Story hit Indigenous communities hard, changed many people’s views of the beloved star
Unreserved: 54:00
Healing After Harm: The Buffy Sainte-Marie Investigation
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CBC Indigenous: Lori Campbell was running some errands in the city on the final weekend of October.
She was at a hardware store when a non-Indigenous person, someone she barely knew, yelled over to her. “Hey, so how about that Buffy thing?”
Campbell, who is nêhiyawak/Métis and a member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation, is the associate vice-president of Indigenous engagement at the University of Regina. She’s also a Sixties Scoop survivor. “I just walked away,” Campbell told Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild. “I was struggling with this like everybody else. I was working through my emotions.”
That weekend, Indigenous communities were reeling from The Fifth Estate’s investigation into celebrated Indigenous music icon Buffy Sainte-Marie’s heritage, which brought into question her claims of Cree ancestry.
“I just felt like [what that person said] was really, really inappropriate,” Campbell said. “The only thing I want to hear from white people right now is a message saying, ‘Hey, we’ve heard this news. I hope you’re doing OK. I’m thinking of you.'”
Although The Fifth Estate investigation wasn’t the first story about “pretendians” — people who claim false Indigenous identity — it was the most high profile. Sainte-Marie has been a hero to many Indigenous people for decades.
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s first appearance on Sesame Street
WATCH | Sainte-Marie’s 1st appearance on Sesame Street: Duration 0:29
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s first appearance on Sesame Street was in December 1975. (Sesame Workshop)
Click on the following link to watch the video”
The story hit Indigenous communities hard and changed many people’s views of the beloved star. They were hurt, taking sides on the issue and lashing out on social media. “People were turning on each other,” Campbell said. “Some really raw, angry, hurt thoughts were put out there [on social media] in ways that were really oppositional … and my heart hurt over that.”
But Campbell said Indigenous communities need to stick together despite the “harsh things that might have been said.” Now she and other aunties are calling on each other to set the tone for conversations about how the story impacted them, the harm of “pretendians” and how they can move forward.
‘We might not get closure’
Shaneen Robinson-Desjarlais, a Cree and Gitxsan music industry professional, watched the combative reactions to The Fifth Estate investigation play out on social media. She’s also heard from Indigenous people in the music industry who are struggling with the report.
“[There’s] anger, pain, hurt. There’s some that want to have accolades taken back or given back,” said Robinson-Desjarlais. “There’s other points of view where they want DNA tests, other people that are saying that’s not our way as traditional people.”
In a statement, Sainte-Marie said she has always struggled to answer questions about who she is.
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“For decades, I tried to find my birth parents and information about my background. Through that research what became clear, and what I’ve always been honest about: I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents are, and I will never know.” She noted that she was adopted into a Cree family by Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket Piapot, in accordance with Cree law and customs.
Buffy Sainte-Marie on adoption | The Vault
WATCH | In this archival video, Saint-Marie discusses adoption in Cree culture: Duration 1:04
Buffy Sainte-Marie described the importance of adoption in Cree culture in this 1994 piece.
“My Indigenous identity is rooted in a deep connection to a community, which has had a profound role in shaping my life and my work,” she said.
Robinson-Desjarlais said divisiveness among Indigenous peoples on this issue isn’t helpful for anyone. “At the end of the day, I think that we need to accept, as Indigenous musicians and artists in the music community, that we might never have an answer,” Robinson-Desjarlais said. “We might not get closure on this. We might never know whether that blood is Indian or not and that shouldn’t hold us back any longer.… We need to start the healing process.”
Institutions have a responsibility
Editor and journalist Michelle Cyca is a member of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. She did her own investigation into a case of false Indigenous identity in academia, which was published in Maclean’s magazine last year, and says “pretendian” stories can be very personal and painful.
“I’ve seen people saying that no matter what, Buffy will still be Buffy to them, that the impact she’s had on their lives isn’t going to change,” Cyca said, who is based in Vancouver “Every one of these ‘pretendian’ cases really touches a lot of people,” she added. “It touches all the people that they worked with that they know who admire them.”
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that people claiming false Indigenous identity are everywhere, she said. After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up its work in 2015, institutions, like universities, rushed to recruit more Indigenous people. But all people had to do was check a box.
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“All of these institutions, any organization that has relied on self-identification, should be doing a really rigorous review of its policies and ensuring, if they’re giving an opportunity to an Indigenous person, that that person is who they say they are,” Cyca said.
A solution could simply be to require candidates to produce something that proves they have the connections to an Indigenous community that they’ve claimed. For those who have Indigenous ancestry and are non-status, it’s important to be truthful about the strength of those connections, she said.
The role of aunties
Lori Campbell was lucky enough to have an important auntie, Métis matriarch Maria Campbell, in town to help her work through her thoughts and feelings when the Buffy news broke. They went out for dinner and talked about it. Aunties are there for guidance, but they don’t exactly tell you what you have to do, Campbell said. They’re people to turn to in times of struggle.
“I certainly never got a ‘Yes, this is true. No, it’s not true.’ It was more of a conversation about how to work through it and come to an understanding and how to be available for others and to help others through this.”
An auntie herself, Campbell is trying to provide guidance to nieces and nephews, and younger community members. To her, it’s a privilege as well as a responsibility. She’s posted on social media, encouraging others to be kind and compassionate to one another, that all feelings are valid, and at the end of the day, the community still needs each other.
Robinson-Desjarlais has also taken on an auntie role in the aftermath of the investigation. She said she wants to support Indigenous musicians and be a sounding board.
She also knows that Manitoba Music, and other arts organizations, need to discuss and possibly create a formal policy around Indigenous identity. The Indigenous music steering committee within Manitoba Music will be meeting in the new year to discuss this, she said.
Robinson-Desjarlais recently sat in on National Indigenous Music Organization meetings about the Sainte-Marie issue. Its tone was very different from the comments and arguments she’d seen online. “It was very, very well done, very respectful and so many various opinions. So many different nations, so many different protocols from across this country. And we all had our time to share and say what we had to say,” she said.
“And I think that’s part of the healing process. No matter which side of the fence we sit on, we can’t just all feel the same about it. And we should be able to share with each other in a healthy way, like family.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Beaulne-Stuebing, Producer
Laura Beaulne-Stuebing is a producer for CBC Radio’s Unreserved. She is based in Ottawa.
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