lawsuits,
"We're contacting all your sponsors,

we're gonna destroy your
reputation on the internet."

[Don] I was being accused of being part of
some sort of a Ritchie-Robinson conspiracy,

which of course
wasn't true at all.

Just being called out on the
internet,

that I am guilty of cultural
genocide against the First Nations,

is just like
putting a target on my back.

Someone had thrown a brick through the front
window of the Kinsman Robinson Gallery.

I said, "Who did this?"

Our videos showed a car driving
up in front and...

and someone
getting out of it,

but the image was not defined enough
to be able to identify the person.

At that time, I was under severe stress -
even my life had been threatened -

"We've gotta do something about this guy.
Don Robinson, are you listening?

What'cha gonna do when they come for you?"
That made me feel... mmmm.

It's not only a mental
harassment,

but there was also a... a physical danger
that was really present at that time.

Ritchie Sinclair,
that freaking scumbag.

Yeah.

[Ritchie]
First the Otavnik threats

by having people hunting me down,
"are gonna find you".

And meanwhile, I'm, like,
I'm not even hiding.

If I had six months to live,
I'd shoot that fucker.

Yeah.

I'd do!
If I had six months to live, I'd shoot him.

Who?

Ritchie Sinclair.
If I had six... oh, yeah, for sure.

I'd do...
I'd be doing society a favour.

That man ruined a lot of
people's lives for no reason.

It's funny...

[Don]
I ended up having a stroke.

It's left me, as one of the characteristics,
completely blind in the right eye.

He thought we're gonna run away and...

and just bury our heads in the sand,
but we didn't.

We fought back.

[Don] I realized that

there was probably around three
thousand fake paintings out there,

and they were selling in the
range of ten thousand dollars,

we're
talking thirty million dollars.

This is the greatest art scam by far
in all... in all Canadian history.

There've always been fakes by
famous painters,

but none of them that even
begin to be on this scale.

Three thousand fake paintings
is a lot of fake paintings.

So I'm not surprised that many,
many people

opposed our view
that the paintings were fakes.

[Gabe] Norval was involved
with many people.

Many bad people,
too, in this life.

Who came in from left field,
and, "Oh, yo, we love your art!

Mr. Morrisseau,
we love your art!"

In hindsight, later in life,
what I learned - these people were killers.

These people are fucking
animals.

[Ritchie] Well,
the more you dived into a pool of garbage,

the more you get to know the
garbage within it.

[Kevin] Each stone we overturned
revealed five more stones,

and I found myself in this sort of complex,
dark story,

which went beyond art fraud.

I was introduced to a...
a young man named Dallas.

Dallas was on the inner circle of the fr...
of the fraud ring.

[interviewer] How do you feel
having been part of it?

I wish I wasn't.

I wish, you know,
things turned out different for me, but...

I was dealt the hand I was dealt, and I just
gotta play it out the best I could, I guess.

And he worked with a man
named Gary Lamont.

He was a white guy,
pretty big, scary, uh, yeah.

I learned that how deeply involved
Gary Lamont was in what was going on.

- [interviewer] Gary Lamont?
- Yeah, Gary Lamont.

- Who is he? How does he...
- Gary Lamont, I met him,

he was selling Norval
Morrisseau paintings on eBay.

Gary Lamont was a drug dealer in
Thunder Bay here,

he's well-known for being a biker,
a badass.

This is where Gary used
to live with Linda.

Gary is my... my...
Linda's common-law partner.

[interviewer] So is...
he's your uncle?

I don't consider him my uncle.

I met Gary in 2001.

Late 2001, early 2002.
At the time, I wa... I'd just turned sixteen.

Yeah, this is Gary's first house,
this is where I met him.

Yeah, this is where he was
selling his drugs out of.

I just started buying marijuana
off of him regularly,

and then
that's how I got to know him.

Gary and Linda always had an...
an apartment

attached to their... their house,
their... their unit.

