Trans indigenous
When Buffy Sainte-Marie strolled onto Sesame Street in 1975, she was making history.
The Dec. 9 episode was the launch of the program’s efforts to present Indigenous culture to millions of viewers.
…
From the early days of her career, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, born in Canada. She has also allowed herself to be celebrated as an Indigenous icon and success story.
In 2022, CBC broadcast a concert that was held in her honour at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Anishinabe musician ShoShona Kish told the audience: “Buffy Sainte-Marie has led the way for Indigenous music on this beautiful land since her first album.”
However, almost 50 years after stepping onto Sesame Street, the iconic singer-songwriter’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being contradicted by members of her own family and an extensive CBC investigation.
Late last year, CBC received a tip that Sainte-Marie is not of Cree ancestry but, in fact, has European roots. She is the latest high-profile public figure whose ancestry story has been contradicted by genealogical documentation, including her own birth certificate, historical research and personal accounts — the latest chapter in the complex and growing debate around Indigenous identity in Canada.
Interesting. Genealogical documentation, historical research, and personal accounts are enough to justify the CBC questioning Sainte-Marie’s indigenous idenniny but nothing is enough to justify anyone questioning someone’s gender idenniny. That’s super interesting because what sex people are – aka their “gender identity” – is a lot more self-evident and concrete and unmistakable than their indigenous ancestry is, yet it’s treated as downright evil to question (let alone disbelieve or deny) that a guy who calls himself Josephine Sexgoddess is a man.
If it’s evil to question anyone’s gender identity why isn’t it evil to question anyone’s ethnic identity? Why is one taboo while the other is The Right Thing To Do? Why is it wrong to try to usurp indigenous identity but brave and stunning to usurp female identity? Please explain.
Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear, a professor of Native studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a member of Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, say it’s unacceptable for non-Indigenous people to speak for Indigenous people and take honours set aside for them.
“It’s theft of opportunities, resources. It’s theft of our stories,” she said.
Hey! I know what she means! Women feel exactly the same way! But we’re not allowed to say so.
H/t Your Name’s not Bruce
I wonder if any of the imputing of “bravery” to men claiming to be women is the percieved stepping “down” to become someone “lesser,” like they’re leaving a life of wealth and privilege to go live on the street. Or something. It’s taken as some form of radical, spiritual honesty, shedding something false to live their “authentic” lives (ironically, as something they’re actually not and never can be-women). Though far too many of them seem to carry their male entitlement with them into their brave “new” lives.
In apartheid South Africa racial identity was heavily policed. You were not allowed to claim to be whiter than you were. That’s because whites had all the status and special privileges. No-one would have cared had you claimed to be blacker than you actually were.
In woke Canada it is the reverse. Being indigenous is the high-status identity with accompanying privileges. No-one would care if a Canadian went around saying they were “whiter” than they actually were, but claiming a BIPOC identity when you are not “entitled” to it is a no-no that is heavily policed.
Things do, though — as Ophelia says — seem to work very differently regarding sex/gender than regarding race. Rebecca Tuvel found this out to her cost. I haven’t worked out why this is.
Yes but not in the same way. It’s a weird kind of high-status identity that’s not high-status in the familiar big fast car, big house with big lawn, expensive suits sense. Or to put it another way, it’s high-status with a completely different set of people, using a completely different vocabulary and Weltanschauung.
@Ophelia:
Agreed. In nearly all societies over history being successful has brought esteem. Those who are unsuccessful in the lives are less esteemed.
Woke ideology is a weird inversion of this. Instead, being unsuccessful and claiming victimhood status conveys high status.
Suppose a black American tries hard at school, passes exams, does well, pursues a successful career, is well paid, has children in wedlock, and provides for his/her family. Is this person lauded and seen as a role model? Strangely not. They’re too successful. Indeed, the woke would be highly suspicious of such a person as being too “white”.
Compare to a black American who never holds down a job long, serves eight jail terms for a range of crimes, is involved with drugs, has children who he didn’t live with and didn’t provide for, regularly gets into confrontations with police, and then dies when resisting arrest, though some combination of a drug overdose and a knee to the neck. Such a person is a martyr elevated to sainthood. Such purity of victimhood! Such a person is high-status enough to merit statues in his honour.
Well that’s not what I meant at all, and I don’t think it’s true as a generalization. Yes the martyr posters of George Floyd are questionable but he did not deserve to be suffocated to death, and much more to the point, he doesn’t justify your wild extrapolation. Where on earth do you get that contemptuous assertion? How on earth do you know that your successful career-having good parent is not praised? Have you done a survey?
What an ugly comment.
I’m not so sure about the quality of the CBC’s research on Sainte-Marie’s ancestry. There’s nothing about her being born in the U.S. that makes it impossible for her to be indigenous, especially in part indigenous. That over her long career that began in the early 1960s she’s more strongly identified with being native is due more to how much more we’re willing to reflect on the past treatment of natives and have sought to at least acknowledge the damage that was done. In any case, in no way has Sainte-Marie dishonored her claimed roots. I’ve seen her perform and while her identity was certainly reflected in her performance, it wasn’t worn on her sleeve.
@Ophelia:
The idea of “blackness” as perpetual victimhood is all over woke, “anti-racist”, BLM/CRT rhetoric (and note that my comment was explicitly about “woke ideology ..”). Point me to anywhere where such literature lauds as aspirational the first scenario.
Don’t Glenn Loury and John McWhorter make essentially the same points as Coel, say, when they’re talking about “Omar”? It’s cultural, not anything inherent to people with black or brown skin.
@TheDude:
Indeed so. Loury and McWhorter regularly say that they are embarrassed that mainstream black culture prefers to self-identify with criminals who get in trouble with the police rather than with successful black people (of which there are many). And they’re embarrassed that mainstream black culture regards such as Kendi as the go-to intellectuals.
[Whites don’t do this, if a white person with a long criminal record gets killed by the police when resisting arrest, whites don’t “identify” with that person and so don’t much care.]
Indeed, this was written as far back as 2001: “In his controversial new book, “Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,” Professor John McWhorter maintains that contemporary black culture is stuck in a cycle of “victimology.” McWhorter believes black youth are being inhibited from attaining true equality because African-American culture since the mid-1960s has painted scholarly achievement as a “white” endeavor.”
It’s only got way worse since then.
And the upshot? McWhorter has said that his fellow black academics at Columbia pretty much ostracise him. While they often organise talks and panels to discuss being black in America, they have (he says) never once invited him to speak or be a panelist.
And that’s because he (along with Glenn Loury and others) has a track record of real intellectual achievement, unlike the professors of African American studies whose only expertise is in Critical Race Theory and wallowing in victimhood.
The point of this post was not to be yet another jumping off point for Coel to channel John McWhorter, aka a derailment.