Buffy Sainte-Marie: Neither indigenous nor Canadian?
October 27, 2023 2:59 PM Subscribe

The CBC has revealed that Buffy Sainte-Marie, prominent 70s era American-Canadian singer-songwriter, and recipient of the Order of Canada, was actually born in the US, was never adopted, has European ancestry, and used legal intimidation to ensure her family stayed silent on her origins. The revelations have divided the indigenous community has raised significant questions about the litmus test of indigeneity, the threshold for investigating such cases, and the value of authenticity when judging music.
posted by sid (129 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite

"Never adopted" is not right. She was adopted as an adult by a Canadian indigenous family who have put out a statement in support of her. It seems to me that there are two issues - how much she consciously lied about her genetic roots to burnish her image to the public, and whether "blood quantum" is the correct way to measure indigeneity. (I'm suspicious of the latter attitude, a position I have developed by listening to many indigenous friends. But the first issue seems troubling.)
posted by branca at 3:25 PM on October 27, 2023 [15 favorites]

This is a hard story to read, and a hard story to think about. Thanks for posting it.
posted by clawsoon at 4:00 PM on October 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

Well, and to what extent “believes what my original parents told me” counts as her lying (versus her parents lying). One detail seems to be that her parents told her that one of them - I think it was her mother? - had Mi’kmaw Indigenous ancestry. And while DNA testing (which wasn’t available until more recently) can find close relatives, it’s not really particularly worthwhile for giving racial ancestry (partly due to race not being an entirely biological category, with genetic variation within races being relatively large; and also because they don’t have enough data for proper statistical analysis).
posted by eviemath at 4:03 PM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

[Jaw unhinges and drops to floor.]
posted by jonp72 at 4:05 PM on October 27, 2023 [11 favorites]

(That is, there are racial groups where the DNA testing companies have more information, but for understandable reasons, not necessarily a lot of Indigenous folks submit their samples, so they aren’t in the database for comparison.)

The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained
posted by eviemath at 4:08 PM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Anyway, not being Indigenous, it’s not my place to have an opinion on this. Understanding the technology being referenced to draw valid conclusions or understand when no valid conclusion can be drawn is important, though.
posted by eviemath at 4:10 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

No, this seems pretty damning when you read the article. She claimed she was adopted by her original birth parents, and threatened her family when they said she was biologically related to them. Finding the original handwritten birth certificate, in sequential time-centered order, seems to show that pretty clearly she was the biological daughter. While her later adoption was certainly legitimate, that doesn’t mean her earlier claims were true.
posted by corb at 4:11 PM on October 27, 2023 [25 favorites]

It doesn’t mean they were true, no. But was she lying deliberately, or being overly credulous about a received family narrative? And what is known about whether or not one of her parents had Mi’kmaw ancestry (which is an Indigenous First Nation), or what they told her about that?
posted by eviemath at 4:13 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am devastated by this news. Damn.
posted by Kitteh at 4:17 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

So we're just going to believe the CBC? Have you seen Buffy's side? Her family's side? Other indigenous folks' POV?
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 4:19 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

anyway, I still like this record. She didn't write it, but she did write this one, which keeps coming back to me as one of the most important songs we've ever had.
posted by philip-random at 4:19 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

The CBC fith estate documentary Investigating Buffy Sainte-Marie’s claims to Indigenous ancestry is available on youtube

otherwise airs 9 pm tonight on CBC
posted by yyz at 4:21 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

It doesn’t mean they were true, no. But was she lying deliberately, or being overly credulous about a received family narrative? And what is known about whether or not one of her parents had Mi’kmaw ancestry (which is an Indigenous First Nation), or what they told her about that?

I can't find any mention of this in the CBC article. Where is this information from?
posted by hydropsyche at 4:25 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Regardless, she was adopted by a Native family, so she belongs to them and they claim her. This is troubling to do these deep dives into Native women's ancestry and become "Pretendian hunters"
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 4:27 PM on October 27, 2023 [13 favorites]

The part where Ste-Marie threatened her brother is not good, even if you want to accept her adoption as making her indigenous. I cannot see her as the victim here.
posted by CCBC at 4:29 PM on October 27, 2023 [8 favorites]

Statement from Buffy's Piapot family
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 4:31 PM on October 27, 2023 [12 favorites]

I can't find any mention of this in the CBC article. Where is this information from?

Yeah, it was from a different thing I read online.
posted by eviemath at 4:42 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

The news that this was airing tonight has been out for a few days and so this has been raging across my socials much of the week. She definitely seems to have told different stories at different times but who knows how much that reflects what she understood at the time, what she knew to be a lie, what was misunderstood or misrepresented by reporters, etc.

At the end of the day, there is an Indigenous family and nation that appears to claim her as their own, even if not by birth, and I am certainly not qualified to question what that means to them or her.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:46 PM on October 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

Many of the concerns raised in this thread are addressed in the article, including by the indigenous experts on the 'pretendian' phenomenon who are interviewed. For example, it is understood that someone can be adopted by an indigenous family without themself being understood by that community to be indigenous. I am totally shocked and dismayed, even as I understand that this article assuredly lacks many details or aspects of the full story.

One thing that I found striking, that is totally in the realm of conjecture for me - her 1975 letter to her brother: “Alan, you no doubt remember your continued sexual abuses to me throughout my childhood,” she wrote. “According to my memories and my childhood diaries, you are nothing but a child molester and a sadist.” I wonder why Allan was writing letters to expose his sister as a fake in the first place? I wonder how other siblings respond to a fraudulent family member? No matter the exact specifics of their childhood interactions, one could certainly imagine a number of scenarios that might lead a talented young woman in the mid 1960s to want to imagine herself to be adopted, to be of a different family. And then, a certain temperament of person just gets carried away in their own exaggerations or little lies which snowball.

I thought this was an especially thoughtful exploration of how this kind of house of lies gets built. I have also been struck, besides the HG Carillo example, how almost very racial faker that has come to light in recent years has been a woman (and Carillo was queer). Like, I'm not sure what that means sociologically. But I want to understand it.
posted by latkes at 4:46 PM on October 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

The family statement has a powerful impact. I guess one of the many questions could be, do non-indigenous people have the right to do this kind of investigation? Surely indigenous peoples should make that decision. So complicated.

My first thoughts when I read this was about how much damage this is causing. My second thought was about how much BFM has done for the indigenous community and that maybe it doesn’t matter if she’s indigenous or not. My third thought was that my second thought was terrible and terribly wrong and that I’m continuing colonial thinking. And then I didn’t know what to think, both about this situation and about myself.

And now I’m worried that I’ve spoken out of ignorance and that I should delete this…
posted by ashbury at 4:49 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Re: race and DNA, indigenaeity is tribal not racial.

I flagged this post because it's a totally thin FPP with no context for the fact that one Jacqueline Keeler is known to be problematic and apparently that's where all this is coming from.

Sad to see people jumping on the bandwagon to dissect someone's background. It's super gross.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 4:50 PM on October 27, 2023 [16 favorites]

Adding to my previous comment, there certainly have been false claims of Mi’kmaw ancestry, eg. folks who claim a Catherine Lejeune as an ancestor. But then we’re again getting into the question of who, at what generation, was making things up versus credulously believing a family story.
posted by eviemath at 4:51 PM on October 27, 2023

Appreciate your thoughtfulness, ashbury. Well, there's lateral violence and Jacqueline Keeler has been doing this for years and most folks know that she is a problem.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 4:52 PM on October 27, 2023

one could certainly imagine a number of scenarios that might lead a talented young woman in the mid 1960s to want to imagine herself to be adopted, to be of a different family.

