Front Burner - The emotional fallout of Buffy Sainte-Marie revelations

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

After CBC’s The Fifth Estate released a bombshell documentary last week calling Canadian music icon and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous ancestry into question, the reaction has been swift and complex. Drew Hayden Taylor and Kim Wheeler join us to talk about why the revelations have been painful and difficult to process for many in the Indigenous community. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. I'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025. I want you to connect with Humber CPL to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's performance and engagement. Humber works with you to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. It's been a few days since the CBC's The Fifth Estate released an investigation that calls into question Buffy St. Marie's Indigenous heritage.

That story has gotten a lot of reaction. A lot of it complicated and emotionally charged. For good reason. Buffy St. Marie is more than a musical icon. She's an advocate. And throughout her career, she spoke out on issues that mattered to indigenous communities at a time when few did. There is a justified bitterness on the part of some Indians who have not only lost their lands in less than fair fights, but whose children are then forced to be sent away from them to go to schools far away from home. In the investigation, CBC journalist Jeff Leon covers documents including Buffy St. Marie's birth certificate

and conducts interviews with her family. All the evidence gathered contradicts her claim to Indigenous ancestry and points to her being born to white parents in the U.S. So far, Buffy St. Marie hasn't addressed these issues directly with the CBC. In a public statement on Thursday, Buffy St. Marie called the Fifth Estate's allegations deeply hurtful. She continues to claim an Indigenous identity. And to those who question my truth, I say with love, I know who I am. Today, I'm talking with two people who have been thinking about the story a lot,

and the complicated issues around Indigenous identity and lineage that it brings up. Drew Hayden-Taylor is a writer and the filmmaker behind the documentary, The Pretendians, and Kim Wheeler is a writer and producer with Canada Land. She hosts Anti-Up, a podcast about issues that matter to Indigenous women in Canada. Hi Kim, how are you doing? Sago, I'm great, thank you. Thanks so much for coming on, and hi Drew, nice to have you on.

Good afternoon. All right, Kim, I'm going to start with you. Buffy St. Marie is obviously a huge icon to so many folks. How would you describe your relationship to her and her work? Well, I started watching Buffy St. Marie like a lot of little Indigenous girls in this country when I was four years old on Sesame Street. And last year, it culminated in me writing and helping produce Buffy St. Marie Starwalker at the Ottawa National Arts Center. So it kind of, for me, it felt like, you know, my whole career and life had been building to that moment. And it was really, it was really special, not just for me,

but for the artists who took part, the presenters and the production team. And Drew, how about you? What's Buffy meant to you? Well, Buffy is such a national icon. I mean, she has been around long, like performing and been a presence in the indigenous, uh, musical arts and activist community longer than most indigenous people have been alive today.

So she's always been there. Uh, I've always been a big fan of her work. I have spent a small fortune over the years, uh, buying her albums and I've seen her in concert about four times. So it's, it's always been,

she's always been a delight, uh, to, to delight to sort of like be a part of her audience. So there's been obviously a huge spectrum of reaction from folks all over the place and indigenous folks in particular since the Fifth Estate's investigation into Buffy's origins came out last week. Lots of people are feeling hurt. Some people don't even want to watch the documentary, read the story. Why has it been so difficult for folks, Drew? Well, I think there are a few things more personal to an individual and a people than identity. I mean, Buffy has been such an integral part of the Indigenous Canadian and American consciousness that suddenly you wake up and she's not who she has been claiming to be or is accused of not being who she's claimed

to be there the dust is still in the air the nothing has really been formally settled though things do look incriminating so this happens and people sit back and like the Emperor has no clothes they're trying to figure out I loved this person, you worshipped in terms of her talent, and then suddenly you walk away having a sense of having been fooled, I guess is the best way of putting it. Has it been difficult for you?

For me? Kind of, yeah, because I first heard about this three, four months ago from an Indigenous journalist in Los Angeles, of all places. And my first reaction, my partner's first reaction was, no, that cannot be true. Just like, you know, it just doesn't seem feasible. And then slowly as stuff began to filter out, it was like, oh, my God, this is creeping more and more towards being an authentic theory. So yeah, as I wrote in my Globe and Mail article, when this happened, it's like up is down, black is white, all these different things that you don't know who to trust anymore. Kim, what are the questions you have? What are the feelings you're left with after watching the documentary?

