Ersatz Indian
Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2023 1:10 am
Douglas Mercer
November 20 2023
As far as we know so called Buffy Saint-Marie never beat her kids, lived off the government or drank herself silly with whiskey which should have been the first tip off that she was White like us. And now the “lady” who played red face got caught red handed as a liar and a cheat---and a rank opportunist. Listen to her wobbly warbling for a few seconds and you see that putting on that squaw headdress and adorning her hair with multi-colored extensions all those years ago is the only reason she vaulted to fame. Though you have to question how famous she is if I had never heard of her until five minutes ago. She certainly didn’t hit the big time (such as it is in her case) on the strength of her talent or her looks. But now the ersatz Indian has been unmasked as a White girl, now she’s an erstwhile Indian. Stop the presses amidst the gnashing of teeth! For of course the news is said to have rocked the First Nations of Canada. They have not been this downcast since those unmarked graves turned out to be as empty as a nigger’s promise. You see one of their own is not one of their own anymore but is just a White girl from New England. And is there anything more evil than that?
“Folk singer and social justice advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie has denied allegations that she misled the public about her Indigenous ancestry, after a Canadian documentary questioned the shifting narrative surrounding her Cree roots. On Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published an investigation into the singer’s ancestry, alleging her life story is part of a broader narrative full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies.”
You ever wonder how all the best Indians are White? I’ll caveat that “best” to the hilt for I mean “best” in relative terms. But what bona fide Indian ever did a thing worth noting even in passing? Answer: none. So even the modest (very modest) accomplishment of the Indians are performed by White folk who go red. There was that artist who did those big collages who got niche fame but she turned out to be White. That Indian who cried about the trash—he was White. And unbeknownst to me until the day before yesterday this Saint-Marie creature got a taste of fame in the sixties as one of those singer songwriters who in the long run did us such enormous harm. But it turns out she was White too. From the reactions you can tell that this was a big one, she was their idol and their beau ideal in moccasins, the squaw who had some minor hits and hobnobbed with Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. The way they cried about this one you’d have thought they just had their teeth pulled with a rusty pair of pliers—that is it went straight to their hearts. And now they have to live in a world where their great champion and heroine is a two-bit hustler who still won’t come clean. But as they say they’ll live. It will be meager living as all Indian life is, but then that was destined to be their lot all along. All the Buffy Saint-Maires of the world ever did was give them delusion of mattering.
“Allegations in a documentary (October 2023) that the popular American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie misrepresented her Indigenous roots have rattled First Nations communities in Canada, where she claims to have been born, highlighting the complex legacy of an artist whose decades-long career is defined by advocating for Indigenous rights. Sainte-Marie describes herself as a Cree singer-songwriter has long traced her identity to the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, where she claims she was born in 1941. Sainte-Marie says she was taken from her biological mother when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US.”
Imagine being “rattled” by this totally inconsequential story. Its only consequence is that it shows how times have changed. Time was in this world when it was the coloreds who desperately wanted to pass as White—that was the ticket to success and glory. But round about the time this nonentity discovered her fake roots things were turning on a dime. By the time Buffy came around being an Indian was the passport to fame, and as time wore on even more so. Claiming to be Indian gets you noticed, gets you legs up, gets you money, gets you tenure, gets you into the inner circle—but being White puts you on the outs. No doubt this White woman was so ideologically turned around and brainwashed that she genuinely found an elective affinity with the Amerindians. But you can be sure too that it did not take her long to figure out that “being an Indian” got her noticed and commented on and that it was a meal ticket. And now it has all ended in tears and recriminations. So sad as has been said.
“Sainte-Marie’s website describes herself as a Cree singer-songwriter who is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan. She was reportedly taken from her biological parents when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US. The singer has previously said that a hospital fire destroyed her birth record.”
