Introducing | Forged: The true story behind the Norval Morrisseau art fraud

Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo

CBC

True Crime

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things — like buying paintings. And what better painting for an iconic Canadian rocker to buy than one by Norval Morrisseau, one of the most iconic Indigenous artists in Canada? But when Kevin’s Morrisseau painting is featured in an exhibit, it gets taken down because the head curator says it’s “questionable.” Kevin tries to get some answers but every answer leads to more questions. Host Adrian Stimson traces Kevin’s dogged quest to find out the truth about his painting — and learns how this one painting is the key to cracking a whole underworld open. Forged is a six-part series, from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia, host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world. More episodes of Forged are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/ForgedxMM

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who was Elon Musk before he was so loved and so hated?
0:04.1	Saved free speech. He created so many different great things.
0:10.1	Before the billions, before the rockets, before the never-ending headlines.
0:17.2	I'm Jacob Silverman, and my new podcast explores the prequel to the Elon Musk era.
0:22.6	Let me tell you what you don't know about the world's most notorious billionaire.
0:27.6	Understood the Making of Musk. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.6	This is a CBC podcast.
0:36.6	Narval Moro is one of the most famous and famous This is a CBC podcast.
0:43.1	Norval Moro is one of the most famous indigenous artists ever.
0:47.1	His paintings are colorful, beautiful, spectacular.
0:50.4	He was called the Picasso of the North,
0:54.8	but there are thousands of fake Norval-Morosso paintings.
1:02.1	I'm Adrian Stimson, and I'm an indigenous artist from the Siksika Nation, and I know every painting that I've ever painted. The idea of somebody putting my name on something that isn't
1:07.9	mine, it's heartbreaking.
1:17.3	In my brand new six-part podcast series, Forged from CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia, I explore how the legacy of one of the most famous indigenous artists got tied up in the largest
1:23.6	art fraud in the world. In this first episode, I trace one rock star's quest to find out the truth about his own
1:33.2	Norval-Morso painting and learn how this one painting became the key to cracking a whole
1:39.5	underworld open.
1:41.2	Have a listen.
1:52.0	Thank you. open. Have a listen. We burn this sort of to prepare our minds. This grass is used for a sacred purpose, and that purpose is to clear away the aberrations of the mind,
2:00.0	to allow space to enter so that spirit
2:04.0	will be speaking true.
	...

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