Buffy St Marie

But can we, will we know if this was done (in this case)? I meant.

Not wanting to let this late-life home truth eclipse the good she's done, but factoring it into the story: the good stuff can take it, in a lot of minds, hopefully.

This!

I can def see the argument for covering the story differently, with more sensitivity/context, etc.; but it is hard to see a news org deciding that Sainte-Marie's apparent history of deception shouldn't be reported on at all.

Jago critiques the CBC's current criteria for reporting a story like this by saying "The questions are so vague that they essentially include every Indigenous person in Canada you have ever heard of" (which I'm not sure is true?); but then also seems to conclude that Sainte-Marie is essentially "too big to fail." I totally get the nuance he's going for with his suggestions of revised criteria, but the story has obvious relevance/significance beyond the impact on the community, even if those concerns should be at the forefront of how it's reported.

― More skin on 'Love Boat' (morrisp)

It’s not that the birth certificate is faked— that’s not under discussion afaik. Nor is it that (generally) people think this situation is far from what Fifth Estate is alleging: that BSM knowingly deceived people as to her ancestry.

The issue is that many adopted Indigenous people have exactly the same documentation as BSM has: a birth certificate issued to their adoptive family, with no record of their biological birth parents. This is the issue: the conclusions the investigations arrived at were hinging themselves on evidence that, if deemed to be conclusive, could imply similar conclusions toward legitimately Indigenous adopted individuals.

I'm also not drawing any conclusions here, but a birth certificate can most definitely be faked or established for convenience, including being signed by the right people in exchange for payment. An official document is only as true as the integrity of the people who sign it. If people forge documents in 2023 for their own or their kid's advantage (migrants for ex), I can only imagine that the complex context around adoptions in the 40s could also lead to forgeries - for ex. if it was considered better to officially be a white kid. And I think that's precisely where journalists, experts, have a duty of care about their reporting, especially against the temptation to simplify or go for sensationalism.

With that said, BSM would at least need to publicly call the integrity of the document and family testimonies into question, otherwise it's a sign of acquiescence with the CBC conclusions, even if at 82... As Left said, the dust has to settle. If everything is as CBC concluded, then "fine", it's sad public interest has been served. If not, then it's another kind of sad.

A birth certificate issued to adoptive parents isn’t anything that I’d describe as “fake”. It might say “born to these parents, at this hospital”, and be not-factually-accurate, but I don’t think that makes it “fake” so much as “customary for adoptions at this period in history”.

If she was actually adopted, why hasn't anyone in the family who raised her corroborated that story? Why did her uncle refute it in print 60 years ago?

I dunno if we’re communicating well here:

My impression is that the consensus seems to be that BSM engaged in some level of deception. Worst case: she entirely invented a narrative in which she was adopted when she was not, at all. Less-worst case: she was told certain things by her mother to suggest that she was adopted, and BSM invented a history based on that.

The issue is that the material evidence that Fifth Estate used to effectively “prove” that BSM was not adopted was not sufficient evidence to arrive at that conclusion. That it is a reasonable conclusion to arrive at, given all the research that was done, given inconsistencies in BSM’s own narratives, given testimony from BSM’s white family for example; but looking at the birth certificate of an adoptee and concluding “this person was not adopted” is not a reasonable conclusion.

Kim Wheeler stated that her own history was nearly identical in this regard, as an adopted Indigenous person, she had a birth certificate issued, that stated she was the child of her adopted parents. No documentation to confirm any other parents existed, until Wheeler obtained it, last year. By the Fifth Estate’s logic, one could obtain Wheeler’s “first” birth certificate and claim “Wheeler was not adopted”, when she was.

The problem I’m speaking to is that if the Fifth Estate is hinging the existence of an adoptive birth certificate as material “proof” that BSM was not adopted, this creates a false precedent; it is not proof. And: it hurts adopted people (esp Indigenous adopted people) for this conclusion to be arrived at. One expert’s testimony (the town hall clerk) contradicts another’s testimony (Kim Wheeler, for example; any many other people who are versed in the adoption of Indigenous people during the “60s Scoop”) in stating that this birth certificate “proves” anything. It doesn’t.

The CBC is not hinging the case on that, it’s just one of the many details in the piece.

