Harmeet Kaur, "Buffy Sainte-Marie is the latest public figure accused of being a ‘Pretendian.’ Here’s why that matters" https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/entertainment/buffy-sainte-marie-cbc-indigenous-questions-cec/index.html

« Sainte-Marie’s case and other instances where people have been accused of Indigenous identity fraud strike a nerve partly because those at the center of such controversies have often benefited from the claim.

Sainte-Marie has been celebrated as an Indigenous icon and won awards as such. In light of the CBC’s investigation, the Indigenous Women’s Collective is calling on the Junos Awards Committee to rescind her 2018 honor for Indigenous album of the year. [...]

The Indigenous Women’s Collective also condemned Sainte-Marie for what they called her appropriation of the trauma that many Indigenous people have experienced. [...]

The “pretendian” problem is bigger than any one individual. A 2022 report by Métis lawyer Jean Teillet for the University of Saskatchewan suggests that tens of thousands of people in Canada are pretending to be Indigenous, and that the number is growing.

[Kim] TallBear [professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta] said she hopes that the CBC’s investigation into Sainte-Marie and similar cases in recent years will prompt institutions to more thoroughly vet claims of Indigeneity, rather than taking people at their word.

“Now what we really need to do is at universities, different professional organizations, go beyond self-identification. You can’t just check a box. You have to provide some sort of testimony or documentary proof that you have citizenship in or kinship relations with a First Nation or a tribe,” she said. »

#indigeneity #indigenous #pretendians