Before it was easier to check on these things, and when it was more secret, I think that this was more common - for unhappy children to wish that they were adopted, and to get to the point of even wondering if it could be true. I know - I did, when I had difficulties with my own family. What if my mother wasn’t my mother? What if I was the product of an affair and she had committed to raising me as her own? I hadn’t seen my own birth certificate. I remember weeks where I speculated about every physical characteristic and invented scenarios and reasons. Needless to say, I was not adopted, which I realized when I eventually both got older and also saw my birth certificate.

But yes, I can imagine a young girl, who doesn’t feel at home with her family, who thinks she doesn’t look like the rest of her family, during the time baby scoops are happening, thinking “what if?” And maybe building a whole narrative which isn’t contradicted. Maybe she tells herself they’re all lying to her to hide the adoption. And then she starts becoming famous, and she’s not trying to do wrong - she really believes this is the truth. But then at a certain point it’s too deep.

I still don’t think it justifies threatening family with lawyers against revealing the circumstances of your birth, but I can understand how someone might get there. I suppose.
posted by corb at 5:04 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Re: race and DNA, indigenaeity is tribal not racial.
Did you read the article? They get into this. A Métis person and an indigenous person both refute the claim that one can claim indigeneity through 'adoption' as an adult. It seems that there is no consensus within the indigenous community on this. When I brought this up with my family who have indigenous ancestry they said that Buffy clearly is not indigenous but questioned the value of uncovering all of this today. This is a complex situation and it seems that there's no clear consensus here.

I flagged this post because it's a totally thin FPP with no context for the fact that one Jacqueline Keeler is known to be problematic and apparently that's where all this is coming from.

I'm not aware of any connection to Keeler. Perhaps you can post some links re that. I'm sorry you feel this is a poor fpp; perhaps you can help by adding relevant content in comments?
posted by sid at 5:10 PM on October 27, 2023 [22 favorites]

But corb, it also sounds like her mother told her that she was adopted, not just that she came up with the possibility herself. Which could also be true, or not true but part of a dysfunctional family dynamic. But it does complicate the narrative.
posted by eviemath at 5:12 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read the Piapot family's statement, Sainte-Marie's statement, then did a bit of exploring Indigenous Twitter. I found this thread by Kim Wheeler, an Indigenous journalist, to be thoughtful.

In case people don't want to give Twitter clicks, a condensed version of the thread:

And what about that cousin who met her one time – that’s who they choose to talk with? I was getting some serious TMZ vibes.

They did not speak to any Cree people about Cree law. They did not talk to any of the Piapots or anyone else from that nation.

Yes, they reached out to the current chief, but what the hell is that? That’s like reaching out to a mayor and asking them to comment. Go to the family. Go to a knowledge keeper. Not to disparage chiefs, but come on.

While I understand pretendians are dangerous to our communities, I also understand how identity is complicated. What would Buffy have to gain by saying she was Indian back in 1961. In Canada, we only became human in 1960 with the right to vote.

Why would you want to be an Indian way back then? That’s a question that was never asked in the Fifth Estate piece. Why wasn’t it? I’m also kind of shocked at how quickly people turned on her. Social media lit up after finding out this story was going to air today.

Before anyone had read the article or watched the doc. Or have even met her. That is very troubling.

As for race shifting. allegations of sexual abuse, and the first mention of her Indigeneity…I want to share my own story. Growing up, my adopted mother told me the story of my birth mother handing me over to her. She described in detail what she wore. When I finally found my birth sisters, I related this story. This story was not true. All my life up to that point, I believed myself to be Mohawk, then I found out I was not only Mohawk but I was also Anishinaabe. That threw me for a long time. Probably for 15 years, I told people I was Ojibway and put the Mohawk side on the shelf – rightly or wrongly. The CBC piece said there was no mention of Buffy’s Indigeneity until later on. If you look back at my early life, I don’t know if there will be a written record of my talking about being Indigenous until you get to my Grade 12 yearbook where I quote Chief Dan George...As for the sexual abuse allegations. This is painful for any survivor of abuse to talk about. The first time I spoke about it, I was 20 years old. It did not go well with the people I disclosed to. I didn’t talk to my adopted family about it until I was 28 or 29 years old...I guess I am saying, I can understand how her story could change and how it has. Especially when, in the 1960s, our stories were not being told with respect, and probably without accuracy and context.

Media is the first rough draft of history they say. So yes, I think that some of those early media reports had errors in them. Is it possible that Buffy just didn’t bother to correct the reporter? Is it possible she did and the paper didn’t give a shit? The answer is yes.

So the birth certificate. Yes. This seems pretty damning. But again, we don’t know what the circumstances were around her birth. If her mother may have had an affair, if her father who is named on the birth certificate just decided to claim her as his own...

The Indigenous community has always said, it’s not who you claim to be but who claims you. The Piapot family has claimed her. So why is that narrative only suitable for when it agrees with your interpretation of this debacle?
posted by coffeecat at 5:21 PM on October 27, 2023 [28 favorites]

But corb, it also sounds like her mother told her that she was adopted, not just that she came up with the possibility herself.

The article disputes this with some quotes from her immediate family. It's unclear if her mom ever told her that she was adopted.
posted by sid at 5:21 PM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

The article says that Keeler found the Mass. birth certificate after getting a hunch about claims by Sainte Marie in the recent documentary, sid, which provides the connection without necessarily invalidating the evidence.
posted by Selena777 at 5:28 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks Selena777! Not sure how I missed that.
posted by sid at 5:32 PM on October 27, 2023

Keeler is a problem. And the problem with this CBC article and with this type of thing generally is that one person like Keeler will make a claim and then publish it in the media and then non American-Indian folks will just say oh, Keeler is American-Indian and she says so and so is not Native so I believe her.

So that's why this FPP is problematic. If one doesn't know and is not from these specific tribes, you don't know who claims whom.

We don't have a right to be sitting here investigating someone's indigenaity and I don't know why people are doing it here.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 5:34 PM on October 27, 2023 [14 favorites]

If one follows any Native social media at all, not main stream media, you would know that Keeler is called a "pretendian hunter" and non native folks believe her and this just does violence to the communities and it needs to stop. She recently backtracked on someone who she claimed to not be native because people proved her wrong.

It's exhausting and it's not cool. We have so much more to care about right now. Not this.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 5:36 PM on October 27, 2023 [29 favorites]

AnyUsernameWillDo, thank you for your contributions to this thread. I apologize and feel shame for immediately assuming it had to be true--CBC has always seemed legit to me, but I am a white presenting person. I really love Buffy Ste Marie. She is a Canadian I look up to.
posted by Kitteh at 5:50 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Am I reading this correctly—the article says she's the biological child of the white Massachusetts couple, and her birth was registered like every other birth to parents who intended on raising their kid themselves?
posted by avocet at 6:00 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

I hope this really bites the CBC in the ass. This is so gross. I will not be watching and I'm so disappointed in the CBC.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:04 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'd like to chime in some support for AnyUsernameWillDo here- Keeler is not a trusted source here at all. She came on my radar a few years ago with the leak of a text message chain where she enthusiastically supported wearing blackface to NBA games to get Kevin Durant to speak out against the offensive name of a sports team.
(Here's a link.)

What's more, I don't know why this is news now- Keeler has been sharpening the hatchet all year now for Buffy Sainte Marie. I read about this first here early this year.

Stolen ancestry, and pretending to be a minority for profit, is a real thing. But there's often an agenda at play for those who makes crusades of it. I urge to do your own research on Keeler and see for yourself if you find her trustworthy. I do not.
posted by LlamaHat at 6:08 PM on October 27, 2023 [11 favorites]

While I understand pretendians are dangerous to our communities, I also understand how identity is complicated. What would Buffy have to gain by saying she was Indian back in 1961. In Canada, we only became human in 1960 with the right to vote.