Of course, as it says in the article, Buffy was born in 1941, long before the 60s Scoop.

*sigh*

I don’t think we’re understanding each other. I’m not arguing that BSM engaged in some manner of deception. I am arguing that there was a key aspect of the way Fifth Estate presented their evidence that was irresponsible. Also, just because it’s called “the 60s scoop” doesn’t mean it wasn’t also happening in the 40s

Officially it started in mid 50s I believe. Anyway, it seems you're jumping to even more conclusions than CBC.

I'm not jumping to any conclusions. I am critical of conclusions that other people are jumping toward.

My own impressions of the Fifth Estate article and doc were an immediate feeling of "this particular aspect of their investigation seemed threadbare, even manipulative". This impression was then shared by Kim Wheeler on the Canadaland podcast. Prior to the article/podcast going live, a journalist was posting on Twitter that "we have the birth certificate" as if it were a smoking gun. The article/doc was otherwise extremely well-researched, cross-referenced, well-filmed and well-edited. I especially liked the moment where they interviewed the "Pretendian hunter", who explained his own history, having been erroneously informed that he was Indigenous, who now researched "Pretendian" cases because "he knew what to look for", and the camera gently paused on a faded tattoo on his hand, the logo of the Wabanaki Confederacy.

When they arrive at Stoneham, and they're interviewing the Stoneham town clerk, and she is giving her expert opinion-- completely unaware of who this "folk singer" is-- she definitively says "this person was not adopted", based on the birth certificate. This is an unreasonable conclusion to be making based on this single document. Kim Wheeler said this, and cited her own documentation as an adopted Indigenous person. My family lawyer relative said, "yeah, idk what things were like in Massachusetts in the 40s, but if it's anything like Ontario, that is an irresponsible conclusion to have made"; this same person then looked up Mass. policy and called me back and said "yeah, no." I noted, even when reading the article after it was released, that the entire style of the reporting changed when it got to this moment, the paragraphs became short, more "gotcha", more pointed, and my feeling was... where's the second opinion? where's the cross-referencing? you guys literally consulted a handwriting expert to verify that "the handwritten note was written by BSM", but you can't consult a second expert about whether or not this birth certificate allows any reasonable conclusions about whether or not BSM was adopted?

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not playing at "Captain Save-A-Buffy" here, I am saying simply that Fifth Estate fucked up, in this aspect of their investigation, that the conclusions they allowed their investigation to make based on the birth certificate is/was harmful to other adoptees who possess no more or less than the same documentation that this Stoneham town hall clerk was claiming was "definitive proof that the individual was not-adopted". It's not proof. Nor is the birth certificate "a fake". It's more complicated than that.

It's not like they don't address the point your lawyer relative made; they quote BSM's own lawyer saying the same thing (and the clerk then talks about why she doesn't believe it applies in this case). I agree perhaps they could have talked to someone else though.

One thing I find odd re-reading that section is that it seems to conflate a few possible meanings of ‘original birth certificate’. The Stoneham clerk says:

“This is the original that came from the hospital,” said Sagarino, who has worked at the Stoneham town hall for more than 20 years. “There’s no refuting this because it’s in my custody from my files in my vault.”

That establishes that this is definitely the certificate that originally came to Stoneham town hall from the hospital (not a later substitution, say), so in that sense, it’s the original birth certificate. But that seems compatible with the information on the birth certificate having been falsified when it was first written.

But then in pointing to the certificate numbering and lack of adoption records, the clerk says that there’s “100 per cent certainty that this is the original birth certificate.” The conclusion there is that this birth certificate is original in the sense that BSM was truly born in Massachusetts on Feb. 20, and this is the birth certificate signed at her birth. These seem like two very different meanings, and the article doesn't try to disentangle them.

I do agree that there could have been more to say in this section. For instance, it's hard to know exactly how much independent weight to give to the record numbering. Like, from BSM's point of view, if you assume that the birth certificate doesn't reflect her actual birth parents and birth location, then it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to think that the birth date on the certificate is also false, i.e. they just entered the date the certificate was written (and that this accounts for the record being at #49). That's something a historical expert might have helped with - whether this is plausible given adoption practices at the time.