So me and my mom would live on
the opposite apartment from them.

My mom used to hang around the
Satan's Choice Clubhouse

and that's how she met Gary,

known him through there and
through high school.

Oh, there was a lot of drug u...

drug traffic in the houses.

He sold weed,

um,
cocaine and heroin.

It was pretty scary
'cause you didn't know

who was coming through the door,
at times.

I was six.

Yeah,
my sister was four.

He used to touch us,
pinch our bum and boobs and stuff.

It was very terrifying.

Gary used to beat them up

with baseball bats
or anything he had,

he could get his hands on

if you didn't do what he wanted.

[interviewer]
Did you ever see that happening?

Oh,
I only seen one incident with my uncle.

'Cause he thought my uncle
stole money from Gary and Linda.

They took a baseball bat to my uncle.

My uncle Jack.

He had a lot of bruises on his face
and arms and stomach and everywhere.

We seen a little bit, and then he yelled
at me and my sister to get upstairs.

Because they used to,
in the basement of my... my aunt's house,

they used to have an arcade games.
Like Pacman.

So we used
to go down and play Pacman.

[Dallas] In the summer,
he invited me out to his camp, to party.

It was just north of the city on,
uh, Warnica Lake.

He would only come
out a couple nights a week,

and I'd just stay out there,
look after it.

He stored all his drugs there,
so I just, it was like a fortress,

right, once you locked the door,
you couldn't get in or out,

there was bars on all the windows and doors,
is...

As you can see, the bars on the windows,
those were on every window.

Barriers on the doors,
big steel cages for the doors, and...

Just sat around smoking dope and
drinking all day and, you know,

listening to music and then he
bought a computer and I...

my family being poor,
I never had a computer growing up,

so this was just way out there for me,
so I just loved it, right.

And then he was buying artwork too,
right.

Just collecting, for show,
had 'em up on his walls, bedrooms.

That was my bedroom over there.

I used to have a Benji
Morrisseau original

hanging in my room out at the camp,
and all that.

Norval was Benji's uncle.

[Amanda] Benji was a very nice
guy when we first met him.

He wasn't
doing no drugs or drinking.

But then Gary got him into the drugs.
Really bad.

He just ended up at the camp, he started off
painting a few pictures of his own style,

the Woodland art style, for Gary,
and then we're sitting around one night,

and then I was...
Gary kept saying,

"Oh, no, you can't do that,
you can't do that,"

about the Norval's, uh,
Copper Thunderbird syllabics, right?

And I was, like, "No fucking way,
you know how easy it is to do that?"

And I grabbed it, did it.
And then that must've just - boom.

Brainstorm in his head.

How easy it was to do the
syllabics.

Norval's syllabics, there's eight,
and Benji's native syllabics,

there's only six.

And then I started seeing Benji

signing Norval's signatures to
his artwork after.

Yeah,
this was the guest camp here.

The guest camp was also,
uh, Benji's art studio.

That's when they
started making the fakes.

[Amanda] When you go into the house,
there's a side door.

You go up, like, three sets of stairs,
and then there's a little office they used.

[interviewer]
Who would be in there?

Either Benji or Wolf.

One of Norval Morrisseau's brothers.

[interviewer] Was the door
open or closed?

Well, sometimes it was open and
sometimes they got locked in there.

Gary would lock them in the room, so,
I guess, so they can hide in there,

so no one knows what they're
doing.

The door was open a couple times,
and I went by.

Benji was in the room painting,
and then singing his...

signing the Norval Morrisseau's name
on to the front of the painting.

At first we thought he was
just painting his own work.

Then we realized what he was
doing when he started

putting Norval Morrisseau's name
on the back of the painting.

[interviewer] How often would
Benji or Wolf be in there painting?

Probably every second day.

After that it was...
they started painting them like crazy.