Well, I guess, you know, I wrote a big post on my socials that got a lot of traction over the last few days. And I actually didn't even expect it to get the traction that it did. I just, you know, wanted to put my own thoughts out there. I was thinking, you thinking, when I watched the documentary, it left me with questions really about the reporting of it and how there is nuance and context when it comes to Indigenous identity and even just straight up journalism. I was surprised that the fifth did not say that the two members of her family were estranged members of her family.

I feel like that word estranged was really important in this context. I question why they spoke to a cousin who she had met once as a child. Bruce Santamaria is about 20 years younger than his cousin Buffy. He says he only met her once in the 1970s. We used to go there every Sunday and she showed up one day and I met her. I shared pictures with you. That felt very, I don't know, like very TMZ and sensationalistic to me. And I also questioned why they didn't speak to the Piapot family or members of the Piapot family who did the traditional adoption. And also why they didn't speak to a Cree knowledge keeper,

why they didn't speak to a historian in Massachusetts instead of some clerk at the office of the birth certificate registry. I just felt like there could have been more. And if those questions and those little nuances had been included, maybe it would be more conclusive for me. So the CBC did request an interview with Pipot's acting chief, as well as several members of the Pipot family, but they either declined or they didn't answer the requests. They ended up including a statement from the family, but it sounds like the how of it really mattered. myself and having written and covered stories in the indigenous community for 30 years before mainstream media was even talking about wanting to cover our stories these are the kinds of things that that a handful of indigenous journalists in this country really you know worked on to make these stories accurate. So when we're talking about Indigenous story and or stories,

Indigenous people need to be involved. Indigenous journalists should have been on that team. And while I understand that Michael Dick was the editorial consultant, I kind of would have preferred to see Indigenous journalists actually involved in the overall reporting of the story. The story, obviously, I mean, it centers around identity. It's brought up a lot of discussion about indigenous identity, how it's defined. So, Drew, this is something you've dealt with when you put out your documentary,

The Pretendians. It looked at other cases of folks falsely claiming indigeneity. It's a big question, but what makes someone indigenous? It's a big question, but what makes someone indigenous? Oh, if I had the answer to that, I'd be a lot wealthier and a lot more well-liked out there. Or less well-liked. Or less well-liked. That's true. That's true. I don't have an answer to that because there's so many different things. I was at a pow this summer, and a white woman whose partner was Native came up to me very aggressively

and was asking me that same question because they were going to have a child. And it's like I'm backing up, and then she just basically says, and what about adopted people who are trying to find their culture back? Are they not Native? She threw a whole bunch of things at me, and then she basically said, what makes a Native a Native? And this woman beside me was looking at something in another stall, basically leaned over and said 50% heritage, and then turned and walked away.

I don't have one answer to this. I think it's a combination of nature and nurture. It is a part blood. It is a part of upbringing. I don't know what that answer is. And I'm not sure anybody does. I just want to jump in there. Yeah, please, Kim, go ahead.

Because, you know, I'm 60 scoop, right? And I was adopted into a white family. And so while I knew I was Indigenous growing up, I didn't know what that meant. It just meant that I was different from my white family and that I faced racism my entire life from the time I was a small child. I didn't return to the community and the culture until I was in my mid-20s. And then it wasn't until I went into journalism school that I really started asking questions about community and culture and covering our stories because it was a safe place that gave me permission to ask those questions. So when, you know, when we start talking about identity and who is and who isn't it it gets really complicated like like for like for me right i'm uh i'm what is referred to as white passing i've got bluish

eyes fair hair and stuff like that but i was born raised and grew up on the reserve i've been to like 150 first nations communities across the country i i. I'm talking to you from my reserve in the dining room of the house I was born and raised in. And there are people out there who still have trouble believing I am Native too. So it does, as I said, there's so many different levels of, so many people have different ways of assessing this issue. different levels of so many people have different ways of assessing this issue well i guess what you know part of why this is such a bombshell or so provocative or so i guess just why it raises so many questions is that that there's there's the issue of belonging to community community involvement but that but the investigation you know the real i guess bombshell of that investigation is this piece of paper right this birth document and that is you know, the real, I guess, bombshell of the investigation is this piece of paper, right?

This birth document. And that is, you know, calls into question issues of lineage and blood kind of, right? Yeah. So is it, am I understanding this right? Her name is Buffy St. Marie now? Yeah, right. And she's a folk singer? Yeah.

