Buffy St Marie

Lowell had/has a big population of French-Canadians. they came in the 1800s.

xp I thought Dylan was notorious for picking up quirks from those he was around and making a persona that was not valid and only came out later, though probably as he moved onto his next version of himself . Though it didn't last 50+ years and was more over a few months or couple of years.

they were also immediately hated:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/french-canadian-immigrants-struck-fear-into-new-england-communities-180972951/

btw I literally saw "blood quantum is an oppressor POV" as a comment in that FB thread

yes, I think we're on the same thread -- it is very confusing to me that a prevailing mood among several friends seems to be rooted in "she's great and isn't hurting anybody, she's done a lot of good" combined with some "identity is performative" stuff -- to me, that the tribe says "she's one of us, full stop" carries real and definitive weight, in one sense that's all there is to say -- but in another sense, no: that's lovely, but there is more to say. there's so much "the cbc are monsters for airing this" / "the reporter sucks, look at what else they've done" and these all look to me like really "no matter what, I'm not accepting this."

i have no dog in this fight - which might be disqualifying! - but i feel like she could have used this lie for good or for evil and it seems like she clearly used it for good. so maybe a spirit of magnanimity and generosity could prevail. i guess you could say why is this fake indian sucking all the oxygen out of the room when you could have had real cree telling their own stories and singing their own songs all these years. and well yeah.

"i guess you could say why is this fake indian sucking all the oxygen out of the room"

because she's the most famous native american singer in the world? that's a pretty big deal. its such an integral part of her art and music.

Yeah that's exactly it, in the article the native women who investigate "pretendians" talk about how they take money, honors, and resources intended for actual naticve people, it's a huge betrayal and benefitting off genocide

right i meant “why be generous to this person who has, by virtue of her stupendous fame, likely elbowed real cree out of the frame”

People should really read the article!

young bob dylan was not an old coal miner. but he was also not saying that he actually WAS an old coal miner.

He definitely was not saying he was nice Jewish boy from a respectable family in Minnesota.

Was he not(?) I haven’t read old interviews with him, but I wouldn’t have assumed he hid anything about his background… it’s such a big part of his story now, anyway.

yeah Bob had a few b.s. origin stories, like I think he said he had studied under Mance Lipscomb or something?

I mean a completely different thing that BSM obviously. also I guess see bullshitting as pretty core to Dylan

he was trying to imitate that wily storyteller persona a la woody. i think he said all kinds of things early on to reporters.

but there was that book that came out in the 60s where the guy went and talked to everyone in bob's hometown and college? he wasn't an enigma for long. i think it came out in the 60s. my memory is such crap in my crapitudinous decrepitude. i used to know things!

Positively Main Street by Toby Thompson. “That boy . . . this fellow, Toby . . . has got some lessons to learn.” —Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone, November 29, 1969

People should really read the article!

^^^^ on this. At least read up until the point where BSM sends threatening letters to her brother.

tbh the whole thing with the family, the uncles, the niece didn't sit too well with me because families can be extremely fucked up and full of old resentments and bitterness.

Especially when one member of a family is world famous and the rest of them aren't.

apologies for linking to something on tiktok but this guy has a good take on this

https://www.tiktok.com/@yllwhrseblackfoot/video/7295113394875649285

no need to apologise for for tiktok links!

I don't even have an account on there so I can only view them on desktop and have to dismiss a modal and everything.

that was good and certainly a good thing to amplify Native voices speaking on this issue no matter the platform

xxxxpost what the family says, especially and starting with her uncle's published letter to the local paper in the 60s, is supported by the birth certificate, with clerk spelling it out more in quoted comments and in video interview----obtained by a phone call to city hall, after 60 years of contradictory coverage/dgaf/print the legend---

Also her son's xxxxxpost DNA.

supported/made more plausible.

Finally got caught up on this. Article seems pretty airtight. To me it looks like she originally needed an exotic angle to stand out and just got in way too deep, perhaps to the point where she eventually bought into her own delusion.

to the point where she eventually bought into her own delusion.

yeah i definitely got that sense too

Being charitable you could see her as a young woman who didn't feel she fitted in her immediate milieu and circumstances and was looking around for something to belong to and believe in and found it - but took it too far.

"So you caught me, it seems"

Bravo.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/the-emotional-fallout-of-buffy-sainte-marie-revelations-transcript-1.7013768

Daemon Fairless interviewed Kim Wheeler (who produced Buffy's big Starwalker special last year), and Drew Hayden Taylor (director of the doc The Pretendians).

Without any offence intended here, I think the last four posts should be removed

fine w/me!

This--blows my mind:

KIM WHEELER: It looks like that is the original birth certificating. Yes, her parents are listed as white. But again, at that time, in the forties, I mean, and, you know, I've read so much stuff online and people are saying like people wouldn't list that they were indigenous at that time. You have to remember at that time, Indigenous people didn't even have the right to vote yet. So why would you? Why would you say that your child is indigenous or Native American or First Nations if they had no human rights at that point?