Why would you want to be an Indian way back then? That’s a question that was never asked in the Fifth Estate piece. Why wasn’t it? I’m also kind of shocked at how quickly people turned on her. Social media lit up after finding out this story was going to air today.

This is a very good question that I don't think can be answered to any satisfaction. There are at east three weird factors going on in comparable cases. People have deliberately done all kinds of strange things like this for reasons that only make sense to themselves. The other part of the question is how much does it mean to advocates of individuals in such situations? And lastly, how much does it mean to communities who may or may not claim said individuals?

I know very little about Buffy Ste Marie. The big question with her is how much dishonesty on her part, if any, is indicated. It seems an an ironclad charge against her claims can really be made. More like her story is complicated and if she's accepted by others despite no blood kinship, she's more blessed than not.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:11 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

thanks hippybear—my confusion stemmed more from the great distance between Cree and Mi'kmaw territory, and the article eviemath linked to above provides a clearer understanding of how someone of the latter community could end up with a birth certificate in New England, compared to the CBC.
posted by avocet at 6:15 PM on October 27, 2023

I guess, I mean, I don't know... there's a lot in this story, but to me the birth certificate is probably the weakest part.

The birth certificate being in order is honestly the most compelling part to me--that doesn't preclude adoption, but it requires the adoption to be essentially contemporaneous to the birth. However, things like "she's listed as white in the census" are so meaningless that it undermines the article entirely. I can narrow down when my dad's relatives gave up on the Hungarian pronunuciation of my surname because it's spelled completely wrong on one census (the census taker was clearly a German speaker who spelled it phonetically).
posted by hoyland at 6:18 PM on October 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

It seems an an ironclad charge against her claims can't really be made.

Sorry for the typo.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:23 PM on October 27, 2023

Thanks, LlamaHat,

This is an article with Buffy's response
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 6:24 PM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

The thing to with the article sourcing information from the cousins is, well, here's a couple of stories from my family.

I have two sets of cousins. The first is three kids and up until recently, I would have said they were all half Indigenous because my aunt (who is married to my mother's brother) is Indigenous, though I guess I would have been guessing on the 'half' bit of that because I wouldn't have know if she was fully Indigenous or not. At some point I learned that one of those cousin's was not my uncle's natural child, but from my aunt's previous relationship. So, I really would have been guessing about the half even more because I know nothing at all about that cousin's bio-father.

But now years later, I can tell you, to the best of my knowledge, those cousins are all at least partially Indigenous, yes, but the region their family traces its roots to is somewhere in Central or South America and not Canada. I am unclear on the specifics of where, and there are a couple of different countries where they have travelled to visit family.

The other set of cousins are my aunt (my mother's sister)'s two kids. I always pretty much knew they were not the biological children of my uncle because they did not share a last name until much later in life, but not much more than that. When I was a child, I would have told you they were white because my default assumption about everyone was that they were white unless it's very obvious or I was told otherwise. When I was a young adult, I came to understand that actually, their birth father was Indian, so they were also partially Indigenous.

These cousins, unlike the first set of cousins, are partially Indian. As in, their biological father traces his roots to the country of India. I misunderstood because for many decades of my life, the word for both Indigenous people of North America and people from India was the same word and I made assumptions about which was meant because, well, there were a lot of Indigenous people where I grew up and very, very few people from India (at that time) and it never would have occurred to me that my Aunt would have even known anyone from India.

If any of them were famous and a reporter came and asked me questions about their heritage, and I tried to answer as truthfully as possible, the things I told them would have been wrong for most of my life. My understanding might still be wrong -- because my family has never just sat down and had a discussion about who is adopted or from another relationship and what everyone's ethnic and genetic backgrounds are.

Just because a family member believed it and said it doesn't make it true.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:32 PM on October 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

Thanks for the context on Keeler.
posted by latkes at 6:36 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think the pretendian issue is important to be outed, because it speaks to the fact that our society's institutions can still be deceived by storytellers. Saskatchewan is the province that the Piapot First Nation and I reside in. We've had a former University of Regina president, a judge, and a University of Saskatchewan professor all outed as pretendians. They were afforded advantages in their careers because they were willing to lie about their minority status that other people were not. The CBC also ran articles about fakes degree holders that were using their education to advance their careers (Erna Hall and Ernie Polsom). Busting liars is unequivocally good for society.

The most compelling part of the story is the genetic testing of Beverly's son against his cousin which showed them with Italian heritage. Coupled with the birth certificate and high school yearbook, I think the likely story is that she invented an Indian persona to increase her marketability in the 20s. And she still threatened her brother with a defamation lawsuit to chill his speech, which doesn't make her a good person.
posted by DetriusXii at 6:51 PM on October 27, 2023 [12 favorites]

I struggle to see what the CBC feels they will get out of this. To go after a beloved performer at the end of her career is, at best, craven. I wonder if it's a sop to the hardcore "Defund the CBC" crowd, to show that the CBC can produce content that even the shitbirds will like.

In a way, I hope she doesn't fight this. To engage would only lend weight to her attackers' arguments. I hope she has many more good years on this earth and doesn't waste the last few of them battling monsters.
posted by scruss at 6:57 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained

There is no mention of any genetic testing in the article at all.
posted by ssg at 7:01 PM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

There was a long standing policy to issue official birth certificates to adoptive parents in various states. I don't know how all the laws differ state to state, but I do know that there is no way to trace my original birth mother through the birth certificate system. There is nothing in that system, from the late 60s, that would flag me as having been adopted at all. The certificate looks identical to one issued to anyone born and kept by their birth parents. That's just how things were done in those days.

I thought about this, too, but the article clearly addresses it and shows evidence that her birth certificate is accurate.

Adoptee birth certificates still work the same way yours did. My ex and I are listed as parents on our adopted son's birth certificate, and as of a couple of weeks ago, it also has his corrected gender and name on it. There's no indication on it that it was amended in any way. "Birth certificate" is kind of a misnomer, really. Even a simple legal name change can lead to a birth certificate being issued with different information than was originally included in it.
posted by Well I never at 7:01 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

The CBC has been promoting their podcast on Buffy Saint-Marie since it was released and then come out with this?
posted by monkeymike at 7:05 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

“This is a very good question that I don't think can be answered to any satisfaction.”

No, it's easy to answer: there were pretendians in 1960. White people have been doing this for generations. I guarantee it had cultural cachet for a folk singer in 1960.

Regardless, it's only for the community she's claiming to be a part of to decide whether she belongs to them. Not us and not anyone else.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:09 PM on October 27, 2023 [16 favorites]

there were pretendians in 1960. White people have been doing this for generations.

Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney; September 18, 1888 – April 13, 1938) comes immediately to mind
posted by philip-random at 7:15 PM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

I think the only conclusion I can come to given the article and surrounding commentary is that if Buffy Sainte-Marie has a First Nations family that stands by her, the rest is very much none of my business.
posted by eekernohan at 7:18 PM on October 27, 2023 [14 favorites]

The most compelling part of the story is the genetic testing … which showed them with Italian heritage

Yeah, see, that’s the least compelling use of that technology, as explained in the article I posted. Also does not preclude (though also does not prove) Mi’kmaw ancestry.

The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained

There is no mention of any genetic testing in the article at all.

Umm… ancestry DNA testing and ancestry genetic testing are exactly the same thing? Genes are DNA. Genetic testing refers to using DNA probes to check for the presence of particular marker sequences in someone’s DNA, or sequencing their DNA and then comparing it with a database of other DNA sequences.
posted by eviemath at 7:23 PM on October 27, 2023

→ Busting liars is unequivocally good for society.

Is it, always?

