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The documentary mentioned in the article, There Are No Fakes, is available for free streaming on a number of providers: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/there-are-no-fakes

Give it a watch! I find it exhilarating.

Is it the same story covered in Made You Look and Driven to Abstraction?
> They learned that Lamont and Voss, white men both ...

Is it just me that finds mentioning people's skin colour in everything a really bizarre aspect of US writing?

>Hearn, the collector whose initiative helped investigators get to the bottom of the scam, believes that Morrisseau’s identity as a part of a marginalized group was helpful to the crooks. The success of the fraud ring, he says, “illustrates the perpetuation of the problem with the relationship between Indigenous people and colonizers.” The fraudsters were betting on a lack of outrage when Morrisseau’s reputation was tarnished.

Because this aspect is important in Canadian history. Especially when…

>Hearn’s investigative team found that, for years, Lamont and his wife had helped oversee a group home for Indigenous youth. Dallas Thompson, the Anishinaabe man who knew a Morrisseau relative, said Lamont operated the home as a virtual factory for producing fake Morrisseau paintings. Under Lamont’s direction, youths and other Indigenous people in Thunder Bay were paid—or forced at threat of violence—to create Morrisseau look-alikes by the hundreds.

That's all about the heritage of the person who's work they were forging.

A person of any skin colour could have done what the forgers did with the same success. There's nothing about the skin colour of the forgers which made it better/worse/etc.

> The success of the fraud ring, he says, “illustrates the perpetuation of the problem with the relationship between Indigenous people and colonizers.”

To me, that just sounds like someone making statements to support their own prejudice(s).

The article is about an indigenous artist, so mentioning race does not seem that far fetched?
Don't really see why that's a valid excuse. The skin colour of the two people mentioned has nothing to do with the story.

Looking at the photo below that text fragment, people of the same skin colour were part of the investigation team which busted them.