I’m full blooded Indigenous … I was born into my family, I have a status card, I grew up in my home community and my first language is Ojibway-Cree … I’m a brown skinned darked hair Indian … the first 12 years of my life, all I ever knew was my Indigenous culture, family and language.
The whole Buffy Sainte-Marie fiasco is not so much about who can identify, who should say what or who claim identity and how it should be accepted or rejected by anyone.
The biggest issue I have with this is … she lied and continues to lie. If she were more honest and forthcoming about who she really is and why she did what she did … everything would be more acceptable and we could continue to respect the work that she has created.
The questions surrounding all of this is a lot more difficult to answer when millions of dollars of awards, legal issues, and entertainment income are at stake.
There will never be a consensus on what it means to “be’ Indigenous or what the qualifications are for someone to claim that they identify as Indigenous. So when we consult “members of the Indigenous community” who are we talking about?
That is the crux of the problem, isn’t it? In other areas like sexual orientation or gender identity, there’s a decently broad consensus that we should allow people to self-identify. The benefit of self-identification is that it discourages gatekeeping. One downside is that it doesn’t change the fact that the broader community may still reject a person’s self-identity. See for example the debate surrounding trans women in sports.
The issue becomes more acute when being perceived as a certain identity comes with some privileges, whether informal or sanctioned by our government. When that happens, it creates an incentive for people to self-identify in a way that they believe will benefit them in some way or another.
I don’t have a solution. Just rambling.
I like the comparison to sexual identity … I know so many people along the spectrum of sexual identity as well as Indigenous identity … and in many ways they all have the same problems.
It doesn’t matter what anyone tries to identify as … the problem starts when someone chooses to identify one way or another for monetary, social or professional gain. The problem start when the person appropriates an identity under false pretenses and then benefits from that identity and then chooses to live under that lie.
The biggest issue here is honesty … Buffy started from a lie and continues to live in the lies she started and told. If she were more honest about it all … it would be easier to deal with.
It doesn’t matter what anyone tries to identify as … the problem starts when someone chooses to identify one way or another for monetary, social or professional gain. The problem start when the person appropriates an identity under false pretenses and then benefits from that identity and then chooses to live under that lie.
The biggest issue here is honesty
Another issue is that self-identifying in a certain way shouldn’t come with monetary, social or professional benefits. Easier said than done, of course, but at least in some cases it already happens. For example, people aren’t entitled to use a handicapped parking spot by merely self-identifying as having limited mobility; sports organizations have (still evolving) rules for trans athletes; etc.
Whatever we do there will always be people who try to take advantage of the system, and people who will unfortunately fall through the cracks. Part of the issue is also that many of these identities aren’t binary: plenty of people have mixed heritage, or have partial disabilities. What do we do about that, and where do we draw the line? Can we have the nuance to cope with gray areas on a case by case basis? A broad consensus will be difficult to achieve in gray cases.
A good way of tackling it is … the more incentive there is, the more checks there should be.
If your self identification of anything means funding, awards, sponsorships, advancement, recognition … there should be an equal amount of checks, verification and acknowledgement from third parties to legitimize your claims.
The more money is on the line, the more checks there should be.
She was adopted by indigenous Canadians. She lived on a reservation. She represented indigenous culture. She speaks the language.
I think she’s pretty committed. I’d say she’s indigenous.
… and I would agree with you, if the person who identified that way had been honest about their story from the start.
Everything she did is acceptable to me … the problem is that her origins are plain to see but she chooses to make up a story and then continually bend and twist her story to protect her original dishonesty. First she said she was adopted … then that was questioned … so now she changed it to being an illegitimate child … and due to the nature of how our society views Native communities, families and people and their dysfunction … it’s very easy to cloud any story you make up by claiming that you are being oppressed by government, stolen as a child, fostered out or hidden in some clandestine way.
All of it is too much for me … if she had been honest and even if she were honest now … all of it would be so much easier for everyone to deal with.
Carrie Bourassa, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and Joseph Boyden were also all adopted into indigenous families. In all of those cases the point was made that adoption does not confer indigenous status.
In all these stories and in the story of Buffy … the core of the issue for me is … HONESTY
If any of them had been honest of who they were and what they wanted to do and why … most of these controversies wouldn’t have become as big an issue as they are now.
They all started from a base of dishonesty and continued that way without ever admitting fault. The biggest issue for me is not there identity … it’s the fact that they lied, continue to lie and live off those lies.
I’m absolutely and completely non-Indingenous and I agree 100%.
Making a claim based on her adoption by the Piapot family is fine. My limited understanding as an outsider who only reads stuff is that the adoption confers legitimate and legal membership as judged by custom. The rest? Not so much.
Should her awards be rescinded? Maybe, but probably not. After all, those awards all came after her adoption and far greater liars have not been banished.
Even if the original adoption was due to a lie? Like I wonder if they would have adopted her if they knew her story was made up?
It’s not so much about her identity or who identifies her … it’s about her dishonesty about it all.
If she had come out from the start or early on in her career and told everyone who she really was … everything would so much easier to understand and accept. Instead, being honest about her background would have threatened her career especially early on which is why she had all the incentive to continue to be dishonest and hide her past.
Her dishonesty continued later on and she kept changing her story as new revelations came to light … first she was a foster child, then a forgotten child, now an illegitimate child.
I honestly like Buffy, her art and everything she’s done for Indigenous people … now I can’t accept anything she is attached to any more … if she had been more honest about who she was … and if she were more honest now … I would have an easier time respecting and maybe accepting what she did.
Instead, she continues to be dishonest and that is not acceptable.
Nobody questioned why Joseph Brant would adopt a mixed-blooded person (or why a Mohawk warrior would have a thick Scottish accent for that matter).
No one? Really? I’m always amazed how accurate our history of the 1800’s is that we can without a doubt make statements like this.
