Canada's outing of "pretendians" may be right where they are taking reserved places but has CBC gone too far in persuing Buffy Sainte-Marie

I’m so shocked by this. I can barely believe it - lying for so long about something so fundamental.

Bloody hell. Buffy Saint-Marie of all people.

Yes @LuciaPillson she has clearly done good things. Many of those were in the guise of being someone she doesn't seem to be.

In the same category is 'Sacheen Littlefeather' of Brando no to an Oscar speech fame. Her transition to a Native American identity seems to have been around the time of a mental health crisis. Among many other things she was an actress, nutritionist, activist and model. Note the costume switches from Western at the 52 second mark here.

Sacheen Littlefeather Modeling For Photo Shoot (1971) - Bay Area Television Archive (sfsu.edu)

@IwantToRetire

I think most people, even if only through sanitised tv series or films are aware of the terrible treatment of First Nation peoples, and particularly the horrendous level of violence women from that group have experienced.

Oh some of it, yes, but I don't assume people know specifics, particularly where Canada is concerned, and some may assume that mistreatment of First Nations people is in the past rather than ongoing. I didn't know about the things I listed until comparatively recently.

I suppose as with most things, responses in a community of a shared identity opinions will vary.

Yes, that's inevitable I guess. The CBC article has quotes from First Nations people who do mind this and explain why.

...if some dont mind, but some do, is it up to the dominant white group to decided they will orchestrate who will be exposed and who wont.
I suppose a famous person suspected of faking their background will always make the news (Hilaria Baldwin for eg). Wonder who tipped the CBC off though and why!

Would be interesting to see how this would have been presented if this exposé had come via members of the First Nations. Yes it would!

Is that what she did? I dont really know about her. I just thought she was a sort of folk singer similar to others of that era. Joni Mitchell Judy Collins and so on.

Well, I think so. Even just being a folk singer, being so well-known would have been important as there aren't a huge number of very well-known First Nations celebrities and I think it's fair to call her a role model.

Then besides that, her Wikipedia lists her as an educator and social activist concerned with Indigenous issues. She appeared on Sesame Street to help kids understand more about being Indigenous. She spoke out, supported protests, wrote and performed songs about Indigenous issues, created educational materials for Indigenous kids and so on. These things are mentioned in the article you linked in your op.

She actually did a lot of good things. I just wish, if it's true that she misrepresented her heritage, that she could have done those things as an ally, they still would have been great things to do.

But you're right that I don't have the ultimate say over whether or not this is a big deal. It just doesn't feel right to me to claim a spurious heritage, particularly if one thereby has access to opportunities intended for a less privileged group. And it's hard for me to understand why people do it and how on earth they get away with it. It would confuse my brain (never very clear at the best of times) and I could never pull it off!

”Seems a bit crazy when you are in the public eye to risk being found out for lying or concocting a false heritage.”

Back when the lies began, there was no internet and the chances of the kind of research that is possible now, and all the connections that can be made, weren’t there. It could have started as an error on someone else’s part that she didn’t bother to correct, or it might have been a spur of the moment lie, which then snowballed. And given how long she’s got away with it, it’s certainly paid off.

As an aside, the TW of the “wax their balls” infamy, self identified as First Nations in Canada to obtain quicker access to Covid vaccines/boosters…

I know little about her, but my Gran told me about this and was disappointed. When I read about it, the birth records and statements by relatives do make it seem that she has been living a lie. That's sad to have happened and I wonder, at her advanced age, whether she ended up more or less believing her tale.

What struck me also was that she seems to have associated with different heritages over the years. This went unnoticed?

Wow. I'm just taking this in now - had no idea.

Providing this is true, it's not really about her career.

It's about the past and ongoing horrific treatment of Canada's First Nations, and about what it might mean for them for a non-Indigenous person to take for herself fame, awards, honours and opportunities that were based on her appearing to belong to a vulnerable community; to pose as a role model for a culture she didn't belong to; and to take a voice away from people who aren't listened to much anyway and replace it with a white voice, however much of an advocate she seemed to be.

If you want a little backstory and have time to google some terms like "missing and murdered Indigenous women Canada," "highway of tears," "starlight tours," "First Nations women sterilised," "Thunder Bay Indigenous drowning" and "children's bodies" with "residential schools," you may start to get the sense that there isn't and hasn't been any reason for Indigenous people to trust white Canadians, and a betrayal like this could hit pretty hard. Yes a family from Piapot First Nation did adopt her and that community stands by her, while acknowledging that her birth claims may not be true. But that doesn't mean there's no wider impact on First Nations across Canada.

Looks like this story has been around for a while. A family member told the press that Sainte-Marie didn't have Indigenous ancestry way back in the mid sixties, and the family claims Buffy threatened legal action to get them to keep quiet.

This shit keeps happening, too. Most recent one I read about was Michelle Latimer who made films with and about Indigenous people and her claim to have Indigenous heritage was very shaky at best.

Being adopted in that way as an adult has nothing to do with her being indigenous though. Anyone can be adopted into a family like that.

The fact of the matter seems to be that as a child, she was never adopted at all. The people she claimed adopted her were her real parents. Her birth certificate is right where it should be and is completely in order. Her claims that the Canadian birth certificate was lost or destroyed in fires didn't happen, and more. It was all a complete fabrication.

If it's true then she is a true fantasist or a liar with no conscience.

I read this the day it came out and I was really shocked. And in general I have a pessimistic view of human behaviour!

As far as whether she'd have done as well without the lies - maybe. She is certainly very talented as a songwriter and performer. I do think though that her billing at that time as an "Indian girl" did really help her career. So, who knows how it would have played out without that.

What struck me was how deliberate it was. There have been cases like this where I felt it was much more ambiguous - stories in the family history of First Nations blood, unprovable, but could easily be true. (Often further back though than people realize. Generational memory is not always good about timespans.)And these figures have not always traded on it to such a degree, or spoken about indigenous issues, as much as BSM has.

And I think it's also important to understand that there has been something of a cultural change about bringing up that kind of connection. There was a time in the 80s and 90s where people with any connection were really encouraged to bring it out - it was about increasing representation in different sectors of society to be an inspiration. THis was especially common in the black community in North America, where even people with only a black grandparent or great-grandparent, or even further back, were described as being black.

That being said - it seems quite clear that Buffy SM actually concocted her story wholly, lied about the available evidence, made up false excuses to cover her tracks, threatened her family, and maybe even falsely accused her brother of being a sexual molester to keep them quiet. It's really quite extreme.

I also think, unlike Rachel D, she doesn't seem to have been disturbed or vulnerable in other ways.

It is interesting though, from the perspective of Id politics, and I think has a real relation to a lot of the problems we see in gender ideology.