Benji ended up being out there
more and more,

and then he started calling
the guest camp his studio,

and Gary's steady supply of
booze,

drugs went up there a few times,

Benji was making backgrounds for
the paintings, and all this stuff,

rolling around butt naked in paint
on canvas and he's all messed up,

and just a lot of weird shit.

[interviewer] How much of his business
was art, and how much was drugs?

Probably more than
fifty percent was the art.

Gary never told me, it just clicked,
you know, I was like,

"I know what the fuck's going on now,"
you know.

And he was just like, "Yeah, well, you
can't fucking tell anybody what's going on,"

and, you know,
shit like that.

[interviewer] And did he
threaten you about it?

No, no. It's Gary Lamont, like,

everybody was scared of him at the
time anyway, like, he didn't have to.

[Amanda] I already knew his
reputation around the city.

Well, he used to tell people
what he can do to people.

Gary used to say,
he's... he's able to get people murdered.

[Dallas] That's me and Gary.
This is in 2003.

Oh, he'd yell,
he'd fucking just give you a look,

and he... you fucking knew to shut up,
stop whatever the fuck you're doing,

'cause the next thing that's
gonna be coming

is a fucking
fist to the face.

And he used to wear all these gold rings,
yeah.

That's what I mean by all his
gold rings he'd wear.

Hurt like hell getting punched
in the face by him.

Just come out of the blue,
you'd end up fucking saying something,

like, you know, just joking around,
saying something he didn't like,

and, you know, and it was "bssh!"
You'd get, fucking, what the fuck, you know?

[interviewer] How many
paintings were being done?

[Dallas] Hundreds. Hundreds.

Hundreds, and lots of them were being painted

at Benjamin's house in Collins,
Ontario.

And we would go meet
Benji on the train,

and pick up all the paintings, and none
of them had the syllabics or were signed.

[interviewer] Why not?

'Cause Gary, for some reason,

didn't want signatures on them in case
they got pulled over in transport.

He didn't want the cops.
Something like that.

Gary would whisk them away to
the back room with a, you know,

brush and some black paint,

and on the syllabics went,
in dry brush style on the back.

Some of them had dates and that.

Like, Gary would say what year they are,
and everything, right,

like, he acted like, you know... he had a
special bond with every single painting.

You know, like, to me,
a lot of it all looked the same.

So I'd end up taking out, like,
every picture out of the roll, and it's like,

"Okay, is it this one?"
You know?

[interviewer] Tell me about where the,
uh, supplies would come from.

We'd go to Painted
Turtle here in Thunder Bay.

- How are you?
- How are you?

- Good to see you.
- Just come to see you at your store.

Yeah.

And I remember coming in and getting
art supplies for Benji and Tim.

Yeah. I remember asking Gary,

um, what are you doing with all this canvas?
And...

He said, "Oh,
I'm buying Christmas gifts for all the...

the Aboriginals up north,"
and...

Gary would actually get me or my
mom to go with him,

and we would present our status card

so he didn't have to pay the
tax on everything, and...

- Does Benji still come in?
- Yeah, he's been coming in for...

Wonder if he's doing his own
work or have you seen anything?

I haven't seen his work.

Well, it's a weird thing, eh.

I've tried to find his work online,
'cause he said he sells online.

I can't find anything that says
"Benjamin Morrisseau."

- Really?
- No.

[interviewer] Who are the key people
in the... in the fraud ring?

Gary Lamont,

and Linda Tkatchuk,

Benji Morrisseau,
and Wolf Morrisseau.

Well,
Gary got them to do the paintings.

Benji was one of the painters,
and Wolf was a painter too.

Linda helped with the emails,

and helping with the money and...

and making the arrangements
for the paintings to go out.

My sister had the bank account.

My sister got told they needed
the bank account

to put the money from the paintings in there,
so they can hide it,

the money,
so they wouldn't get caught.

[interviewer] And what was
the website called?

It was just, uh,
Norval Morrisseau art that Benji painted.

People were buying
through the website,

and most of the customers were out West,
Calgary,

uh, Edmonton, Vancouver.