The old dog ate my birth certificate routine—if you’ve heard that one once you’ve heard it a million times, eh? Believe to be, reportedly taken—this is mealy mouthed nonsense. First off they’ve found the birth certificate and it’s authenticated by the registrar, no demon fascist went in and planted it in order to embarrass the first nations. Hell, Wikipedia (no right-wing conspiracy site) straightforwardly says she was born in Massachusetts “to” her White parents. Case closed. She was not adopted, the only one who said she was born on the reserve was Buffy herself, she is the one who reported it. Here’s what happened folks: she traveled to Piapot as a young squaw in waiting and became enamored of them and saw the main chance and told a world class fib and managed to buffalo the world for half a century and more. But a tangled web you weave—and now it is coming unraveled frayed ends and all before her mortified eyes. She’s feinting that the truth might be the truth but can’t come clean just yet. For people to know the truth is one thing but to hear their idol say it full stop is too much to bear.
“The CBC, citing interviews with Sainte-Marie’s family and a birth certificate, suggests there is evidence she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and has no Indigenous ancestry. She wasn’t born in Canada. She’s clearly born in the United States, Heidi St. Marie, daughter of Sainte-Marie’s older brother, Alan, told the CBC. She’s clearly not Indigenous or Native American. Saint-Marie said in response: I have always struggled to answer questions about who I am. Through that research what became clear, and what I’ve always been honest about, is that I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents were, and I will never know. As adopted children, we don’t even know when our birthday is, she said. You spend your entire life asking questions you can’t answer.”
Poor her! She may not drink whiskey, beat her kids, or live off the government but this is one trumped up Indian who lies like a nigger. There is no struggle, there is no anguish, that is just a sorry plea for sympathy. She knows the truth. She knows she’s not adopted and she knows the world knows it’s true. That is she’s red faced and she can no longer be considered a part of the world of the red man. And the questions can be answered except by her who built her identify on a transparent pack of lies and is digging herself deeper into the hole instead of once and for all walking honestly and shamefacedly out.
“Sainte-Marie has told media outlets she was eventually reunited with her relatives at the Piapot First Nation and adopted by the Piapot family. My Cree name is Piyasees Kanikamut, which means Singing Bird. I’m a recognized member of the reservation now. Members of the Piapot family said Thursday that questions over Sainte-Marie’s ancestry were hurtful, ignorant, colonial – and racist.”
Ouch! Colonial and racist. I’ve never heard that one before. Don’t question the squaw you bigot, just acquiesce in the lies and move slowly on. Anything other than that and you are no better than those settler racists who dumped those non-existent brown kids in those forever empty tombs.
“No one, including Canada and its governments, the Indian Act, institutions, media or any person anywhere can deny our family’s inherent right to determine who is a member of our family and community, Debra and Ntawnis Piapot said in a statement. Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could. Buffy has lived her life as an Indigenous woman, and as such, has experienced all of the lived experience that goes along with it- the good and the painful. What is gained by targeting her at this age? wrote Robyn Michaud, an Indigenous studies professor at Conestoga College. My heart hurts.”
Not since the Sand Creek Massacre and not since we put the finishing touches on wresting the continent from them have they been so dejected and crestfallen. Documents are racist, stamps on the document are racist. The funny thing is that some registrar in Massachusetts in 1941 was not some pike helmeted officer in India for crying out loud. It was just some man putting in a decent day’s work, punctiliously doing his job, recording some fact, placing the stamp on all in a good’s day’s work. But what is the clean and meticulous record keeping compared to their subjective reveries and existential and experiential truth----which is another name for license to lie and not be questioned about it. The Piapot say she’s a Piapot---born if not bred red but fortuitously returned to the ancestral fold due to the wisdom of the Great Spirit. It’s their dream truth, it’s their rain dance truth, it’s their Indian truth—so stick it pale face with your files and your records. The Race and Settlement office in Germany had files and record too after all and look what they did.
“The report left communities in disbelief and threatens to tarnish Sainte-Marie’s reputation as a cultural icon who fought tirelessly for social justice movements during a career in which she won an Oscar, numerous industry accolades and four honorary doctorates from Canadian universities. Delia Opekokew, Sainte-Marie’s former lawyer, who is Cree, has disputed the claims and recently signed an affidavit that concludes Sainte-Marie was probably born in Saskatchewan in a private home and soon after was given up for adoption to an American family visiting the area.”