Kim Wheeler just produced a big concert celebrating her as an indigenous heroine, no wonder she's defensive.

Something the CBC article/program didn't get into is Buffy's claim that her mother (Winifred Santamaria) was part Mi'kmaq. If Buffy's whole story is that she was adopted, she doesn't need to prove anything about the identity of the people who raised her. And yet that detail is on her website.

Then, in her statement about the investigation, she said that Winifred "told me some things I have never shared out of respect for her that I hate sharing now, including that I may have been born on 'the wrong side of the blanket.'" If Buffy was adopted, then why would she be so concerned about protecting Winifred with respect to the possibility that she (Buffy) was the product of an affair? Unless she wasn't adopted but her dad was someone other than Albert Santamaria?

I guess I wonder what Winifred told Buffy when she was a kid and how it may have contributed to the stories she's told as an adult.

Something the CBC article/program didn't get into is Buffy's claim that her mother (Winifred Santamaria) was part Mi'kmaq.

Wouldn’t the rest of her family be aware of this? That’s not a detail that would’ve been revealed only to her.

this is just classic liar behavior

I guess I wonder what Winifred told Buffy when she was a kid and how it may have contributed to the stories she's told as an adult.

― jaymc, Wednesday, 1 November 2023 14:57 (one hour ago) link

Generous of you to entertain

it seems really bad but I agree the investigation could have done a better job of explicating the position of her (piapot) family and what that means- because a cursory read could make it appear like they are in denial which I don't think they are - but they barely appear in the story except to contradict some of its basic assumptions in a way that is relatively uncontextualised

obviously how her family feels is not the final word on the subject but the really troubling thing is the deception rather than the fact that she's white - but I haven't seen anything about how they feel about it all. if she did deceive them like she (very likely) did the public - I have to believe she did - has anyone asked?

Something the CBC article/program didn't get into is Buffy's claim that her mother (Winifred Santamaria) was part Mi'kmaq. If Buffy's whole story is that she was adopted, she doesn't need to prove anything about the identity of the people who raised her. And yet that detail is on her website.

am I wrong or did they not get into this in the article?

As part of her report on false Indigenous identity claims, Teillet included a list of what she refers to as “red flags,” warning signs that might indicate someone isn’t telling the truth about their ancestry. One of those flags is shifting Indigenous identities.

Teillet said if those reports accurately reflect what Sainte-Marie told the publications, it is hard to understand how she could claim such dramatically different ancestral lines. She pointed out that the Mi’kmaq live on the East Coast, Algonquin people are from Ontario and northern Quebec and Cree people are primarily from the Prairies.

“It’s really difficult to believe that somebody could mistake being Cree for being Mi’kmaq,” said Teillet. “Those are so far apart that it’s a little bit ludicrous, right?”

Tbc, I have no reason to doubt the CBC investigation, which seems pretty airtight to me. I'm struck by those claims about her mom because they hint at the possibility that there's more to the story -- not in a way that would disprove the investigation but maybe reveal something about her motives and psychology. But yeah, also possible that all of that stuff is made up and conveniently can't be checked because her mom is no longer around.

xp The article says that Buffy herself claimed Mi'kmaq identity -- or at least that news articles in the early years of her career said that she was Mi'kmaq. But now she's saying that she was *adopted* by someone who was Mi'kmaq.

Right, this is how the bio on her website begins:

Buffy Sainte-Marie is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and taken from her biological parents when she was an infant. She was adopted by a visibly white couple and raised in Maine and Massachusetts. As a child, Buffy’s adoptive mother self-identified as part Mi’kmaq but knew little about Indigenous culture. She encouraged Buffy to find things out for herself when she grew up.

xp My understanding:
*Buffy has variously claimed to be born to parents of different indigenous groups, including Mi'kmaq.
*Separate to that, Buffy has said her adoptive mother claimed Mi'kmaq heritage.

she comes from a long line of pretendians

The CBC article seems conclusive to me. Imposters always fascinate me, perhaps in part in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god way, as I certainly remember as a very young woman making up things about myself to make me seem more interesting. The difference being that I never became world famous and I could easily discard my fabrications without any consequences. Whereas BSM found herself caught in a trap of her own making and unable to move on from her youthful attempts to exoticise herself.

I've also been thinking about the inconsistencies in how she presented herself before she landed on Cree as an identity and how much it was easier to do that (and not get caught) in the pre-digital days. At the time, she probably never imagined anyone digging it all up.

I'm not sure I buy the idea that she made a Faustian pact to live a conscious lie in exchange for a career, betting her whole life on not getting caught. I am not sure where the truth lies, but it seems improbable with all the people who could expose her (letters of threat or not). Part of me refuses to believe someone would go through so many efforts to deceive.

I am not ruling out the conclusions of the investigation either. I'm just saying it's a baffling story anyway you look at it.

Can't believe I can't find any evidence online of anyone saying "it's time for her to go". Possibly because she's already retired.