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.
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.