A friend of mine was adopted, and all of his family history and documentation suggested he was Métis. His adoptive family supported him in reconnecting to family roots and traditions in Manitoba. His adult son is now a respected Métis artist. But there's a problem: a few years ago, my friend took a DNA test. His heritage isn't Métis but Ashkenazi. He's met his birth mother, and now understands more about his family. He doesn't consider himself Métis now.

So: was my friend a liar? Is my friend's son a liar?

I suggest that Canada's systems combined were the liars in my friend's life. Firstly, an adoption system that stripped a person of their tradition shortly after birth is inhuman. Secondly, a colonial country obsessing about its bloody Two Solitudes in order to distract itself from the Other Fucking Huge Solitude It's Doing Its Best To Erase is sick. The inhumanity and the sickness combined to affix a myth to a man: my friend.
posted by scruss at 7:24 PM on October 27, 2023 [22 favorites]

Umm… ancestry DNA testing and ancestry genetic testing are exactly the same thing? Genes are DNA.

Are you referring to something specific here? There is a lot about ancestry in the CBC article, but there is nothing about genetic testing. They use the word "genealogical", but that's about things like birth certificates and other similar records, not about genetic testing.
posted by ssg at 7:40 PM on October 27, 2023

I have no comment on these issues because I have no expertise in any of them, and since I'm white, it's not my ethnic community that's affected.

But I can mention that my husband, who is also white, started studying/praying (the boundaries between study and prayer were nebulous) with a revered Blackfoot elder, maybe 20 years ago. This elder opened his sweatlodge to non-Indigenous people. Some in the Blackfoot community supported him and others did not.

My husband began participating in ceremony with the elder, going to sweats and vision quests (four-day fasts without food or water), and learning to make traditional drums, moccasins, and prayer pipes. He did this in a way that the elder felt was respectful and genuine. Eventually he made the commitment to Sun Dance, which is actually a commitment to participate in four annual Sun Dances, and the required prayers and fasting that go with them. The elder and his wife (also an elder) adopted my husband and claimed him as one of their sons. When his adoptive parents passed away, my husband was listed in the obituaries along with the birth family members.

I have no idea if Buffy Ste. Marie's adoption by a Cree family was like this. I know almost nothing about Cree or Blackfoot people (other than they were traditional enemies, and each nation still tells disparaging jokes about the other), and their adoption traditions may be entirely different. But my white husband was considered a son of a Blackfoot elder, although he has never been considered Blackfoot.
posted by angiep at 7:42 PM on October 27, 2023 [8 favorites]

Let’s Talk About Jacqueline Keeler

You see, Jackie may have 22k followers but if you really look at her Twitter you'll see the dwindling number of likes she gets for her tweets. She's no longer welcome by Native American Journalists Association. Reputable publications are learning not to listen to her. It's why people are questioning her more and more. It's why she has a Substack instead of a byline in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast like she used to. People are seeing through her grift and that enrages her.

And grift it is. If it weren't she wouldn't have so hungrily and disgustingly danced on Sacheen Littlefeathers grave, using shoddy research to pump up her profile, not caring that it has far reaching consequences for tribal sovereignty including damage to ICWA.

No, this isn't about saving our Native Nations. It's about her profile, her books, her money. It's about what's best for her and everyone else be damned.

published roughly eleven months ago.
posted by philip-random at 7:47 PM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

philip-random's link may have been meant to go here: Let’s Talk About Jacqueline Keeler | by Frances Danger | Medium
posted by scruss at 7:59 PM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

thanks for correcting me
posted by philip-random at 8:07 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Naturally, it was a shock to hear this in the news this morning, and I admit I kind of placed it in among all the other "pretendian" cases and the damage they've done. The fact is that a lot of these people, including St. Marie, are selling something that isn't theirs.

Then I reminded myself that unlike a lot of those others, up until 24 hours ago, her contributions to indigenous causes were pretty widely respected and acknowledged, at least among non-indigenous people. (Kim TallBear did point out to the host of CBC's "Current" that there are so many people doing important work on the ground that St. Marie's contribution might be thought of as important mostly outside of those communities, not so much within them.) What has changed, really?

I remind myself that in these cases, the affection for non-white public figures is often precariously conditional. When they misstep, we pursue them with a blood thirst from which flawed white people are generally protected. I don't want to involve myself in that.

She has some things to sort out with her families. That's none of my business.
posted by klanawa at 8:10 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

ssg, see the other link I posted which gives a few more details about the story, including discussion of some claims that are based on ancestry DNA testing. Other posters above, like the one I was responding to, had been talking about claims based on the DNA testing that Buffy’s sister (and son, I guess?) had apparently done. The claim about Italian ancestry seems to come from this (but, again, there are some problems with using such DNA testing for racial ancestry analysis), and Buffy’s sister seems to maybe be claiming that there was sufficient match between her and Buffy’s son to establish that they are genetically related? Although the details were still quite sparse, so I found that part confusing or wasn’t sure of those claims after reading. Genealogical research involves looking at birth certificates and census reports and such, and is indeed a different thing, yes.
posted by eviemath at 8:53 PM on October 27, 2023

(That the CBC article didn’t include it may speak to their analysis of the relevance or potential accuracy of the claims, of course.)
posted by eviemath at 8:56 PM on October 27, 2023

The claim about Italian ancestry seems to come from this

No, the Italian ancestry claim is not based on DNA testing. Buffy Sainte-Marie’s grandparents (the parents of Albert Santamaria) came from Italy.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:01 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Based on family stories, me, my family and my adopted children have had ethnic connections that with genetic testing turned out to be different in other complicated ways. On legal paperwork, there are entirely other stories which don’t correspond to either genetic or social accounts. There’s a pressure to fold complicated stories into neat little boxes with One True story but who I am is not a set of percentages adding up to 100%, but overlapping braided identities that can’t be quantified.

And the story of indigenous identities colliding with western empires very often goes down to quantification of some sort to assign a single legal box of control.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:35 PM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

LEAVE BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE ALONE.
posted by wats at 9:46 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

The article doesn't mention it, but there was a sibling between Alan (b. 1936) and Buffy (b. 1941): Wayne (b. 1940). He died on May 16, 1940 -- nine months and four days before Buffy's birth.

Bruce Santamaria [61] said his family told him Sainte-Marie’s claim that she was adopted was incorrect. "We were told flat out that she was my Uncle Albert’s child".

Buffy Sainte-Marie [82] has said, "I was told that I was adopted. I was told that I was just born ‘on the wrong side of the blanket.’ In other words, one of my parents was my parent and one wasn’t."

The article doesn't delve into the discrepancy between Uncle Arthur's account in the 1964 clipping ["She was born here, in Wakefield, at 24 Prospect st" -- per public records, then the Santamaria home] and the birth certificate ["Beverly Jean Santamaria was born in Stoneham, Mass., at New England Sanatorium and Hospital on Feb. 20, 1941,” said [town clerk] Sagarino; that hospital would change names a couple of times before shuttering in 1999, and it was on Woodland Road, within the Middlesex Fells Reservation (a state park)].

Or, why that certificate would list father Albert's occupation as electrician, when he's reliably a mechanic elsewhere. He worked for Robbins & Burke, specialists in truck refrigeration. Ice cream trucks, sure, but also military contracts for transporting food and medical supplies. (For the US, but perhaps Canada, in the two years before the US officially entered WWII.)

Mainly I wish someone involved with this reporting had gone with "Beverley" or "Beverly".
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:02 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

So, sorry for the delay here, but this was posted at a point where we have a somewhat significant moderation gap, and ideally this would be removed, reframed and reposted with more background and context about the issue and the author of the article, etc., and b) even in that case, Ivan Fyodorovich put it well and succinctly: "it's only for the community she's claiming to be a part of to decide whether she belongs to them. Not us and not anyone else." I am leaving this (at least for now) because so many people have contributed to add more information about the wider picture and concerns, but let us withhold trying to make a judgement or "settle the question" when we have neither the full story nor the moral authority to do so. Thank you!
posted by taz (staff) at 11:18 PM on October 27, 2023 [18 favorites]

No, it's easy to answer: there were pretendians in 1960. White people have been doing this for generations. I guarantee it had cultural cachet for a folk singer in 1960.