“As an Indigenous woman in the 1960s, I tried to walk proudly, but we faced so much racism and sexism. And so I kept my head down. But when I first heard Buffy sing my heart just erupted with joy. I cried, she said. What she sang was so heartfelt. It showed respect for the dignity of Indigenous people. It gave me dignity. And so I raised my head.”
“To underpin her research, Opekokew, the first Indigenous woman admitted to the bar in Ontario and Saskatchewan, conducted multiple interviews in Cree and in English more than two decades ago, including with Emile and Clara Piapot, the couple who adopted Sainte-Marie as an adult into their family under Cree traditional law. She criticized what she called the CBC’s voyeuristic journalism that she said had failed to include the importance of oral history and Cree traditions. The CBC did not speak to me as the witness to the oral history. I spoke to the elders and oral history is just as important as written records. And for the purposes of Indigenous history, it’s often more important. They lacked that sense of respect for our way of keeping our history, she said. And I just feel awful about that. I feel awful for Buffy and all those in the community that support her.”
Flaubert said that we should not mistreat our idols because the gilt comes off on our hands. The guilt too. And as picayune as this faux squaw seems to us in the small pond of the Indians she’s a giant among pygmies. This is not some doofus Indian novelist who writes books about going back to the woods in face paint few read and no one likes, this isn’t the wigwam professor boring the pants off people with the ten billionth rendition of the trail of tears, this isn’t some rinky dink art maven stitching tomahawks to look like tears, no this here is a superstar. Did I mention she hung with the likes of Stevie Nicks? No, the Indians are the brand new up and coming darlings of the age and they take those land acknowledgments and those First Nations bumper stickers on the beat-up old Volvos damn seriously. And they say jaws dropped and the earth shook when the big cheese big Chief Squaw was transformed by the evil colonialists into the pretendian’s pretendian, the pretendian to out pretendian all prentendians---that is a big heap liar. And that’s got to hurt. In fact they say the rain dances now bring now rain and the Navajo are no longer sky walking but are skulking along low to the ground, the Apache no longer muster up war whoops but let out pip squeak yelps, and the formerly brave Sioux are no longer circling the settlement because they are hanging their heads in their hands in shame.
November 20 2023
As far as we know so called Buffy Saint-Marie never beat her kids, lived off the government or drank herself silly with whiskey which should have been the first tip off that she was White like us. And now the “lady” who played red face got caught red handed as a liar and a cheat---and a rank opportunist. Listen to her wobbly warbling for a few seconds and you see that putting on that squaw headdress and adorning her hair with multi-colored extensions all those years ago is the only reason she vaulted to fame. Though you have to question how famous she is if I had never heard of her until five minutes ago. She certainly didn’t hit the big time (such as it is in her case) on the strength of her talent or her looks. But now the ersatz Indian has been unmasked as a White girl, now she’s an erstwhile Indian. Stop the presses amidst the gnashing of teeth! For of course the news is said to have rocked the First Nations of Canada. They have not been this downcast since those unmarked graves turned out to be as empty as a nigger’s promise. You see one of their own is not one of their own anymore but is just a White girl from New England. And is there anything more evil than that?
“Folk singer and social justice advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie has denied allegations that she misled the public about her Indigenous ancestry, after a Canadian documentary questioned the shifting narrative surrounding her Cree roots. On Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published an investigation into the singer’s ancestry, alleging her life story is part of a broader narrative full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies.”
You ever wonder how all the best Indians are White? I’ll caveat that “best” to the hilt for I mean “best” in relative terms. But what bona fide Indian ever did a thing worth noting even in passing? Answer: none. So even the modest (very modest) accomplishment of the Indians are performed by White folk who go red. There was that artist who did those big collages who got niche fame but she turned out to be White. That Indian who cried about the trash—he was White. And unbeknownst to me until the day before yesterday this Saint-Marie creature got a taste of fame in the sixties as one of those singer songwriters who in the long run did us such enormous harm. But it turns out she was White too. From the reactions you can tell that this was a big one, she was their idol and their beau ideal in moccasins, the squaw who had some minor hits and hobnobbed with Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. The way they cried about this one you’d have thought they just had their teeth pulled with a rusty pair of pliers—that is it went straight to their hearts. And now they have to live in a world where their great champion and heroine is a two-bit hustler who still won’t come clean. But as they say they’ll live. It will be meager living as all Indian life is, but then that was destined to be their lot all along. All the Buffy Saint-Maires of the world ever did was give them delusion of mattering.
