I've got my own seeds
I've got my own weeds
I've got my own harvest
That I've sown
Anyone checked in with Rachel Dolezal recently? Just wondering.
I thought about that while listening to the news and visiting my parents on the weekend — at least, I think they’re my parents. That’s what I was told my whole life. Who knows?
I’m a big Buffy Sainte-Marie fan. I came to her music later in my life, but then dove in deep. I’ve read both her biographies. I’ve dug through record crates to find original vinyl copies of her early records. I’ve interviewed her and seen her live several times.
Last week’s CBC bombshell was shocking. As a fan, I’m biased, but: I think that bombshell is mostly bullshit. [EDIT: The first version of this story had the word “bombshell” in the headline. That was inappropriate considering current headlines elsewhere.]
(Warning: WhiteManTM opinions ahead. From Gord Downie’s biographer, no less, who wrestled with the Joseph Boyden issue in a chapter of The Never-Ending Present.)
Buffy won an Oscar for her songwriting, in 1983. But if everything in the Fifth Estate documentary is true, then she should get an honorary Oscar for being the greatest actor of all time. Talk about method acting!
Sure, it’s quite possible that we’re talking about someone not necessarily fraudulent but capable of fabulist delusion that seems beyond human capability.
But I seriously doubt it. For starters, that would take a shitload of effort to walk the walk every single hour of every day, which, by any account I’ve ever read, is what Buffy Sainte-Marie does.
I think there’s a lot of context missing. Especially for people who only know the bullet points of her biography. People who write things on Facebook like, “I've never felt that Buffy Saint Marie looked authentically brown. She looks tanned, like from a tanning bed.” (That’s a real comment, spotted on a friend’s page.) People who think that Buffy might have claimed to grow up on a reservation or an Indigenous community.
The 82-year-old never did claim that. She has always said that she grew up in Massachusetts with a white family and that she herself had many questions about her own roots. Decades ago, that was a story people easily bought. Now it raises red flags for those who want to out “pretendians.”
The documentary cherry-picks different statements Buffy made over the years that suggest her story’s details changed. Some could easily have been misquotes or misprints; it’s not like the mainstream media were sensitive to details in Indigenous culture at the time (or, sadly, now). I wouldn’t trust a cub reporter from 1965 to know the difference between Cree and Algonquin.
A few statements are fishier than others, in their inconsistency. But part of me wonders how consistent anyone would be when constantly retelling their life story for 60 years.
Buffy released her response to the allegations here, and followed it up with a video statement here. Read/watch those before you listen to anything I have to say.
Buffy’s art and her activism speaks for itself. Both are exceptional. She didn’t win an Oscar because she was Indigenous. “Universal Soldier” didn’t become a 20th-century folk standard because she was Indigenous. Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand didn’t cover her songs because she was Indigenous. She has been nothing but a positive force for good, including her groundbreaking work on Sesame Street — though that’s a gig she definitely did get because she was Indigenous. And where generations of Indigenous people will tell you she did very important work.
She didn’t defraud anyone — except perhaps Canadian arts and government institutions eager to applaud someone who, if she was born in Canada at all (an assertion that is now definitely debatable), left the country as an infant.
That’s not an Indigenous issue, and it’s not unique to Buffy: ask yourself why Eleanor Catton is on the Giller shortlist this year, or why Astra Taylor is this year’s Massey lecturer. No disrespect to either woman, but both left Canada as small children. That’s an argument that’s been going on as long as Neil Young’s been winning Junos.
But that issue is the opposite of political dynamite, which Buffy’s story definitely is.
Buffy didn’t swindle anyone out of money or opportunity — quite the opposite (we’ll talk about the Junos, though, in a bit).
She identified herself as being Indigenous at a time when it was not remotely a commercially lucrative stance to take. There were no other Indigenous singers anywhere near the spotlight then. (Go ahead — name one. From 1964.) There were only one or two Indigenous actors of any note. No one in the dominant culture was interested in Indigenous stories, at least not ones told by Indigenous people themselves. Sure, some hippies and academics and the occasional TV interviewer were curious, but if young Beverly Sainte-Marie (Santamaria) wanted to be a star she’d have a much easier path as a white woman like Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez.
She chose the path of most resistance. That’s not something an opportunist does.
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