It doesn't seem very easy to Kim Wheeler, who asked the question.

Regardless, it's only for the community she's claiming to be a part of to decide whether she belongs to them. Not us and not anyone else.

I can see how this assertion can also bring up a pretty hard question. Precisely because of the first part of your answer. If someone can benefit by identifying themselves as part of a community, even if that particular community agrees, I can absolutely understand how others who were born with that identity, and never have the choice to escape it, might be angry at an outsider exploiting it for "cultural cachet", as you put it. An outsider whose adopted identity may very well have been a choice.

If Sainte Marie got "cultural cachet for a folk singer" with her identity, knowing it was untruthful, I don't see how one could just wave away concerns by saying "it's only for the community she's claiming to be a part of to decide whether she belongs to them". Much of her fame came from outside that community, based on that "cultural cachet". From people who must have thought they were getting a more authentic voice than might have been the case.
posted by 2N2222 at 3:33 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

Then, per mod comment, link to an Indigenous person saying that.
posted by eviemath at 4:18 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

reframed and reposted with more background and context about the issue and the author of the article, etc., and

I’m sorry but - was the link changed? Because this is a huge story in Canada, with a three-reporter months-long investigation by our national broadcaster, 2 radio segments and an hour long TV show.

I have an incredible amount of concern about why the CBC is spending its time on this and the incredible wave of coverage it launched yesterday, starting with this segment on The Current.

But this is a huge story in Canada because it’s not “thin,” it’s ridiculously thick. It’s also extremely weighty because it touches on Canada’s 60s scoop and residential schools. In our country, there are bodies of children being discovered who were taken from their families for one reason: they were Indigenous. They died in schools where they were being abused. They have no voices. Their families were not told what happened to them. Others were placed in white families.

It is absolutely not for me to say what Buffy St Marie’s history is. I have met her. She’s a legend. I don’t understand why the CBC took this on. But the topic of appropriation of the Canadian trauma that was due to genocide is not “light.”

There is a discussion in the comments above about Kim Wheeler’s involvement and response on Twitter but to call the FPP a “thin” article is absolutely untrue. This is exactly the way Canadian context is routinely stripped on this site to make arguments on both the American right and left.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:20 AM on October 28, 2023 [48 favorites]

And eviemath, how’s APTN.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:34 AM on October 28, 2023

Whoops missed the edit window: APTN
posted by warriorqueen at 4:42 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

This thread has gone a long way in showing me how to decolonize my thinking and I appreciate it. I shouldn't assume a story is true despite it being on our country's main news source, and especially considering what I didn't know about Keeler.
posted by Kitteh at 4:52 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

I really appreciate this post. Ditto the posters who have commented with added Indigenous and/or Canadian context (I'm neither). I also flagged angiep's comment as fantastic, because I feel it provided useful, nuanced information that helps to illuminate some of the complexities at play here.

Very hard agree with warriorqueen. This post should not be deleted. MeFi posts regularly appear with just one thin link and no one says a word. There's a shit ton of "everyone knows X" in the comments here that everyone does not know, or even agree with, and clearly many people did not even read the article linked, let alone subsequent additions.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:19 AM on October 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

TW: sexual violence.

Well, for my part, I had a knee-jerk reaction to this FPP being posted with just the one CBC link, and with the question of is BSM who she says she is? so to speak.

And because I follow different Indigenous media on IG, I actually first heard of it from the POV of, "pretendian hunters" are at it again; leave BSM alone."

Then BSM came out with her statement ahead of the CBC documentary airing.

So I heard this from different perspectives before seeing the CBC article. That's why I said why is this FPP so thin? Just saying.

And people who have no business dissecting her background are now coming in here acting like trained genealogists.

I don't know what's true or not. Maybe she isn't Cree. But we don't know at all what her "growing up mother" told her. There are so many scenarios that could have happened and we will never know for sure.

Having adopted parents on a birth certificate as biological parents is one scenario.

She mentions sexual trauma in her family both herself and possibly her mother's. She might have been conceived out of wedlock or by rape and it could have been a dark secret.
She alludes to this is her statement.

Some people already thought she wasn't Cree because her brother wrote a letter to the newspaper in Denver and some folks in Denver just sorta thought or there Buffy is playing dress up. But it's not like anyone forced her to prove it.

She's just retired from performing because of health issues. God forbid she doesn't get a day of peace before she passes because of this. She's in her 80s ffs. It's cruel.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 6:37 AM on October 28, 2023 [13 favorites]

Fun piece and thread. I’d like to say I’m surprised by the defensive handwringing in the comments here, but clearly a story like this butts up against a core Metafilter belief “believe people’s claims about their identity.”

That belief works kinda for identities that are pure statements about an individual (eg “I’m a book reader,” though even there you could dig into people’s actual amount off reading), but doesn’t work so great for claims to identity that rely on unchangeable, documentable facts.
posted by crazy with stars at 7:07 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Well once again, the article, two national radio shows and two national television shows were all running in Canada yesterday after the CBC chose to put three investigators, including a senior investigative reporter, who are as far as I can tell, non-Indigenous, on this story.

I agree with you, AnyUsernameWillDo, 100% that no one should be focusing 200 years of colonialist bullshit on one female artist. To be clear, I didn't have as much of an issue with your comment. I had an issue with the moderation note which seems to reinforce that there's a single discredited author to this piece when that is absolutely not the case.

My opinion is that CBC should not be running this story and my question is why are they not investing these resources in investigating rich and powerful white people who run corporations or political leaders who throw anti-Semitic dogwhistles around.

And yet, they did and now Indigenous people are once again having to deal with a firestorm of opinion about someone's identity, which is extremely painful and divisive. And it's painful not because someone got their facts wrong. It's painful because of the editorial choice to run it.

It behooves us white people to understand why this is extremely painful and divisive. I agree people should not be dissecting her background here. But I also think it is a colonial attitude to consider these questions thin. We should read stories about why identity is such a mess - we made it that way.

Both with our genocidal policies and with the way we tokenize and make exotic and claim culture as ours. Canadians need to engage with that in a complex way. Appropriating trauma is harmful. Policing identity from outside a community is harmful. I would also gently say that identifying with Buffy because of her trauma - I'm a sexual abuse survivor too - does not give insight into her impact (in any direction) within the Indigenous community.

The CBC should not be the people running this piece. But now that they have, with so much vigour, here everyone is.

The really affronting thing about the CBC story besides the fundamental and essential question of why did they chase this story down, is that it in fact is almost certainly factually correct. (Add: Whether this is truth or not is a different thing.) They didn't republish Wheeler. They spent a lot of fucking time and a lot of fucking airtime to delve into the whole experience, true-crime podcast style. They didn't get an Indigenous team on it. If they tried to and couldn't, that says something. They chose this as their story.

Now that this firestorm is kicked off, it's important, IMO, for Canadians to engage with the issues. Not with St. Marie's identity.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:14 AM on October 28, 2023 [12 favorites]

Acting Piapot chief, other Sask. Indigenous people react to CBC investigation into Buffy Sainte-Marie [CBC]

"When it comes to Buffy specifically we can't pick and choose which part of our culture we decide to adhere to.… We do have one of our families in our community that did adopt her. Regardless of her ancestry, that adoption in our culture to us is legitimate."
...
Kamao Cappo is a residential school survivor from Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation, which is located about 10 kilometres away from Piapot First Nation. ... Cappo admitted that he felt conflicted, sometimes thinking the revelations should've been left buried, allowing people to live "happily ever after."

