The indigenous icon Buffy Sainte-Marie is in serious trouble. She has always claimed to belong to the indigenous Piapot Cree nation in Canada, but according to a CBC documentary, the 82-year-old lied about her background and was instead born in the United States.
“I am a proud member of the indigenous people with deep roots in Canada,” the icon wrote in a defense speech.
After the documentary, there has been a backlash and the Indigenous Women’s Collective of Canada is calling for Sainte-Marie to be stripped of the Juno Awards she won in 2018 for Best Indigenous Album.
“Misled indigenous youth”
“This deception allowed her to benefit from a very deliberate and false narrative that misled thousands of Indigenous youth, adults and most tragically, Indigenous survivors of colonial injury,” writes the Indigenous Women’s Collective in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
The organization was formed after another CBC review found that high-profile academic Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s claims to be of Cree descent were inconsistent with publicly available documents.
She was then stripped of several awards and they now want the same thing to happen to Sainte-Marie.
Ira Lavallee, acting chief of the Piapot First Nation, says, however, that they will not turn their backs on Sainte-Marie.
– I can understand that many of our people feel betrayed. But regardless of her origins, it is legitimate to adopt her in our culture, she says.
Similarities with Sápmi
Rauna Kuokkanen, professor of indigenous research at the University of Lapland, thinks he sees similarities with what is happening in Sápmi.
– We have groups that pretend to be Sámi and try to get benefits that way. In Sápmi there are particularly political advantages, she says.
Kuokkanen compares the Buffy story with conflicts in the Sami Parliament on the Finnish side, where there has long been a debate about Finns with a weak or no Sami connection getting into the Sami Parliament and that way able to reach political power.