This is the best summary I could come up with:
Buffy Sainte-Marie is pushing back on a recent CBC News investigation that questions her Indigenous heritage, maintaining she has never lied about her identity.
The document lists the baby and parents as white and includes a signature of an attending physician — information CBC says is corroborated by Sainte-Marie’s marriage certificate, a life insurance policy and the United States census.
Thompson said CBC was assured by a town clerk in Stoneham, Mass., that its document on file is an original live birth certificate and it’s not possible another was inserted after the fact.
CBC’s report said family recollections and other written correspondence show the brother received the letter after he informed someone from PBS that Sainte-Marie was not Indigenous.
“It hurts me deeply to discover that my estranged family grew up scared of me and thinking these lies because of a letter I sent intended to protect me from further abuse,” Sainte-Marie said in the statement.
She brought First Nations culture to Sesame Street and is credited with being the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar, for best original song in 1982 for co-writing Up Where We Belong from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
The original article contains 1,020 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It would take some work, but if I were Buffy and 100% confident I was adopted, I would find a DNA sample from my parents (likely a hair on anything they owned, like a brush or clothing) or have one / both of my parents exhumed to take one tiny DNA samples from their body. With a DNA test, the result would be so definitive that anyone who had questioned my ancestry before would at that point shut the fuck up.
Isn’t her contention that it doesn’t matter if she was naturally born to the Sainte-Marie’s because the Piapot’s adopted/claim her as their family and therfore she is indigenous no matter what anyone else says?
Yes she said that and also many other things in the past that don’t necessarily line up with that sentiment. Even if she does think she is indigenous regardless of her genetics, it seems like one would want to combat the perception that she is a liar. Doing the genetic test shows for sure you have nothing to hide, in my opinion.
But if her claim is that it doesn’t matter if she was conceived by indigenous parents then doing a genetic test can only strengthen her opponents’ position. Why would she do that?
It’s my opinion that she is unlikely to have significant indigenous ancestry and that she has intentionally mislead the public about the nature of her connection to the indigenous community. That said: she may have entered the indigenous community under false pretenses but she IS part of the community.
I feel it is quite inappropriate for her to have accepted grants/awards reserved for people disenfranchised by settler colonialism and residential schools. But, I don’t know if it’s possible to discern which awards etc are intended as such and which are just to lift indigenous cultures in aggregate. She should double down on her rejection of colonial definitions and just announce her willingness to voluntarily return any awards/ grants to all organizations that feel blood quantum is paramount to indigeneity. I think that would put this whole thing to bed.
deleted by creator
The Earth is burning around us as a slo-mo climate catastrophe builds up unstoppably. Fascists and other authoritarians are ramping up to take control of people around the world (with a major party in Canada, even, hiring an open fascist into its leadership). Canadian essentials prices are reaching the point where the practically the entire nation is finding it increasingly difficult to meet the basic needs of food and shelter. There’s a genocide going on in Gaza after a mass murder was done against Israelis. The people of Ukraine are still fighting off an invader that the world let get cocky and arrogant enough to decide to invade.
But the CBC is bravely fighting to expose a has-been entertainer.
Bravo, CBC! Only you have the journalistic integrity to do deep investigative journalism on issues that don’t matter at all! Keep up the great, tax-funded work!
You utter fucking berks.
