this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023

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‘We claim her, end of story’: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Piapot family hurt by allegations (globalnews.ca)

submitted 10 months ago by sik0fewl@kbin.social to c/canada@lemmy.ca

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Indigenous icon Buffy Sainte-Marie's identity was brought into question by a CBC investigation, her Piapot family says the accusations are "ignorant, colonial -- and racist."

top 37 comments

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

As a 100% full blooded Ojibwe-Cree .... this whole thing is messed up.

It doesn't matter what the Piapot family says about the matter ... Wab Kinew did the same thing for Boyden during that controversy

As an indigenous person, the whole message I get out of all this is that ...

As Indians, we have to fight to be anything - and most of the time we'll lose
As whites, they can be whatever they want as long as they make money

I've spent my entire life surrounded by Native people who could only dream of being white and like the majority of Canada and live without stigma, or shame for who they are ... as a young person, I didn't like the fact I was a brown Indian who was looked down upon and thought that I would never live up to anything

It's completely sickening to watch a privileged white person who had everything going for them to make a decent career and take on the identity of a people that didn't want to be who they were and use that as a shortcut to make millions for herself and everyone that supported her.

She built her career on our misery ... she built her wealth on the image of our poverty ... the Piapot family don't mind the controversy and moral ambiguity because they probably stand to gain a bit of fame and fortune from it all, I'm sure Santamaria has some financial rewards to share with them .... as for the rest of us Indians, we're left with the bitter taste of knowing that white people can still say and do whatever they want to us and get away with it.

It's a pretty sick and disgusting situation. I was feeling good in my life as an Indigenous person until today ... now I feel like I did years ago as a teenager wondering why the hell I should keep identifying as an Indian when it hangs a like a curse for me and a blessing for a white person.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As a white person, specifically a white man, all I can tell you is I'm here to listen. I hope as much from everyone else but sadly I doubt this is the case.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Lol, you don’t need a qualifier to listen

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I respectfully disagree.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It just comes off as you hitting on them

I’m not like other guys, see how understanding I am!

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca -1 points 10 months ago

Ok?

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ultimately, this is about who gets to police Indigenous identity, and regardless of whether the answer to that is "each tribe can decide its own membership" or "some significant number of Indigenous people have to agree", it's obvious that the correct answer is not "the government established established by European colonists decides" or "the news media decides". The people involved need to argue it out. The opinions of those of us who aren't Indigenous or claiming to be really aren't important.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The answer is obviously the government because they are the ones with the resources to do so

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think your average First Nation can scrape together enough bureacracy to keep track of a few thousand members. Most of them aren't huge groups.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But the average First Nation isn’t going to have the resources to enforce that Canada wide

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why does there need to be a single Canada-wide definition? We're not talking about "who gets a government-issued status card" here—people can be unambiguously Indigenous and still not have one of those. We're talking about who can stand up in a public venue and say "I'm Indigenous" without causing a scandal, and who gets to decide that.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We’re talking about who can stand up in a public venue and say “I’m Indigenous” without causing a scandal, and who gets to decide that.

What’s to stop someone from doing that

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The fact that no single individual can control the "scandal" part.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, what’s to stop anyone from claiming ancestry

How can people in Iqaluit monitor those claiming their status in Ontario?

It’s unfair and unreasonable to leave it up to the tribes

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They don't have to monitor it. They only have to respond to inquiries about people's tribal membership, not proactively anticipate them.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why is there an inquiry in that scenario?

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Okay, now you're just being silly. My cat could figure that one out, especially with an example right in front of him.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You are being ridiculous if you think most scenarios of people claiming to belong to a tribe far enough away that they aren’t going to run into a member is going to result in an inquiry

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The point is that the claim doesn't matter unless someone cares enough about it to make an inquiry (that is, cares just a tiny amount), or it affects legal matters like status cards (in which case, someone will care enough to enquire). If there's no harm being done, then no enforcement needs to be done either. Which is also so very basic that my cat could figure it out.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Just don’t have the status to begin with if anyone can claim it because you think it does no harm

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's like saying you can avoid tripping over a rock if you just will it out of existence. Reality doesn't work that way. And I don't think you really believe it does either. Kindly go troll somewhere else.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago

So you see why the obvious answer is the government

[–] Saraphim@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

This whole scandal has blown my Canadian mind more than anything I can remember. She has done an impressive job of bringing attention to First Nations people, and indigenous people in Canada overall, her Piapot family clearly loves and claims her. BUT, she’s also literally a colonizing liar who has benefitted off the struggle of our indigenous people. It turns out she wasn’t an advocate at all but an identity thief. I feel like everything I ever knew was a lie. Next someone’s going to tell me stompin’ Tom kept women chained up in his basement. Frig.

[–] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The "Notable Examples" section here is much longer than I expected:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretendian

This must be so hurtful to some people, I can't even imagine. The CBC investigation looks thorough. A response like this is just weak.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

On "Day 6" this morning on CBC Radio One they had a Metis Lawyer on who estimates the amount of "Predentians" to be about 25%. That number is huge.

