Thread by @kimagewheeler

After watching the Fifth Estate’s episode on Buffy Sainte-Marie, I have a lot of thoughts. Am I emotional about it? Yes, of course. 🧵1 of many.

Do I feel like CBC has left out some important context? Most definitely. Perhaps I missed it, but not once did I hear them call her niece or cousin – estranged family. Watching CBC’s News Network, their super just says ‘family.’ That’s kind of a big one.

Estranged family would put it in more context. What do they have to gain from coming forward now after all these decades? And are you going to tell me a 10-year-old remembers what or how her father felt after seeing his sister all those decades ago?

And what about that cousin who met her one time – that’s who they choose to talk with? I was getting some serious TMZ vibes.

They did not speak to any Cree people about Cree law. They did not talk to any of the Piapots or anyone else from that nation.

Yes, they reached out to the current chief, but what the hell is that? That’s like reaching out to a mayor and asking them to comment. Go to the family. Go to a knowledge keeper. Not to disparage chiefs, but come on.

While I understand pretendians are dangerous to our communities, I also understand how identity is complicated. What would Buffy have to gain by saying she was Indian back in 1961. In Canada, we only became human in 1960 with the right to vote.

Why would you want to be an Indian way back then? That’s a question that was never asked in the Fifth Estate piece. Why wasn’t it?
I’m also kind of shocked at how quickly people turned on her. Social media lit up after finding out this story was going to air today.

Before anyone had read the article or watched the doc. Or have even met her. That is very troubling.

As for race shifting. allegations of sexual abuse, and the first mention of her Indigeneity…I want to share my own story. Growing up, my adopted mother told me the story of my

birth mother handing me over to her. She described in detail what she wore. When I finally found my birth sisters, I related this story. This story was not true. All my life up to that point, I believed myself to be Mohawk, then I found out I was not only Mohawk but I was also

Anishinaabe. That threw me for a long time. Probably for 15 years, I told people I was Ojibway and put the Mohawk side on the shelf – rightly or wrongly.

The CBC piece said there was no mention of Buffy’s Indigeneity until later on. If you look back at my early life, I don’t know if there will be a written record of my talking about being Indigenous until you get to my Grade 12 yearbook where I quote Chief Dan George:

“There is a longing among all people and creatures to have a sense of purpose and worth. To satisfy that common longing in all of us, we must respect each other.”

As for the sexual abuse allegations. This is painful for any survivor of abuse to talk about. The first time I spoke about it, I was 20 years old. It did not go well with the people I disclosed to. I didn’t talk to my adopted family about it until I was 28 or 29 years old.

And even two decades later, I still had to sit with an adopted sister and go into great detail about it before she finally really believed how bad it was.

I really don’t like it when people put themselves in the story but I am doing this because I know the struggle with identity, the disclosure of sexual abuse, and finding yourself as you return to community. Each person’s journey is different and we have to respect that.

I guess I am saying, I can understand how her story could change and how it has. Especially when, in the 1960s, our stories were not being told with respect, and probably without accuracy and context.

Media is the first rough draft of history they say. So yes, I think that some of those early media reports had errors in them. Is it possible that Buffy just didn’t bother to correct the reporter? Is it possible she did and the paper didn’t give a shit? The answer is yes.

If you think that is naive, then you don’t pay attention to how many times the media offers up corrections.

So the birth certificate. Yes. This seems pretty damning. But again, we don’t know what the circumstances were around her birth. If her mother may have had an affair, if her father who is named on the birth certificate just decided to claim her as his own.

Those are all answers only Buffy can know. And the only way the rest of the world would know is if she did submit to a DNA test. But why? She knows who she is as she said in her video.

The Indigenous community has always said, it’s not who you claim to be but who claims you. The Piapot family has claimed her. So why is that narrative only suitable for when it agrees with your interpretation of this debacle?

At the end of the day, people will believe what they want to believe. But for me, Buffy Sainte-Marie has done more good than harm. She has opened doors for Indigenous people to walk through, sometimes kicking down those doors.

Without her the Indigenous category at the Junos may not exist, she created scholarships that created doctors that improved healthcare on reservations in the U.S.. She helped change curriculum about Native Americans in schools south of the medicine line, and

she inspired a generation of Indigenous people to believe they could make it in the entertainment industry.

It’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves if we still want to uphold Buffy as a personal hero, regardless of her genetic make up.

For me, she will always be a hero, ever since I was that four-year-old little Indian girl sitting in the living room of a white home watching Sesame Street.