"But that's not a reality and we'll survive," he told CBC. "What was the saying? 'The truth will set you free.' It's better to deal with the truth and we'll be OK."

posted by mazola at 7:14 AM on October 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yeah I read that article too mazola and then I was like...I don't know if I trust that the CBC made a good faith effort there to collect varied responses. If people would even talk to them.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:18 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

warriorqueen, the comment was that the FPP here was thin, not that the wider story itself outside of this FPP had little reporting. The link I posted about the story upthread is from an Indigenous news source, and included multiple perspectives. My point toward 2N222 was that those of us in the thread who are not Indigenous should be referencing Indigenous voices(*,**), not that there was a single Indigenous perspective.

* The lack of this in the FPP itself is also a pretty big problem with the way this FPP was crafted.

** I don’t know everyone’s identity, because we are somewhat anonymous here, but assume that there are also Indigenous commenters in this thread.
posted by eviemath at 7:32 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

True to your ** point.

But I disagree that the FPP was thin if you’re Canadian, or if you read the whole article.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:36 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

FWIW here's CBC statement on why they ran this story.
posted by mazola at 7:37 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh my god please do not make a FPP linking to the story of the day in Canada into a I/P argument. It’s bad enough that the moderator somehow missed that this was as major investigative piece.

I’m so out.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:49 AM on October 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

After I point out how fucking tokenizing that was. I can pull Indigenous quotes from Twitter too but that’s gross.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:51 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

CBC news ran the story because they want more views.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 7:51 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

But I disagree that the FPP was thin if you’re Canadian, or if you read the whole article.

The FPP is thin in the sense that it doesn't relay that there was broader discussion about the topic, nor provide the context about Keeler. The article itself is not being described as thin by anyone who is wishing for a deeper post.
posted by hoyland at 7:57 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Fine, I am back. So what is the bar for Canadians to post an article here? Do we have to assume that we have to explain that the CBC is our national broadcaster, and that the link in the article to the full-hour show and the three authors of the piece and the discussion of all the evidence and the links at the bottom to journalist practices and all that is incomprehensible to Americans who want to get their two cents in?
posted by warriorqueen at 8:03 AM on October 28, 2023 [29 favorites]

I made a Metatalk for Palestine, so I will cease that talk in here. I'm sorry that was triggering for you. It's all I can think about atm.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:07 AM on October 28, 2023

I was the one who got mad about the FPP being "thin" cuz I read the other stuff before the CBC piece. I think it should stand now with all the good contributions. We can just drop that argument about this fpp being thin since it's now fat with all the contributions. I think Taz was just going with my complaint, honestly.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:08 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Even with their closest neighbour up North, it's amazing how Americans are just gonna American no matter what.

I agree with warriorqueen. What is the bar for Canadians? In at least two Canadian media threads I can think of in recent memory, American posters got a lot of stuff wrong about the issues but doubled down anyway.

edited to add: the MAID thread, and the Hunka affair in Parliament are the examples.
posted by Kitteh at 8:10 AM on October 28, 2023 [12 favorites]

Omg! Please don't do that. I was just responding to "Canada news of the day" warriorqueen said. We are not in competition here and I'm sorry that it was felt in that way
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:11 AM on October 28, 2023

Y'all should make a Metatalk about this since it's clear there's some stuff coming up about it. Canada vs. U.S. perspectives.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:14 AM on October 28, 2023

Good job, warriorqueen. I almost vomited my immigrant gay trans woman perspective all over this thread.
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:19 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Derail removed. Trimmed this back. Don't make this thread into a thread about another topic please.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Entirely within Canada, asking that a post on Indigenous issues include some Indigenous sources is reasonable. We have Indigenous news networks up here, such as (though not limited to) APTN as warriorqueen mentioned. CBC, while it does have a section reporting on Indigenous issues, is not one of them.

I think that warriorqueen raises important questions about the CBC’s reporting. In the CBC editor’s statement on why they published the story, that mazola posted, they state,

Reporting on stories of false Indigeneity is very much in the public interest. Experts in the field have said time and again that failing to challenge false narratives is contrary to the principles of truth and reconciliation.

Linking to these experts would provide additional useful context, even for Canadians, many of whom, in my experience (and including myself in this!) really don’t know enough about the Truth and Reconciliation process. This could also be helpful in giving those of us who are not Indigenous more direction in how to engage with this story respectfully. (I’ll try to find such links as time allows this weekend, but help from other commenters would be appreciated.) Even accepting the argument that this is a story of important public interest (and there are definitely Indigenous voices in Canada saying it is, some of which have been linked in thread comments), of course, there’s the question of the level of resources given to this story - not just an investigative report, but coordinated presentations in multiple formats across multiple platforms - versus other stories, and whether that is or isn’t proportionate.

Given that Saint-Marie was raised in the US, got her career start there, and has remained very active in the US, this is not just a Canadian story or one only affecting Canadian Indigenous communities, of course. And as I understand it, while there is much overlap, some of the important issues impacting communities differ between the two countries (especially given the different legal issues around status, treaties, the legal status of bands or reservations, and the differences in human rights legislation and types of affirmative action that are permitted in each country). The consequences of someone falsely claiming Indigenous status could differ between the two countries. I’ll look for more info about that too when I have time.

A small part of this, though I think not the important one given everything else, is also the slightly wider issue of what counts as CanCon for Canadian cultural funding and awards.
posted by eviemath at 8:41 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

Pam Palmater, quoted in the APTN article, is a professor of Indigenous governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, an expert commentator often seen on/in Canadian news, and, critically, a Mi'kmaw woman—while members of Piapot FN have come forward confirming Buffy Sainte-Marie is part of their family, I don't think anyone from Mi'kma'ki has done the same yet.
posted by avocet at 8:56 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

One thing that’s glaringly (to me) missing from the editor’s comment on why they reported the story is an acknowledgement of the role that CBC had in helping build Saint-Marie’s career, and grappling with what their responsibility may have been or should be in the future. That question of what are institutions’ roles in accepting versus verifying details such as Indigenous status for awards and appointments reserved for members of a given demographic is certainly a current topic of discussion in Canadian universities that I haven’t been personally involved in but have seen second-hand.
posted by eviemath at 8:59 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Unlike traditional sources of the news, on Metafilter, no matter what the topic, people with actual experience with, knowledge of the topic respond and the rest of us can learn something. Thanks to all those commenting here who actually have something concrete to present. Opinion is one thing, but experience and knowledge is something else. The rest of us should listen.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:01 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

Here is an excellent article by Michelle Cyca of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation that frames government and academic reconciliation initiatives following the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action...and how white women academics across the country have exploited Indigenous communities and the good faith of those trusting their self-identification. Veldon Coburn of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, referenced in the APTN article above, unfortunately* now specializes in researching false claims of Indigenous identity, and spends much of his time debunking false claims from those seeking Algonquin status within his community and in the Ontario judicial system.

Read the TRC Report.

*his work is fantastic, it's just a damn shame that it has to happen. I also just saw a mention of a 2013 conference paper he delivered at a U2 Studies conference on Achtung Baby, and remember everyone contains multitudes.
posted by avocet at 9:29 AM on October 28, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm thinking about whether she lied about being Canadian (presuming that she did in fact lie). I guess in one sense she didn't, since most First Nations people weren't considered Canadian enough to vote until about 20 years after she was born.
posted by clawsoon at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rereading that Macleans article, Keeler is mentioned briefly at the end—for getting a pretendian accusation entirely wrong.
posted by avocet at 9:44 AM on October 28, 2023

avocet: Here is an excellent article by Michelle Cyca of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation

Like the Pretendians who have emerged in recent years, Grey Owl fooled countless white people, who saw in his performance a version of Indigeneity that reflected their assumptions and stereotypes back at them... [S]ome people still prefer a fake Indian to a real one.