Would they have written it at 3:15am though? Or just made up a time of birth? (I'm honestly asking, and I suppose these are questions that could be addressed if the issue was dug into further.)

is it really so hard to believe that BSM's mom told her that she was adopted, or that she was the product of an affair with an indigenous man, and so Buffy felt like an alien in her own family, then found solace and identity in the indigenous community after leaving home, culminating in the Piapot adoption? self-mythologizing aside, why are we certain that the foundational deception, if that's what it is, lies with her and not e.g. with her mother?

i'm not invested in any particular outcome, mind you, and ultimately if the indigenous community decides she's got to go, i'm certainly not going to argue with that.

but at the very least it seems like we should give BSM the chance to respond before utterly dismissing her? idk.

again, not saying these things because i need BSM to be indigenous. if she's a fraud then she can go fuck herself. but it's just weird how a bunch of non-native ppl suddenly become experts on ancestry and indigenous identity whenever stuff like this happens. i'm just saying that it seems confusing

Well she did respond

By the way (just to be clear), I'm not personally making any judgment on whether her indigenous identity should or shouldn't be accepted by the community, based on all the factors of her life. In fact seems like the best-case scenario (for everyone) would be that it were still able to be accepted.

okay i must have missed her response somehow?

https://pitchfork.com/news/buffy-sainte-marie-defends-indigenous-heritage-ahead-of-investigative-report/

i did see that. i meant a response, which usually comes after something

Well she got ahead of it.

(her lawyers also respond on her behalf in the article, and she declined to be interviewed for it.)

I’m going to listen to this today:

https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/how-we-tell-buffy-sainte-maries-story-matters-explained-by-a-60s-scoop-survivor

Would they have written it at 3:15am though? Or just made up a time of birth? (I'm honestly asking, and I suppose these are questions that could be addressed if the issue was dug into further.)

― Phair · Jagger/Richards · Carl Perkins (morrisp), Wednesday, November 8, 2023 11:44 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

You didn’t know that after a kid is born the parents can make up whatever time of birth they want? All of mine were born at 4:20 on June 9th.

some interesting discussion here but ultimately imho the inference doesn’t rely on any single piece of evidence (ie birth certificate) that is alone dispositive, sufficient or necessary for the conclusion that BSM pretended. rather it’s all of the evidence taken together that makes it basically incontrovertible. the lawyerly tactic (i mean this non pejoratively) of trying to sow doubt by unraveling the weakest points of the argument won’t really work, there are just too many things that all line up and point in the same direction, can’t all be coincidences

having said that, i haven’t seen anyone address the fact that the numbers on the birth certificate line up sequentially with other births and therefore aren’t consistent with adoption. so i think the certificate is more of a smoking gun than some want to admit

I do agree that there could have been more to say in this section. For instance, it's hard to know exactly how much independent weight to give to the record numbering. Like, from BSM's point of view, if you assume that the birth certificate doesn't reflect her actual birth parents and birth location, then it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to think that the birth date on the certificate is also false, i.e. they just entered the date the certificate was written (and that this accounts for the record being at #49). That's something a historical expert might have helped with - whether this is plausible given adoption practices at the time.

― jmm

what i meant more was has anyone found a historical expert offering evidence that the contrary interpretation is correct? if so i haven’t seen it. the birth record specifies that her parents stayed in the hospital for 3 hours and that she was born at 3:15am. not clear why they would fill something in for those field if it were an adoption

@ flopson, to be clear, I wasn't trying to "sow doubt" as to point out that the particular lack-of-follow-up regarding the singular assertions made by the Stoneham town hall clerk was, broadly, hurtful to adoptees, as the things that were being expressed were by-no-means conclusive. I remain convinced by the article and doc that some manner of deception was at play, for sure. Personally, and my relative agrees, the presence of a "birth hospital" and "delivering doctor" (the same hospital and doctor that had delivered BSM's sister) on the birth certificate effectively leaves us both sufficiently convinced that "BSM was not adopted, as she has claimed"; but again, I don't know for sure if this, too, was standard practice in the issuing of birth certificates for adopted children.

To be clear, I don't think she was adopted either. I think the mass of evidence points this way, and to make the contrary work basically means explaining away all the evidence.

sorry didn’t mean to imply that that’s what you were doing or that that was your motive. unfortunate choice of word on my part. all i meant the sum of evidence is much greater than its parts here

(xp)

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