“Allegations in a documentary (October 2023) that the popular American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie misrepresented her Indigenous roots have rattled First Nations communities in Canada, where she claims to have been born, highlighting the complex legacy of an artist whose decades-long career is defined by advocating for Indigenous rights. Sainte-Marie describes herself as a Cree singer-songwriter has long traced her identity to the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, where she claims she was born in 1941. Sainte-Marie says she was taken from her biological mother when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US.”
Imagine being “rattled” by this totally inconsequential story. Its only consequence is that it shows how times have changed. Time was in this world when it was the coloreds who desperately wanted to pass as White—that was the ticket to success and glory. But round about the time this nonentity discovered her fake roots things were turning on a dime. By the time Buffy came around being an Indian was the passport to fame, and as time wore on even more so. Claiming to be Indian gets you noticed, gets you legs up, gets you money, gets you tenure, gets you into the inner circle—but being White puts you on the outs. No doubt this White woman was so ideologically turned around and brainwashed that she genuinely found an elective affinity with the Amerindians. But you can be sure too that it did not take her long to figure out that “being an Indian” got her noticed and commented on and that it was a meal ticket. And now it has all ended in tears and recriminations. So sad as has been said.
“Sainte-Marie’s website describes herself as a Cree singer-songwriter who is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan. She was reportedly taken from her biological parents when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US. The singer has previously said that a hospital fire destroyed her birth record.”
The old dog ate my birth certificate routine—if you’ve heard that one once you’ve heard it a million times, eh? Believe to be, reportedly taken—this is mealy mouthed nonsense. First off they’ve found the birth certificate and it’s authenticated by the registrar, no demon fascist went in and planted it in order to embarrass the first nations. Hell, Wikipedia (no right-wing conspiracy site) straightforwardly says she was born in Massachusetts “to” her White parents. Case closed. She was not adopted, the only one who said she was born on the reserve was Buffy herself, she is the one who reported it. Here’s what happened folks: she traveled to Piapot as a young squaw in waiting and became enamored of them and saw the main chance and told a world class fib and managed to buffalo the world for half a century and more. But a tangled web you weave—and now it is coming unraveled frayed ends and all before her mortified eyes. She’s feinting that the truth might be the truth but can’t come clean just yet. For people to know the truth is one thing but to hear their idol say it full stop is too much to bear.
“The CBC, citing interviews with Sainte-Marie’s family and a birth certificate, suggests there is evidence she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and has no Indigenous ancestry. She wasn’t born in Canada. She’s clearly born in the United States, Heidi St. Marie, daughter of Sainte-Marie’s older brother, Alan, told the CBC. She’s clearly not Indigenous or Native American. Saint-Marie said in response: I have always struggled to answer questions about who I am. Through that research what became clear, and what I’ve always been honest about, is that I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents were, and I will never know. As adopted children, we don’t even know when our birthday is, she said. You spend your entire life asking questions you can’t answer.”
Poor her! She may not drink whiskey, beat her kids, or live off the government but this is one trumped up Indian who lies like a nigger. There is no struggle, there is no anguish, that is just a sorry plea for sympathy. She knows the truth. She knows she’s not adopted and she knows the world knows it’s true. That is she’s red faced and she can no longer be considered a part of the world of the red man. And the questions can be answered except by her who built her identify on a transparent pack of lies and is digging herself deeper into the hole instead of once and for all walking honestly and shamefacedly out.
“Sainte-Marie has told media outlets she was eventually reunited with her relatives at the Piapot First Nation and adopted by the Piapot family. My Cree name is Piyasees Kanikamut, which means Singing Bird. I’m a recognized member of the reservation now. Members of the Piapot family said Thursday that questions over Sainte-Marie’s ancestry were hurtful, ignorant, colonial – and racist.”