The problem is, as she states in the interview, that there are no winners in this only losers.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-14-day-6/clip/16019165-metis-lawyer-says-truth-hurts-regarding-buffy-sainte-maries

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago

Making up rules on the spot is a pretty weird way to handle things like genetic testing. But I've lived on the coast.

[+] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works -14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

That's the thing the CBC decides to investigate?
I get that there can be more than one investigation at a time, but whatever resources they spent on this could have been better used on practically anything else.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I actually think that a settler taking things that were reserved for indigenous people is worthy of exposure.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I just feel like the opinion that matters most here would be that of this specific tribe and they claim she's one of theirs and I feel they're free to choose so.

If you're talking about grants money and stuff like that, I'm sure we can find the money spent on her and inject that into a new foundation or grant.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There was a time when I would have agreed with you. I now think that the problems we have in this world are because we've let the "small stuff" go until they've built into big balls of shit. Now our eyes are so focused on the big balls of shit that we not only don't see the other "small stuff" building up, we no longer recognize the "small things" at the centre.

We are not going to ever fix the big problems or prevent new ones without tearing things apart to get at the core. Selfishness, greed, and the desire for power over others are behind every major problem we've got, so everything we do to root those things out gets us one step closer to a better world.

The things you set aside as unworthy of attention are in fact the biggest problems we have. They are why the world is turning (has turned?) into a big ball of shit.

So this is not just a distraction, but the exposure on one of those who prefer us to keep our eyes covered. We need more of these investigations, not fewer and the investigations need to start earlier, before the ball of shit gets too big to handle.

We may have no more important social project on our plates than that of sorting out our colonial past and present to create a future for all, and this strikes at the heart of that project. This is not an entertainment story or a criminal story, but a story about deep, ongoing social injustice.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not even disagreeing with you tbh.
My initial comment was poorly worded, I'm just tired of the fourth estate pulling their punches when it comes to bigger issues.

The world's going to shit because we let megacorps and rich fucks steal from the people.
This story is more than a distraction, but it's also a distraction.
While we argue about whose blood should have been worthy to receive whatever grant money scraps, we're not paying attention to the class war that robs infinitely more wealth from every community.

On this story? Her tribe claims her as their own.
She should probably give money back to support other indigenous artists if she's not doing that already.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I guess were in at least partial agreement. I do think that this story would have been better if the class warfare had been more explicitly called out. As it stands, it's about one person's bad behaviour, leave the class struggle as a secondary character.

[–] DavidM_yeg@mstdn.ca 2 points 10 months ago

@jadero @InEnduringGrowStrong

I understand what you are saying… the concern reported is essentially that ‘non-indigenous’ Buffy may have sucked up precious and very limited resources in a zero sum, dog-eat-dog arena without questioning why we accept a world in which support is so limited in the first place.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The things that's unclear to me still is if she even knew about it from early on.
Like... I know where I was born but only from what I've been told, as I have no memory of that time.
Reality could be much different than my understanding of it.

From what I understand, she was still raised by indigenousparents from that tribe, she still grew up on a reserve with most of the difficulties associated with it. She's been an activist of indigenous issues for longer than most people on lemmy have been alive.
She still grew up in her tribe's culture and as such I think her art is still representative of indigenous roots. If anything, it highlights that the hardships of indigenous people aren't coming from their blood, which would be racist nonsense, but from the shitty position the rest of our society puts them in.

I understand how an actual indigenous artist might be angry in some sort of lost opportunitykind of way, but I also understand that her family must feel really fucking insulted.

What's the next step? Requiring DNA testing before giving grants money to indigenous artist doesn't seem like a positive to me and I'm fine with indigenous people doing their own gatekeeping into who's one of theirs instead of some bureaucrat somewhere.

Supporting more indigenous artists shouldn't require burning down what she's done.

[–] DavidM_yeg@mstdn.ca 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

@InEnduringGrowStrong @jadero

I’m sorry but a lot of what you just wrote is contradicted by facts in the reporting… Buffy did *not* grow up on a reserve or in her ‘her tribe’s culture’, she grew up as a white girl in new england, and claims of indigenous origin didn’t appear until the 60s along with her growing musical career.

How to respond to or interpret those facts is up to the communities affected.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My understanding is that she was raised in a non-indingenous household in a non-indingenous community from birth through high school and was claiming Indigenous heritage before she was ever adopted into the community of which is now a member.

To me, her marriage certificate says it all. It is a clear and direct refutation of her public claims to ignorance or confusion. Not because she was telling a different story for a different purpose, but because she was acknowledging the reality of her upbringing.

I'm reluctant to suggest that DNA testing is required. Many of the indigenous peoples of at least North America have a long and well documented practice of adopting even adults and former enemies into their families and communities as full fledged members with all the associated privileges, rights, and responsibilities.

[–] Saraphim@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I don’t know if I agree with you here. This isn’t as petty as you seem to feel it is. The cultural significance of her impersonation is big and it’s definitely news worthy. News is more than stabbings and explosions.