[Amanda] Dallas would help going
on these trips with... with Gary.

[Dallas] And at that time,
that's when production was just...

they're spitting them out
the Norval Morrisseau fakes.

It was crazy, that summer,

in 2006, 2007,

we went to Calgary
approximately twenty-six times

in a two, three month period, selling art.

[interviewer]
How would you get there?

[Dallas] Driving in his truck.

Every time he bought a brand new,
2004 GMC Sierra, something, extended cab,

and that's how we drove, me,
him, and Benji.

And Benji came on
ninety percent of the trips,

'cause he was a driver and Gary...
they'd split the driving,

we'd drive to Calgary,
one str... straight shot,

twenty-three hours,
twenty-four hours.

Sell the art and, you know,
sleep

and be gone the next morning,
drive straight back.

And on every trip, there was probably about
thirty paintings that Gary would bring.

Average price was probably
around three grand per painting.

Always the same question - why... why cash,
and Gary would just say,

"That's the way I want it."

No paper trail. That's why.

Every trip,
I got paid six hundred dollars cash.

'Cause I'd be corresponding
with customers through emails

and showing arts and retrieving the
paintings out of the carton tubes,

and, you know, just everything, making his
coffee, it's pretty much being his bitch.

[interviewer] Who were some of the other
buyers that you heard Gary talking about?

David Voss is one of the names,
yeah.

[interviewer] And Jim White?

Jim White I've heard of.

And then we went to...

where was that...
Southern Ontario,

to Randy Potter Auction House.

And we just stopped in there,
um,

Gary went inside the auction house and me and
Benji sat in the truck in the parking lot.

A couple hours later,
Gary came out

and we took off to Niagara Falls
to go see his niece, Tanya.

That one is actually the same day,
later on that evening.

Gary Lamont,
I met him on eBay.

[interviewer]
Did you ever buy from him?

No. Never bought a
painting from Gary Lamont.

Fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred?
I have fourteen hundred over here.

[interviewer] How important a
client was for Randy Potter Auction?

Very,
because of the amounts they bought.

[interviewer] Would you go to them,
or would they come to you?

They came to him. They came to hi...
they actually flew into Thunder Bay

from, uh,
down Toronto area just for that one sale.

They rented a van, there was three of
them that came, a girl and two guys.

They ended up buying, I think,

like, thirty pieces for, like,
a hundred and twenty...

I can't remember, a hundred and twenty
something thousand dollars, cash.

[interviewer] What was your role then,
after?

[Dallas] Just to count the money
with his wife, Linda.

I didn't know, I was just counting thousand,
thousand, thousand, thousand,

that's what I was told at the end - I was,
like, "Well, how much fucking is here?"

And, "Hundred and twenty-six."

A lot of things were going through
my fucking head at that time, man,

they just, you know, fuck, grabbing a bat,
fucking doing them both in, you know.

Especially I was a young kid,
you know.

I'd never seen that kind of money in my life,
I still haven't, since. That's, yeah.

[interviewer] And what was your sense of...
of how Gary would pay?

Well,
Gary would pay Benji and Wolf,

sometimes in drugs and sometimes money,
depending what they asked for.

[Dallas] There was an incident with, uh,
Benjamin, and, uh, they had a disagreement.

I guess Gary wasn't paying him,
and then Benji told him,

flat out, "When the money stops,
the brush stops."

And then they had a falling out, Benji
wasn't in the picture for a couple months,

and then that's when Tim Tait
came into the picture,

and started doing the fraudulent art at his
house on York Street in Thunder Bay here.

Gary Lamont put Norval
Morrisseau's name on my paintings.

[Dallas] And it was the same deal, uh,
Gary would go inside and check on, you know,

how progress was being made,
and how it's looking and everything,

a couple of times a week he'd go there,
tell him, you know,

"Okay, well, this has got to go this way,"
or whatever, you know, and...

