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Buffy Sainte-Marie’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being contradicted by members of the iconic singer-songwriter’s own family and an extensive CBC investigation.
By Geoff Leo, Roxanna Woloshyn and Linda Guerriero • CBC News
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Fucking hell … That pisses me off to no end
This world is fucked and these fucking white assholes are fucked.
I’m full blooded indigenous born and raised with my family in the north … my first language is Ojibwe-Cree, I spoke it with my family for the first ten years of my life … and all I’ve ever felt was shame for who I was and where I was born
To hear these revelations about people like Joseph Boyden, judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and professor Carrie Bourassa. … And now Buffy St Marie … I fucking looked up to Buffy, most of indigenous Canada grew up with her.
One of the messed up parts of this story to me is I know and I am friends with lots of Mohawks from Six Nations and I heard many stories from their families about discrimination in southern Ontario. They had second world war veterans who couldn’t even find work because they were Indian so the only way they could get around that was to pass themselves off as ITALIAN!
It’s twisted … Indians were passing themselves off as Italian to avoid being identified as Indian to make a basic living… and at the same time an Italian was passing herself off as Indian and making a fortune.
It makes me feel sick to my core.
That fucking bitch… What a wicked evil person it is to think it’s acceptable to take on the identity of an oppressed people and live off their misery and misfortune.
Fuck you Buffy
Or should I say fuck you Beverly Jean Santamaria
It really saddens me to hear that you feel/felt that way about your identity/origins. I value the existence of you and your culture.
My thoughts:
As a settler Canadian I’ve been told blood quantum is a racist colonial concept, and what really makes a person indigenous is if they are embraced as a member of a first nation community.
So my initial reaction (ie to the revelation she has european roots) was:
It’s a person’s life that makes them indigenous, not their genes. It doesn’t really matter if she was born off reserve to settler parents, if she’s a member of a first nation.
The article talks about how 1962 when she was in her twenties she asked a Cree family to give her an ‘Indian Name’, and adopt her into their family. She says they did.
BUT It seems likely to me that she (fraudulently) presented herself to the Cree family as a ‘scoop’ victim to receive a sympathy name.
And then:
In the space of those 10 months [1962-1963], she was referred to as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, half-Mi’kmaq and Cree.
So clearly the naming/adoption didn’t start as anything serious.
It seems to me she received the sympathy naming, then over the course of years wormed her way into the family. Actually it’s pretty grotesque because the family had had a daughter Buffy’s age taken from them so this was like extreme manipulation of the vulnerable.
All this is to say: Buffy didn’t grow up facing the challenges of an indigenous child. Her purported accession to the Cree nation was likely based on fraud and grotesque emotional manipulation.
She has received so much of what was reserved for people that had to overcome real, actual oppression/prejudice and state abuse and trauma. Is this the biggest case of cultural appropriation in history?
I didn’t even know she wasn’t Canadian. This is much worse.
This is what I didn’t get after watching the fifth estate program.
Santamaria (which is what I’ll call her from now on) was born American and at one point in her career she is identified as Canadian … which didn’t matter much at first.
But then the Canadian government gave her awards and put her to the order of Canada … doesn’t anyone look into backgrounds and history before bestowing these awards? … or do they just hand them out based on your bank account?
She was definitely claiming to have been born in Canada. I guess nobody dug deep enough until now.
She’s gone way past the option of ‘asking for permission’ … Now the lies are at the stage of ‘asking for forgiveness’
She’s psychotic … she asked for sympathy because she identified as an opposed person who was part of an oppressed culture … now she’s asking for sympathy because her privacy has been invaded.
Never once showed awareness, self reflection or humility … instead it’s just ignorance, arrogance and deflection. I guess you have to be when thousands and possibility millions are on the line.
Likely nobody had any real need to dig, and had little reason to doubt her assertions that she was adopted out and her birth certificate had been destroyed. These had sufficient “truthiness” about them to pass a basic sniff test.
I do have to wonder if the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada will consider rescinding her membership over this.
Turns out she’s just Italian American pretending to be indigenous
Brought you by “Keep America Beautiful”
I got that reference
Good to know an ad from the 70s can still be a meme today
I wonder how much grant money she received and stole from legitimate first nations artists over the years due to her false claims. I hope they can be repatriated back to the communities she’s defrauded in some way or another.
The real Buffy Sainte-Marie is a con artist and thief of indigenous grants.
That was one hell of a report. Incontrovertible.
Big if true.
The evidence is pretty damning.
It’s open and shut. On the one hand, we have a birth certificate. On the other, we have Sainte-Marie’s vague recollections and shifting narrative.
It fucking sucks. But it’s pretty clear the reporting is accurate.
The problem is that lies are decades old and involve hundreds or thousands of people. And it also involves tens of thousands or millions of dollars.
So it will never be resolved… so many people and so much money are invested in the lie that it will never come undone completely.
Also … the issue is about native identity, which most of non indigenous North America don’t really care about.
She’ll get away with it all … mainly because the lie was so big and partly because not enough people really care.
And her “vague recollections” are deliberately constructed. I’ve read enough about false memories to have some sympathy for people who get events of even their own lives wrong. But when she got married, she officially represented her birth in a way that was not just counter to her public claims, but that validates a preexisting official record.
She wasn’t confused or ignorant or delusional. She was clearly and deliberately deceitful, fully aware of the fraud she was committing.