Yeah. And she says a folk singer. Yeah, yeah. And she says she was born in Canada and that these people adopted her. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, not true. Yeah. How much does that matter?

How much is that over focused on? Can we get into that? I think it's up, you know, in this particular case, everybody's going to make a decision for themselves. They're all going to have an opinion. And for the family, for the Pie Pot family, they have claimed her. They are, she is family. She will always be their auntie. And, you know, that we have to take that into account.

Just on, on your point there, you know, some, as you say, members of the Pipot family, the Pipot First Nation in Saskatchewan have put out a statement saying just what you said a few days before the documentary came out. And I'll just read a little bit of that. We claim her, they're talking about Buffy. We claim her as a member of our family and all our family members are from the pipe bot first nation to us that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could. So, so I guess I'm curious, like what, what does it mean to be claimed in that context?

Well, I think I can safely say in the first nations community, nobody is arguing with the pieaiapai family. They adopted her. She's part of their family. I acknowledge, I respect, and I honor that decision. I think most Indigenous people do. However, if I adopt somebody into my family, my community, that doesn't mean somebody in B.C. or whatever has to follow by those rules too. I think in situations like that, it is up to the individual to assess where they fit on that line of acceptance.

I don't know how else to put it. I would say that people are arguing with the Paiapot family. Natanis Paiapot, who is a journalist as well, and her name is on that statement. I've been following her socials over the weekend, and they've received threats. So people have been threatening them. She has taken a lot of abuse online, and we knew when this story was going to come out that it was going to be very divisive and it was going to be very hurtful. I think there's a way for us as a community to have respectful conversations and not indulge in lateral violence. And on a slightly different note, if I remember correctly, when the whole issue with Joseph Boyden came down several years ago,

Joseph had been adopted by, I think, two or three Cree families. But that didn't seem to be relevant to the larger, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community afterwards. In his first public appearance, since an investigative reporter called into question his Indigenous background, author Joseph Boyden, whose body of work is largely based on First Nations culture and identity, stuck to his story. I'm a white kid from Willowdale with native roots. I have always said very clearly and carefully to the public, a small part of me is Indigenous, but it's a big part of who I am. And just to remind folks, Joseph Bourne's a writer. He was claiming to be Indigenous.

It happened that that wasn't the case, and then there was this fallout. You're talking about Drew? Yes, yes. That basically he's now wandering the wilderness of the Pretendian forest. And as I said, from what I understand, having been adopted by several families, again, I respect that, I understand that,

but it still did not seem to give any assistance to him and, and trying to maintain his career. Well, you then, sorry, you also have to ask like, what did he do? What did Joseph Boyden do with and for the community after this, after those allegations came out, after he was adopted into Indigenous families, First Nations families, like he just disappeared. Yeah. And I find that a lot too with the pretendians that they, you know, it's like you shed a light on the issue and on them,

and then suddenly they're gone. Like nobody's heard anything about Terry Barasa or Mary Ellen Tappel LaFond. I'm hoping Buffy will come back and face these questions. You know, a small part of me still has hope for her, for her relation with the Indigenous community. But if she stays silent, that hope might just dim. Happy Holidays. I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic.

And I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals. In learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel. Go to humber.ca slash cpl to get started. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's

because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. Kim, I have a question for you, but there's a bit of context I want to add just for folks who may be just coming into the story. So bear with me and all that stuff. So Buffy says she's adopted into the family she grew up with in Massachusetts and that she was born to an indigenous mother in Canada. and that she was born to an Indigenous mother in Canada. The CBC investigation, the Fifth Estate investigation, found a birth certificate that says she was born in Massachusetts and that the parents Buffy claimed were her adoptive parents

are actually listed as her birth parents. So, people are questioning the validity of the birth certificate as we've been talking about, pointing to the complications that surround adoption of Indigenous people and tracing their lineage. My question to you, Kim, after that preamble is, so you've talked about, and you mentioned earlier, but you've talked about being adopted by a white family and putting the pieces together about your lineage later in life. What do you think people might be missing when it comes to the adoption issue here with Buffy? Well, I guess, you know, for me, I have two birth certificates. The birth certificate that states who my adoptive parents