[Tim] I wonder why he's asking
me to do all this, you know,

like... he told me to paint this,
paint that...

I did.

Yeah. To get my fix.

Ah, man,
I was in bad shape those days.

That's why I lost my wife and
my mortgage and everything.

Everything was gone.

I got into the drugs.

Crack, coke, uh,

OxyContin, Percocet, everything.
Everything that was around.

[interviewer] Tell me about how
you first became aware

that paintings you had done

were being passed off as
Norval Morrisseau's work.

After the fiftieth painting, I think,
I started realized, started thinking,

"What does he do with these
paintings."

Gary Lamont bought a house
right during that time.

Made me think, like,
"Where is he getting money from?"

Holy smokes,
I remember those.

See, that's mine right there,
too, I always see that one.

How could
they think this is Norval's?

It's not Norval's style, it's just...
you can tell it's my style in a way.

That's the one that's on the computer,
I always look at.

That's not Norval Morrisseau's,
that's mine.

The signature?

I didn't do
those signatures at all.

This is one of the early ones I did,
for Gary.

I thought... I thought it was gonna be,
like, my work.

This one, I didn't sign.
But he... I guess he did that.

Ozaawaabiko-binesi.
Copper Thunderbird.

Norval Morrisseau.

Huh. I think Gary's the one that
did that one himself, you know?

You know what, if I had a chance to
beat the shit out of him, excuse me...

beat the hell out of him,
I would.

You know what I mean?

That's the kind of anger I have
in me right now.

And then Gary and Benji,
they're back in good graces again

with each other.

I guess Gary paid them off
whatever money he owed Benji.

[interviewer] There are people who
say they were part of a fraud ring,

who have been saying that Gary
Lamont was selling

these paintings as Norval
Morrisseau paintings.

I've heard such stories.
But I have no, uh,

direction towards that.

Let me just ask you directly,
I mean, did... did you ever paint...

No. Not ever. Not ever.

- You never painted...
- I paint Woodlands Art, okay.

For me to... to, uh, uh,

sign, uh, shaman's name

would be such a
bad omen on my spirit

that it
would probably stop me.

I haven't attempted this.

Because I already know, on hand,
I wouldn't be able to do this thing. Okay?

So I'm here today to set this
record straight.

With you, my good man,
and the rest of the art community,

that I have never
forged my uncle's work.

Funny thing about this picture
is it's Benji who's taking it.

[Bryant] Norval was a great storyteller
and he always told me this story.

He told me many times.
Kind of drummed it into me.

That money was like a river and
it flows by your back door.

And you
can go to the bank of the river

and you can dip in and get what
you need,

or you can wade into
the river and drown.

[Amanda] Norval Morrisseau was
around lots when I was a kid.

'Cause Gary and Linda used to help him
out with... with groceries and rent.

And some of his bills that
he had.

Gary said, well,
said that they were close.

Gary said the paintings were coming
from when he was helping him.

So he was getting that in
exchange.

[Bryant] Back in the, uh,
late '80s, early '90s,

Norval unfortunately

was majorly
into substance abuse.

He was living in Thunder Bay,

and he hooked up with this fella that,
um,

for one reason or another,

started making these fake
paintings.

[Gabe] Lamont was the son of a
very close friend of Norval's.

And then as Lamont got... grew older,
he started hanging around Norval.

And then, I think,
Norval's close friend, Lamont's father,

asked him to watch out for his son,
take care of him.

So I think Norval felt like he was
gonna try and help this young man.

But this young man is
way beyond help.

I think Norval was involved in,
not only Gary,

but obviously Gary's chaos or whatever
that he was creating brought into his life.

And it would be, like,
almost like, "Okay,

I'm willing to make a deal with
the devil and I won't get burned."

It's like,
"You're gonna get fucking burned."

[Bryant] You know,
I've always told other people this,

and some of them don't like me to say it,
but it's the truth,

is I believe that Norval was
complicit.