Especially in the cases of the academic positions and artistic grants that the article talks about, there's a big complicated set of cultural expectations around what it means to be a proper academic on one hand and what it means to be a proper Indigenous person in the eyes of mostly-white university administrators and faculty on the other.

In some ways it's not surprising that white people would often be better at meeting other white people's expectation of what an Indigenous person is "supposed" to be like.

And even presuming that Buffy Sainte-Marie has always been telling the truth, there's the fact that we white people have so often wanted to get our Indigenous culture from people who were adopted as infants by white parents. Maybe that's why we didn't hear about residential schools for so long - we wanted to hear what someone who was raised white could reconstruct about Indigenous culture. We didn't want to hear from the reserve. We didn't want to hear about the horrible industrial genocidal assembly line that we had tried to put Indigenous culture through.
posted by clawsoon at 10:11 AM on October 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

I'm wondering how Canadians in general (not just from the indigenous perspective) feel about the idea of Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC, face on a stamp, turning out to be an Italian-American, born in the Boston suburbs, not prairie-born, etc. Would/does that make any difference to whether you listen to her music?

I already linked to some of her music way above.

As for the other stuff, the weird part for me is how I even discovered Buffy Sainte-Marie was indigenous (do I now need to put that word in quotes?). I certainly knew her music well before that. So it wasn't somebody saying, hey, check out this cool First Nations singer-songwriter. No that information came up via some family stuff which I'm not going to go deep into, except to say that some relatives (white) got caught up in the Sixties Scoop (ie: they adopted two young Cree boys). Long unhappy story short, at some point when they (the boys) were going through some traumatic teenage stuff, Sainte-Marie sought them out and spent some time with them. I have no idea what was discussed or really any other circumstances -- that just happens to be when I discovered that Buffy Sainte-Marie, who wrote and/or sang those amazing songs, was of First Nations heritage (now disputed, of course).

tldr: her now disputed ancestry was not a factor in my initial love of her music. As for the stamp stuff, trust that we have far worse villains to contend with in that regard, starting from day one.
posted by philip-random at 10:14 AM on October 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

some relevant history that just showed up on my Facebook:

Indigenous representation on TV in 1968 | Buffy Sainte-Marie:
posted by philip-random at 10:51 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm wondering how Canadians in general (not just from the indigenous perspective) feel about the idea of Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC, face on a stamp, turning out to be an Italian-American, born in the Boston suburbs, not prairie-born, etc.

Speaking as a non-Indigenous Canadian-in-General person: lots of Canadians are Canadians by choice. That can include everyone from our neighbours to our governors general. If she was not born in Canada she is surely not the first person not born in Canada to be portrayed on a stamp. Sir John A, linked above by philip-random was our first prime minister, was not born in Canada and has been on our stamp and on our money. Alexander Graham Bell, has been on a stamp though he wasn't born in Canada. There are Order of Canada recipients not born in Canada, Aga Khan IV, Henry Morgantaller...Charles Best, the 77th Greatest Canadian*, was born in Maine.

*Banting came in 4th. I wonder if they hadn't split the vote and had run as a sort of joint ticket if they might have placed higher...I mean Best would have, for sure. But maybe jointly they could have come higher than 4th.

So how do I feel a about it? *shrug*. Lots of fabulous Canadians weren't born here. I have no interest in putting up that wall.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:23 AM on October 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Then, per mod comment, link to an Indigenous person saying that.

Wouldn't that be Keeler herself? That's kind of her whole schtick, to the dismay of many.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:54 AM on October 28, 2023

One deleted. Let’s not derail this thread by questioning a person’s sexual abuse allegations.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 1:32 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yeah, that was fucking VILE
posted by hangashore at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

My point wasn’t that no Indigenous voices had that perspective. My point was that those of us who are not Indigenous probably shouldn’t have an opinion (at least publicly), and should be linking to Indigenous voices. Or at the least, citing them, rather than being lazy and stating the opinion or perspective without citation or linking.

This starts to sound like shutting down argument, without presentation of a pedigree. Under your reasoning, shouldn't anyone not of indigenous heritage refrain from contributing, for or against?

I would argue the whole reason this is a story at all is because Sainte Marie's career at least partially hinges on the public identity she's had for decades. Appealing to an audience that's far beyond any indigenous population. She was never "the Italian-American folk singer who adopted/has been adopted by, Piapot-Cree culture". Which might have played out differently for her. As far as I can tell, any clarification on her part came out pretty recent in life.

I'm not going to show you my genetic profile to shore up my argument, because it doesn't matter. What matters is if she was knowingly dishonest about her past, which is a complicated question that may not have any easy answer. And more importantly for everyone else, how much any misleading may have contributed to her success. Which I think may be a bigger indictment of dominant North American society.
posted by 2N2222 at 2:06 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

without presentation of a pedigree.

Yeah, that is the tricky part in anonymous online forums. And anyone who does say “well, I am Indigenous and here’s what I think” we would have to decide whether or not to accept that in the same way as we decide whether or not to accept Saint-Marie’s word before there was any evidence of her ancestry. Which I generally think is a good thing to do… but feels a little different to me when the topic itself is about questioning someone’s ancestry and claims to legitimacy in some way? A hypothetical opinion along the lines of “I don’t think it matters in any way if Sainte-Marie is or isn’t Indigenous or to what degree, and I don’t think anyone should be excluded from expressing an opinion on this” at least feels logically consistent to me, but doesn’t seem to be anyone’s actual opinion here; while “here’s my negative opinion about pretendians or analysis of why that’s a harmful phenomenon, but no you can’t ask me about my identity” sounds a little hypocritical? Like, if our perspective is that Pretendians are bad (whether we believe that Sainte-Marie counts as one or not), why do we hold that opinion, and what other consequences are there of whatever value lies behind that opinion?

But yes, then we are getting into the question of who we do or don’t think should be weighing in based on their own identity, and the invisibilising of people who don’t want to self-identify, or just the extra stress that doing so puts on people, and a whole host of other problems crops up. And I fully admit that my opinions on who should give opinion about something varies widely by topic, with this topic being somewhat on one extreme, and I don’t fully know where a good balance is as sort of general site policy. (I mean, I’ll make my own private judgements, as with any question that has a moral dimension for me. And will continue to advocate for what I think is the right choice, in part because I fully understand that I’m not the dictator of this community and that my word isn’t law, so I don’t have to take everyone’s values into account when voicing my own perspective.)
posted by eviemath at 3:11 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Another (immigrant) Canadian chiming in here. I've been following the thread and mulling over how I feel about the whole thing. And I think there are two entirely seperate issues at play here that are being conflated. The first is one of personal identity - if BSM is accepted into the Piapot First Nation, then that's up to the Piapot to decide.

But the other issue at hand is Canada has had a rough decade or so of people reaching the pinnacle of their chosen careers, lauded as barrier-breakers, only to be "pretendians" who might not be familiar names to people outside of Canada. Author Joseph Boyden. Jurist and scholar Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Health expert Carrie Bourassa. Director Michelle Latimer.

There are others that have made the news here, ones more focused on direct fraud than building a career out of a stolen identity. The sisters who received grants and scholarships falsely claiming to be Inuit. The Quebecois fraudsters offering fake DNA tests to obtain First Nations status, and the tax exemptions that come with it.

I'm going to quote Jean Teillet, a Métis lawyer, from one of the articles linked above

“It is no accident that Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and Carrie Bourassa just pulled out all these tropes about trauma and addictions and violence in the family,”

“That’s what Canadians think about Indigenous people, so they play us, right?”

What Canadians should be asking, Teillet said, is “why do (we) buy into it?”

