Another Indigenous pretender

Buffy, not Indigenous afterall.

So, now it comes out that Buffy Sainte-Marie is not Indigenous.  She is Caucasian.  What a shocker that is!  Buffy, who has spent her entire life trading, dining out, making a career and morphing into a native, isn't.

It's a lot easier to claim Métis status, because all you have to prove is a connection to, and acceptance by, that community.  But unfortunately for her you also have to have a genetic ancestral connection, which Buffy doesn't.  So, even measured against that nebulous and subjective criteria, she misses the mark. 

Apparently, she was born in Stoneham, Mass., in 1941 to Albert and Winifred Santamaria.  That name sounds Spanish, so she changed it to "Sainte-Marie"; her background may also account for her swarthy complexion.  

While she may have been adopted into the Piapot clan when she became famous, that doesn't make her Indigenous.  In fact, one of her brothers threatened to expose her lie a number of years ago, but backed down when she threatened to sue him and falsely claim he had molested her as a child.

I am adopted and growing up knew I wasn't Welsh, as my father's heritage was.  Having adopted parents who were English and Welsh didn't confer that on me -- anymore than Buffy's false claims to be Indigenous make her so.  Turns out I am as Irish as they come; DNA confirmed it. 

Doubling down on her lie, Buffy has issued a statement saying she "knows who she loves and where she belongs", but she doesn't deny the latest, well-researched documentation about her origins because the proof is irrefutable.  'W5' travelled to her hometown and interviewed the official town clerk, who produced her birth certificate in authentic black and white for all to see.

What an insult to the thousands of genuine natives who have held her up as a beacon of their heritage.  What an insult to her millions of fans.  What an insult to artists like Inuit Susan Aglukark, with whom she recorded an Indigenous duet.  Everyone's been duped while Buffy made millions!

She is what real Indigenous people call "costume Indians", with all her beads, baubles and feathers.  "They tend to go overboard with their outfits when they are not really native," said one Indigenous spokesman. 

I wonder what the half-native Tanya Talaga, who has also appropriated full native heritage herself, will have to say in her next rave?  Watch this space!

(Note:  Tanya today gave Buffy a hall pass, saying we need to love each other and support each other's "truth" because of all the "intergenerational pain" we're forever mired in.  Of course, this would be Talaga's position.  She writes on, and claims, all things Indigenous, all while being half-Polish herself and raised in downtown Toronto -- not on a reservation.)