In the fact that he didn't like
people to not do well.

He wanted everybody
to do well.

And he...
he's seeing someone,

you know,
doing one of his paintings,

and getting some money for it,
and they did better.

And he saw it like that.

And, um, you know,
it didn't bother him, right?

At the time.

In the very beginning,

he knew that Gary Lamont

was having fake paintings made.
He knew that.

[interviewer] How do you know?

Because
Norval talked about it.

[Norval] Many times people come
up to me and say, "Norval,

I thank you very much for
healing me.

I thank you very
much for helping me.

I thank you
very much for doing this."

I have never seen those people.

What did it?

That certain painting.

It will be a force that will protect
whatever situation you're in.

[Bryant] Norval called him "the
dope dealer."

I never once heard him
say his name.

But he'd say, "Oh, the dope dealer did this,
and the dope dealer did that."

It was actually years later that I
figured out who the dope dealer was.

[Ritchie] Now, my suggestion
about this Gary Lamont thing is,

he saw a wonderful business
opportunity.

With Morrisseau's paintings,
he could convert drug money

into money that you could buy a
car or buy a house with.

It could be, uh, surfaced.

Just from things that he said,

I believe that he knew in the
very beginning what was happening.

And he could...

you know,
Lamont got him a place to live,

basically gave him
booze and drugs,

and he sat around and good...
had a good time,

and other people painted
paintings.

But it was small scale,
though.

It was some,
it was enough for all these people

that were around him to
get by.

You know,
he wants everybody to have a good life.

Well, we figured, near the end,

that they had a relationship going on,
sexually, in a way.

The way they were
acting together.

Just the way he was always,
like, on him.

Touching him.

Like, rubbing his legs and...

[interviewer]
Who was touching whom?

Gary was
touching him like that.

[interviewer]
And was Norval receptive?

No.

He kept
moving to different chairs.

Being uncomfortable.

And so he stopped coming over
for a while.

And my aunt just went to his house and
gave money for groceries and paid his rent.

And Gary just stayed back.

[Bryant] Over the years,
this fraud developed and snowballed

and became more prevalent,
and they became greedy,

and they wanted more and more
and more,

and they were doing paintings,
you know, hundreds of paintings

and it's, you know, it... it became,
uh... it became a monster for him.

They got greedy.

And they waded into the river,
and they drowned in it.

And by then it was too late for
Norval to do anything about it.

[Gabe] And then later in life,

what I learned about Gary Lamont
is that he's a creep

and been in all kinds...
involved in all kinds of things.

[interviewer] Are you scared
talking about the art fraud now?

I was in the beginning,
but I'm not anymore.

Because I already...
you know,

I have fantasies of killing Gary all the
time over the sexual assault stuff and that,

you know, so... wasn't that,
you know.

I wouldn't be able to
live with myself after

if I just backed out now.

Gary had lots of Native
boarding students

that would come in from
the up North reserves

to continue their high school
education.

[Amanda] Well,
my aunt signed up for boarding students

from different reserves to live
in their hou... in their home.

[Dallas] And I was friends
with a couple of them.

[Amanda] Well,
they were coming from small reserves,

some...
some of them were dry reserves,

so they didn't know about
drinking or drugs.

So she would take six at a time.

Six boarding students.

Native guys.

In between eighteen
and twenty-five.

They wouldn't
take the females.

[Dallas] That's what he called
the camp,

it was just north of the city,
and they were like,

"Okay, well,
let's go out to camp."

[Amanda] Gary introduced them to
having a beer, or an alcohol drink.

He used to drop Valiums in our drinks,
right, and it was...

it was like a big joke - "Oh,
hahahaha, you got dosed, duhduhduh,"

you know, and everybody, like,
he'd drug everybody around the table,

different times,
different partying times, and...

And then we got stories from the,
some of the... the boarders they took,

that they're waking up with
their pants off and everything.

And being sore
when they'd go back.

So they didn't know what
was happening to them.