are, and that was the only birth certificate I had up until last year when I finally decided to go through, I think, maybe the post-ad post adoption registry here in Manitoba because it was, it, my, my adoption was certified or whatever documented. And then I found a second birth certificate, the one which was my live birth form. So,

you know, it, it is complicated, but the. So, you know, it is complicated, but the way that, you know, what they show in Massachusetts, I can't really speak to that. Like, yes, it looks like that is the original birth certificate between, because they said that it's chronologically numbered, and hers fell, hers was number 49 and it fell between 48 and 50. Segarino explained that as each certificate is registered, they're given a number and filed in chronological order. That means Buffy could not be baby number 49, like this birth certificate says, if she had been born in Canada. So this is 48. So this is the one right before Beverly.

It looks like that is the original birth certificate. And yes, her parents are listed as white. But again, at that time in the 40s, I mean, and I've, you know, I've read so much stuff online and people are saying like people wouldn't list that they were indigenous at that time. You have to remember at that time, indigenous people didn't even have the right to vote yet. So why would you, why would you say that your child is Indigenous or Native American or First Nations if they had no human rights at that point? I want to talk to you about the practice of investigating folks who claim to be Indigenous. Obviously, it can be pretty divisive. Drew, you've made a whole documentary about this.

Why do you think these stories are worth pursuing? Well, truth is always worth pursuing, and though'm sure Kim, you've come across this too, that it's now developing into a serious conspiracy theory area. People are thinking it's the CBC or it's the government because she's so popular and so influential. Anytime anybody gets that success, we have to bring her down. But I think, you know to bring her down. But I think I you know, is it better? People say

this world is better because of Buffy. And to a certain extent, I believe that. You look at her music, you look at everything and yes, I do think there's a certain amount of the world the artistic world, the political world is better because of her.

But on the other hand, as somebody who has kept going through the world of journalism himself, is it better to know or not know? And in situations like this, I think it is better to know. Kim, what do you think? Well, I guess, you know, as a journalist, I have to say it's better to know than not know. It's better to have the truth or aspects of the truth out there. As an Indigenous woman who held up Buffy as a hero all of my life, I wish I didn't know. all of my life. I wish I didn't know. It's been heartbreaking to see the divisiveness in the community. It's horrible to see that our community can turn on one another so quickly and start

tearing each other down. And I think that there is a way through this to have respectful conversations and to remain friends with everyone. But, you know, we can disagree. Like, we don't all have to agree that Buffy St. Marie is Indigenous. Buffy St. Marie is not Indigenous. Buffy St. Marie has her truth. Buffy St. Marie is a liar. I mean, everybody has something to contribute to this conversation. I just wish it was done respectfully. Well, we're starting to see, you know, as you both mentioned, we're seeing stuff on social all over the place. People are still, I think, processing the investigation. But on Sunday night, the Indigenous Women's Collective put out a statement saying that they believe Buffy St. Marie, and I'll quote here,

engaged in a great deception, and that the Juno should rescind her award, her 2018 award for Indigenous Album of the Year. And beyond awards and accolades and whatnot, in terms of moving forward, Kim, you mentioned the need to do this with respect without, you know, getting into escalations on social and beyond. How do we move forward? each of us go to our teachings, right? That they show us how to be respectful, how to move forward with grace and integrity.

And again, it's going to be up to each of us to decide if we're going to continue to hold Buffy St. Marie up as a hero within our own hearts. Drew, anything you want to add to hold Buffy St. Marie up as a hero within our own hearts. Drew, anything you want to add to that? Well, I think it's also important to point out that in the end, this whole topic is fairly irrelevant in the larger picture of Indigenous affairs in Canada. I mean, we've just had Ms. Blackstock win an amazing court case for Indigenous children. The largest settlement in Canadian history was approved by the federal court today

more than a decade and a half after the battle for First Nations child welfare compensation was first launched. We've got murder and missing Indigenous women. We've got, you know, dig up the landfill pipelines. There are other things way more important and will have much more of an effect on individual Native people in this country than this. When we wake up tomorrow, next week, next month, nothing will really have changed because of this controversy. I think it's just, it's moderately interesting, but not earth shattering.

All right. Thank you both. I really appreciate you guys both coming on. Thanks, Kim not earth shattering. All right. Thank you both. I really appreciate you guys both coming on. Thanks, Kim. Thanks, Drew. My pleasure. That's all for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner.

Talk to you tomorrow.