In addition to reliance on stereotypes, Teillet’s report said red flags include vague claims, family secrets, shifting or conflicting stories, or reliance on DNA testing to find some kind of Indigenous ancestry dating back several hundred years ago.

So much of the above applies to BSM's story. Do I wish the CBC did a better job of employing indigenous investigative journalists? Yes. Do I wish this whole investigation didn't initially stem from another Jacqueline Keeler hit piece? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean what this investigation dug up about BSM is untrue.
posted by thecjm at 6:29 PM on October 28, 2023 [18 favorites]

Richard Two Elk began InDigitNess Voice on KUVO Denver this morning with “Blood Quantum (Nəwewəčəskawikαpáwihtawα)” by Mali Obomsawin. After which, he came on the air and expressed dismay with so much energy being expended on figuring out who is and isn't really native, ending with, "No matter what they say, I'm with Buffy all the way." Then he played “Qu'Appele Valley Saskatchewan.”
posted by ob1quixote at 6:59 AM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

So I was just curious, and of the 50 greatest Canadians, 10 were not born in Canada. Of the top ten, three were not born in Canada, including the actual Greatest Canadian. *shrug* Who cares?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:14 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

So much of the above applies to BSM's story. Do I wish the CBC did a better job of employing indigenous investigative journalists? Yes. Do I wish this whole investigation didn't initially stem from another Jacqueline Keeler hit piece? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean what this investigation dug up about BSM is untrue.

As a white Canadian, Yes. Here's what Nigaan Sinclair wrote in yesterday's Wpg Free Press: It's complicated.
posted by kneecapped at 3:09 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised that the consensus here is that non-natives should step out of the issue entirely and cede to any Native person that claims an individual's belonging. Because I've (white person) spent time following a lot of Native folks on twitter who are pretty vocal about wanting non-native people to become conversant re native identity fraud, because at the end of the day pretendianism is a matter of non-natives erasing indigenous people by elevating other non-natives in various spheres of influence. This tweet that just came across my TL (and sparked me to come post here) is from a group called the Indigenous Women's Collective and they say that "Based on the overwhelming evidence presented, we believe that Buffy Sainte-Marie engaged in a great deception regarding her origin story as an Indigenous 'Scoop' survivor."

Personally, I've respected her a lot as a musician and definitely don't take any pleasure in potentially having to think less of her. Though, I can't imagine how painful and paranoia-making it must be for indigenous people to find out time and time again that their history is being written over by self-indigenizing colonizers.
posted by dusty potato at 5:38 PM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Native folks on twitter who are pretty vocal about wanting non-native people to become conversant re native identity fraud, because at the end of the day pretendianism is a matter of non-natives erasing indigenous people by elevating other non-natives in various spheres of influence

And that’s an example of taking direction from Indigenous folks. Relying on them to set values and policy is what I’m advocating for, for those of us who are not Indigenous. Eg.,

how should you determine if someone is pretendian? Making sure that we have the knowledge to apply that more independently before doing so, and referring back to Indigenous original sources when helping educate other non-Indigenous folks about the details of this.
What sort of policies should be put in place so that non-Indigenous institutions don’t elevate and give awards intended for Indigenous people to someone who doesn’t meet those standards?
What should accountability processes look like when non-Indigenous institutions have failed at that? Are we just focused on punishing pretendians, or are we also looking at what roles we might have played in the situation? Most of us don’t have relevant decision-making power for situations like that of Sainte-Marie, but as an academic, my university has scholarship or job opportunities aimed at members of some specific historically marginalized communities, so these are relevant questions in a different context for my colleagues.

That means learning and engaging (becoming conversant). And for me and my values, it also means respecting the principles of first voice as I learn and in any situation where I might apply what I learn.

I also think that this is the sort of situation where a collective onion principle (comfort in, stress out, centered around the person or community most directly affected by something, but recognizing that there are layers and levels of impact) should be applied. That means paying attention to what communities at the center of the onion are saying about how this situation is making members of affected Indigenous communities feel and what would feel most supportive to them. (Which, to be fair, I may not be doing a great job of given the number of comments I’ve typed in the second half of this thread.)
posted by eviemath at 9:06 PM on October 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

In reading the CBC article, it struck me that so many of these pretendians would get accolade after accolade. The judge who received her 8th honorary degree, for example. So in a sense, it's a systemic issue as well. It's so colonial to tokenize just a few rather than spread out the wealth, so to speak. The issue of prestige and awards is very colonial as well.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 12:00 AM on October 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

The Beaverton weighs in
posted by eviemath at 8:44 AM on October 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

In reading the CBC article, it struck me that so many of these pretendians would get accolade after accolade.

This might be more common with Indigenous or pretendian recipients, but it's also part of how awards are handed out. Universities give out honorary degrees to people it wants to recruit to speak at their graduations, so there are some high profile people who get a lot of honorary degrees. I believe it was at my call to the bar that the speaker told a story about how once he was invited by the Law Society to receive an honorary degree and speak at the ceremony had to remind the Law Society that they'd already given him an honorary degree and just forgotten about it. And when it comes to things like Order of Canada inductions, they look at other similar awards lists like Jubilee Medals and Order of (Insert Province Here) and GG awards and such. Getting any one of these awards makes it wildly more likely you will get any other of them.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:44 AM on October 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

What should accountability processes look like when non-Indigenous institutions have failed at that? Are we just focused on punishing pretendians, or are we also looking at what roles we might have played in the situation?

Agreed, and this is what I think non-Indigenous folks should be doing in this situation more than playing amateur genealogist or providing the latest hot take on it. Because white folks deciding who and who is not Indigenous (Indian Act, anyone?) and who's a good enough token Indigenous person is exactly why we're in this mess. The decolonizing our institutions part of it is what those of us who aren't Indigenous need to work on while we listen to Piapot FN and other Indigenous peoples.

Sure, I'm a white person with an opinion on whether Buffy Sainte Marie is or isn't or why or why not or should or shouldn't have. But my opinion on that part of it doesn't need to add to the din of other opinions of that sort and risk speaking over Indigenous peoples - that's just more colonialism. Getting out of the way is a choice that settler folks should make more often than we do.
posted by eekernohan at 11:18 AM on October 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

I am a white settler Canadian and this was a gut punch

I can only imagine what my Indigenous colleague is feeling.. they identify Buffy Sainte-Marie as their first role model.

Reading these first stories about Buffy, it could not have come as a greater shock if you told me Terry Fox was a faker and the prosthetic leg was photoshopped and he took all the money raised for cancer research and he's on a beach somewhere today, living large. I mean, it just seems preposterous and insulting and here we are.

we just keep colonizing, I fucking hope we are all learning something at this point
posted by elkevelvet at 12:41 PM on October 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Flagged as fantastic, eekernohan's comment. And to jacquilynne's point, this is exactly the point... only a few begin to reap these accolades and more and more rather than spread the wealth to an entire community and its a colonial system in that way.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 5:37 PM on October 30, 2023

This is the best article I've read so far, from Lori Campbell (Cree-Métis).
posted by avocet at 9:23 PM on October 30, 2023 [14 favorites]

I'm from Wakefield, MA, and my Mom and her friends went to school with Buffy Sainte-Marie. They have always, always said that her stories about being adopted into the family didn't make sense, based on what they knew about her, but admitted they didn't know the intimate details of anyone's family. But really interesting to see that things are coming out now.
posted by xingcat at 12:27 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

avocet's best-article-so-far link definitely is. The CBC didn't consider the harm they caused by creating this exposé, when the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action explicitly require them to.
posted by scruss at 12:48 PM on November 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

The National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada's statement on Buffy St. Marie
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 9:51 PM on November 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

What’s the Point of “Pretendian” Investigations? from The Walrus
posted by juv3nal at 5:00 AM on November 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

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