And then this, uh,
room to the right of it was, uh,

there was bunk beds in there for
all the Native boarding students,

and this is where he kept
them all.

And I ended up getting
drugged,

and then he kicked everybody out,
and then I had my own bedroom,

right beside his in the main house,
and everybody else,

he kicked out to the guest camp
and then locked the door.

That night, I... there was, like,
a blue light from the stereo,

I remember,
I remember him coming into the room,

I was just thinking to myself,
"I'm fucked."

He kept the keys
on him at all times.

Once he locked the door,
there was no getting out.

He pretty much did whatever he
wanted.

And I was just so fucked up,

and then that's basically when I
became a prisoner in this house.

He threatened my life,
he started threatening me, he told me once,

when he was raping me,
he was punching me in the head,

he told me that I better just go along
with it or I'll end up like Scott Dove.

[Amanda] Scott Dove owed money
for drugs to Gary. They found him.

He was hung with his privates cut
off and shoved down his throat.

Gary was one of the suspects.

[interviewer] And was...
Was anyone ever arrested?

They didn't have enough evidence.
So he got off the charges.

[Dallas] He raped me, and then just
went to bed like nothing happened,

and woke up the next day and
acted like nothing happened.

Everybody else was around,
I felt all ashamed and down...

This was Linda and Gary's room.
This was the living room.

I never expected the sexual
assaults to start happening again,

because his wife lived there,
right?

And then my
room was there.

And, you know,
we all lived on the same floor,

and he was coming into my room at night and,
you know,

raping me while his wife's,
you know,

just on the other side of the
kitchen in her bedroom,

and just progressively got worse
and worse

and more and more violent,
and I was scared, I was young,

and it was a nightly occurrence.

Uh, somewhere in the neighbourhood of five,
six hundred times

that I could estimate.

[Amanda] A couple of the
students went to Linda,

and told what was happening to
them.

Then she con... Well, she confronted Gary,
and Gary denied everything.

She just believed Gary,
whatever Gary says.

I thought that people would think of me,
I'm a bitch, you know, whatever.

You know,
just really negative.

It was like he was trying to brainwash me,
but I never enjoyed it.

It, just, even to this day,
it just...

think about it,
it really bothers me.

Just... it's... yes.

With the Native school,
I went and called it in.

Told the school what was going on,
so they put a stop to taking...

getting...
Linda to take students.

[interviewer] And what was their reaction,
Gary and Linda's?

They were kind of upset about it,
'cause they wanted that income to come in,

so they can...

say they got
income from some other place

instead of what they were
actually doing.

So it was an excuse for them to
have all that money.

[interviewer] What year was it that you began
to speak out and testify about the assault?

[Dallas] It was 2012.

2012 would be the
year I came out about it all,

uh, actually followed through the cops,
and then that's,

actually something got done,
something happened.

[man] Thunder Bay OPP began
their investigation in June,

after receiving allegations of
incidents that occurred at Warnica Lake

between 1997 and 2007.

As a result,
51-year-old Gary Bruce Lamont

has been charged with eight offences,
including assault, sexual assault...

[woman] The OPP confirms that
52-year-old Gary Lamont

was arrested today on nine new
charges.

They include forcible confinement,
three sexual assaults,

sexual exploitation,
and assault with a weapon.

[Jonathan] As we've been going through
the process of this fakes lawsuit,

some of the victims of Gary Lamont
filed complaints with the police,

and that led to prosecution of
Gary Lamont

for sexual assault
and other charges.

He was convicted and sentenced
to five years in federal prison.

Three new victims have come forward,
two men and one woman.

They ended up charging him for one female.
That was me.

[Dallas] I don't know,
I've cried lots about it,

I've got no more tears to cry
about this at all.

I feel good
about becoming the first one,

and giving other people the
courage to come forward

and put
this guy where he belongs.

In jail. He's a predator,
and that's where predators belong, in a cage.

