this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023

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Who is the real Buffy Sainte-Marie? (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 11 months ago by Grappling7155@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

all 29 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago

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?

[–] MooseGas@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I didn't even know she wasn't Canadian. This is much worse.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] yads@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

She was definitely claiming to have been born in Canada. I guess nobody dug deep enough until now.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] Yaztromo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] yads@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Turns out she's just Italian American pretending to be indigenous

[–] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Brought you by "Keep America Beautiful"

[–] yads@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I got that reference

[–] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

Good to know an ad from the 70s can still be a meme today

[+] Just_Pizza_Crust@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] yads@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They literally have her Massachusetts birth certificate. There is nothing tying her to being indigenous except her wanting to be perceived as such.

[+] Just_Pizza_Crust@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 8 points 11 months ago

Did you miss the part where they've found a birth certificate showing that she was not born on any reservation.

She also made official reference to her birthplace as part of getting married in 1982, just to seal the deal.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 7 points 11 months ago

She was born on the Piapiat reservation

Uh, no, she wasn't. She was born in Maine to white parents.

She may have joined the Cree nation but it seems likely it was under false pretenses.

I'm sure that she has done a lot for indigenous people and deserves some accolades but if she accepted money or awards that was meant for people that faced prejudice and oppression that's wildly inappropriate.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

As a full blooded indigenous person the news about this completely sucks

The message is .....

being full blooded means nothing
being successful and having money means you can say do and become whatever you want to be

This revelation doesn't say that much about Santamaria .... it says so much about how everyone doesn't really care about full or mostly blooded native individuals.

[–] Yaztromo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I think the fact this is coming out now and is being discussed so much means that a lot of people really care about full/mostly-full blooded native individuals, and that they feel this sort of misrepresentation of heritage is wrong and harmful.

The fact it’s taken 60 years to get to this point says something sad about how much people cared about this in the past — but I’d like to think the attention this story is getting means this is changing for the better, and that most settler Canadians don’t agree that people should be allowed to misrepresent their heritage to the ultimate detriment of the First Nations people of this country.

[–] MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

Kinda curious, why should anyone care how much "indigenous blood" you have. Shouldn't your personal circumstance, history, and culture be a more important focus than your genetics?

[–] mawwage@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago

Her adoptive first nations family still claims her: https://globalnews.ca/news/10049385/buffy-sainte-marie-accusations-identity/

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago

It's not just a question of blood quantum .... it's basically a question of theft .... theft of identity, theft of culture and misrepresentation.

If I claimed I was cousin and I made a million dollars because of it, how would you feel about it? If everything I own, everything I did, every award I gained and every time I was celebrated it was because everyone said I was your cousin ... how would you feel about that?

It doesn't matter if there is no money involved .... but it matters a lot when someone starts making millions out of it all.

It's also sadistic .... to think that a person could build an identity, a persona, a career worth millions on the backs of oppressed, poor people that have no chance, and then show no remorse for it all. Her career is based on what she stole from people who already had nothing. The world gave her millions so that she could share a few thousand.

It's sickening ... and to defend all that or be apologetic about it all is not right either.

[–] Yaztromo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

There is a big gulf between “belonging to a tribe” and claiming to be a Sixty’s Scoop survivor born at a hospital that never existed.

I don’t think anyone (certainly not the CBC) is claiming that the Cree Nation and the Piapot family weren’t allowed to adopt her, and that she isn’t a member of that nation. But the evidence points, beyond the shadow of doubt, that she was born to a white Italian American family in Boston. And that she has a long history of lying about her original heritage (often changing the story when it’s convenient for her), and threatening her own family if they outed her.

So she’s perfectly allowed to be “tribal” — that seems to not be in contention. But she shouldn’t be lying about being a Sixty’s Scoop baby who never knew her birth mother (which is odd, considering she would have been a teenager when the Scoop started in the 50’s), or about being born in Canada and adopted (both her birth certificate and her own family refute this), or about her birth certificate having been destroyed in a fire in a facility that never existed, or about her changing tribal heritage (first Mi’kmaq, then Algonquin, then Cree), or about whether her mother was dead or alive…

The lies are the problem, along with the benefits she’s obtained from those lies. If the relevant Cree Nation wants to keep her, and the Piapot family claims her as one of their own — that’s perfectly fine and within their right. But that doesn’t give Ms. St-Marie the right to rewrite her own personal history. There is a big difference between “citizenship”, “family bonds”, and “heritage” — and it’s the latter of which she appears to have lied about for a very, very, very long time.

[–] WanderingCrow@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago

The real Buffy Sainte-Marie is a con artist and thief of indigenous grants.

That was one hell of a report. Incontrovertible.

[–] LittleTarsier@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Big if true.

[–] MooseGas@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The evidence is pretty damning.

[–] zaphod@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

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.