Ouch! Colonial and racist. I’ve never heard that one before. Don’t question the squaw you bigot, just acquiesce in the lies and move slowly on. Anything other than that and you are no better than those settler racists who dumped those non-existent brown kids in those forever empty tombs.
“No one, including Canada and its governments, the Indian Act, institutions, media or any person anywhere can deny our family’s inherent right to determine who is a member of our family and community, Debra and Ntawnis Piapot said in a statement. Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could. Buffy has lived her life as an Indigenous woman, and as such, has experienced all of the lived experience that goes along with it- the good and the painful. What is gained by targeting her at this age? wrote Robyn Michaud, an Indigenous studies professor at Conestoga College. My heart hurts.”
Not since the Sand Creek Massacre and not since we put the finishing touches on wresting the continent from them have they been so dejected and crestfallen. Documents are racist, stamps on the document are racist. The funny thing is that some registrar in Massachusetts in 1941 was not some pike helmeted officer in India for crying out loud. It was just some man putting in a decent day’s work, punctiliously doing his job, recording some fact, placing the stamp on all in a good’s day’s work. But what is the clean and meticulous record keeping compared to their subjective reveries and existential and experiential truth----which is another name for license to lie and not be questioned about it. The Piapot say she’s a Piapot---born if not bred red but fortuitously returned to the ancestral fold due to the wisdom of the Great Spirit. It’s their dream truth, it’s their rain dance truth, it’s their Indian truth—so stick it pale face with your files and your records. The Race and Settlement office in Germany had files and record too after all and look what they did.
“The report left communities in disbelief and threatens to tarnish Sainte-Marie’s reputation as a cultural icon who fought tirelessly for social justice movements during a career in which she won an Oscar, numerous industry accolades and four honorary doctorates from Canadian universities. Delia Opekokew, Sainte-Marie’s former lawyer, who is Cree, has disputed the claims and recently signed an affidavit that concludes Sainte-Marie was probably born in Saskatchewan in a private home and soon after was given up for adoption to an American family visiting the area.”
“As an Indigenous woman in the 1960s, I tried to walk proudly, but we faced so much racism and sexism. And so I kept my head down. But when I first heard Buffy sing my heart just erupted with joy. I cried, she said. What she sang was so heartfelt. It showed respect for the dignity of Indigenous people. It gave me dignity. And so I raised my head.”
“To underpin her research, Opekokew, the first Indigenous woman admitted to the bar in Ontario and Saskatchewan, conducted multiple interviews in Cree and in English more than two decades ago, including with Emile and Clara Piapot, the couple who adopted Sainte-Marie as an adult into their family under Cree traditional law. She criticized what she called the CBC’s voyeuristic journalism that she said had failed to include the importance of oral history and Cree traditions. The CBC did not speak to me as the witness to the oral history. I spoke to the elders and oral history is just as important as written records. And for the purposes of Indigenous history, it’s often more important. They lacked that sense of respect for our way of keeping our history, she said. And I just feel awful about that. I feel awful for Buffy and all those in the community that support her.”
Flaubert said that we should not mistreat our idols because the gilt comes off on our hands. The guilt too. And as picayune as this faux squaw seems to us in the small pond of the Indians she’s a giant among pygmies. This is not some doofus Indian novelist who writes books about going back to the woods in face paint few read and no one likes, this isn’t the wigwam professor boring the pants off people with the ten billionth rendition of the trail of tears, this isn’t some rinky dink art maven stitching tomahawks to look like tears, no this here is a superstar. Did I mention she hung with the likes of Stevie Nicks? No, the Indians are the brand new up and coming darlings of the age and they take those land acknowledgments and those First Nations bumper stickers on the beat-up old Volvos damn seriously. And they say jaws dropped and the earth shook when the big cheese big Chief Squaw was transformed by the evil colonialists into the pretendian’s pretendian, the pretendian to out pretendian all prentendians---that is a big heap liar. And that’s got to hurt. In fact they say the rain dances now bring now rain and the Navajo are no longer sky walking but are skulking along low to the ground, the Apache no longer muster up war whoops but let out pip squeak yelps, and the formerly brave Sioux are no longer circling the settlement because they are hanging their heads in their hands in shame.