Can't control themselves,
it's just... it's horrible, he's a monster.

In every sense of the word,
a monster.

There's a lot of mixed feelings,
you know, nervousness.

Everything this trial represents
about the fake Morrisseaus,

and all the sexual assaults that took
place while these were being made,

and it's just a lot.

I think he's very brave and
courageous for doing what he's doing.

He's nervous, but, you know, he's doing
the right thing and I'm proud of him.

She doesn't have to wonder anymore,
you know,

about everything,
what took place, what happened,

why I am the way I am, I guess,
today, how it shaped me.

Messed up my life,
pretty much.

Starting to get nervous, yeah.
Just sweating away.

Me too.

[Dallas] In my opinion,
I'm being a warrior,

I'm standing up for what's right,
what I believe in,

and the Native people were all
about that.

How do you feel?

Extremely nervous.

This is, uh,
private property.

Yeah. No kidding.

- How you doing, Gabe?
- Good.

[Ritchie] It's incredible.

I'm totally blown away,

I had the biggest cry last night
to realize with overwhelming truth

what these people are doing.

The beauty of it, the exposure, the dignity.
It's like a sacred moment.

- How's it going?
- How are you doing?

- I'm good, you?
- I'm so proud of you. Thanks for doing this.

Are you testifying again today, too?

Yeah, I heard you did yesterday.
I heard you did good.

- Well, should we head in?
- Definitely.

Yeah.

All right, babe, you ready?

Let's go.

[Dallas] All these paintings
offer a story.

Gary pretty much just
took advantage of it for profit.

To make a penny,
you know.

This is my culture and my heritage,
being Native,

and total disrespect,
disregard for anything.

And it
just doesn't sit well with me,

how he's making
money off of Natives like that.

I felt like crying after I came out,
brought up a lot of stuff.

I feel really shitty mood,
personally, you know,

and this... I don't know,
I'm feeling really down right now.

Trying to forget about some of this stuff,
you know.

I wanted to hug you in the
courtroom,

but I didn't know if I was
allowed.

- That was powerful.
- Thank you.

Thank you.
I'll see you in a bit.

Okay.

[interviewer] Do you know what was testified
to at the end of the last leg of the trial?

Two people testified that they
were inside an art fraud ring...

- You're kidding.
- ...paintings with black dry brush on them.

Hahaha. Very funny.

That's what was testified to,
I'm not kidding.

I don't... I don't disagree.
Where are they? Did they show any?

They described
the whole process.

They described.
I can describe many things to you,

but if I don't show you,
you don't even know it exists!

So you think it
was all made up?

I have never seen a fake.
Have you?

- Well, I've seen...
- Have you? I have not. What can I tell you?

Randy Potter here, we're gonna show
off this beautiful Norval Morrisseau.

[Dallas] There's a lot of people that are
saying that there are no fakes out there,

when I've seen hundreds and
hundreds of fake paintings.

I just feel like Gary pretty much
raped my culture, doing this.

[Kevin] I just wanted to buy a painting,
really.

[interviewer] What do you
know about this painting?

On a personal level?
I'd give you five bucks for it.

Spirit Energy of Mother Earth,

that sounds really familiar.

Spirit Energy.

'Cause it looks all,
like, lots of, many of,

I've seen that Benji has painted,
for sure.

[interviewer] You said that the
one that his lawsuit is over,

you don't think is yours, right?

I don't think it's mine.

It kind of reminds me, uh, the bottom piece
here reminds me of one that Benji painted,

I called it, uh,
the 'Kung Fu Bears.'

Cause it was a bear and it looked
like they're doing kung fu.

[interviewer] You don't
think it's a Norval?

No. I don't.
Not personally.

[interviewer] And you don't
know anything about...

No.

- Did you paint it?
- No.

I swear on Norval's grave
and my grandmother's.

I never painted that.

If I could,
it would look ten times better than that.

That looks like my five-year-old
son painted it. Okay?