Fake Indian celebrity exposed – Lakota Times – FilmyVoice
Though Buffy Sainte-Marie issued an announcement, explaining how she is Indigenous (however on the similar time not refuting proof she is white) it seems that Sainte-Marie is one other Italian American pretending to be Native American, such because the earlier superstar Pretendian, Iron Eyes Cody. She additionally seems to be a pretend Canadian as nicely, having been born in Massachusetts and raised in New England.
Canadian Broadcast Firm (CBC) investigative reporters uncovered her precise heritage on October 27, though way back to 1972, makes an attempt had been made by different members of Sainte-Marie’s household to tell the general public they had been white, not Native American. The query stays, how was Sainte-Marie in a position to keep and revenue from her Pretendian ruse all these years when it was really easy for investigative reporters to ferret out the reality?
In 1962, a younger Sainte-Marie went north into Canada, already a famous folks singer with compelling promise. She befriended Cree elders and reiterated to the Vancouver press in 1963 that she had ties to the Piapot First Nation and that she had been adopted by Chief Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket. This was confirmed by family members of the Cree couple however Sainte-Marie’s assertion she was born on the Cree Reserve after which adopted out to white folks as an toddler couldn’t be corroborated. What was corroborated by the CBC was that Sainte-Marie was truly born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, in 1941 to white mother and father, Albert and Winifred Santamaria. Sainte-Marie claimed her organic white mother and father had been her adoptive mother and father. Past the verification of documentation and damning testimony from family members, a DNA check confirmed that Saint-Marie’s sister was her organic sister and so Saint-Marie’s adoptive mother and father have to be her organic mother and father. The check concluded that Saint-Marie’s blood sister had “nearly no” Native DNA, the one DNA different Natives had that the sister had was foundational DNA frequent to all peoples throughout the planet. Sainte-Marie’s organic son, Sheldon Wolfchild, son of a Dakota father, has confirmed she is a “naturalized” Indigenous particular person, and isn’t Indigenous by delivery.
Probably the most disturbing side of the CBC documentary was the historical past of her household’s makes an attempt to step away from her Pretendian id. Way back to 1964, in an editorial to the Wakefield Each day Merchandise, Sainte-Marie’s paternal uncle, Arthur Santamaria, acknowledged that Buffy Sainte-Marie “has no Indian blood in her” and “not a bit” of Cree. Her brother Alan additionally tried to make clear his sister’s id in a 1972 letter to the Denver Submit, wherein he wrote: “… to affiliate her with the Indian and to just accept her as his spokesman is fallacious”.
On the set of Sesame Road in 1975, Alan’s daughter stated her father was requested by a Sesame Road producer if he was Indigenous as a result of he appeared white, and Alan knowledgeable the producer that his household was of European ancestry and had no Indigenous blood. A letter was despatched to Alan threatening authorized actions and stated: “We now have been suggested that you’ve with out provocation disparaged and maybe defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered together with her employment alternatives.”
A handwritten letter from Buffy accompanied the letter wherein she threatened to accuse her brother publicly of sexually abusing her as a toddler if he introduced up her ancestry once more.
When the details show you aren’t Indigenous, like they did with Sacheen Littlefeather, the alleged Native girl who turned down Marlon Brando’s finest actor award for the Godfather, this doesn’t imply you’ll lose assist from the Native American neighborhood. Realizing her predicament, Sainte-Marie launched an announcement addressing the Pretendian accusation: “All I can say is what I do know to be true: I do know who I really like, I do know who loves me. And I do know who claims me.”
Unable to refute the laborious proof towards her, Sainte-Marie argued that being Indigenous was “her reality,” and that no matter her precise heritage, she had the assist of the grandchildren of her adoptive Cree mother and father: “Our methods are so lovely and profoundly inclusive. Buffy is our household. We selected her and he or she selected us. We declare her as a member of our household and all of our members of the family are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds much more weight than any paper documentation or colonial report holding ever may.”
The grandchildren additionally characterised the allegations towards Sainte-Marie as being “hurtful, ignorant, colonial and racist,” though most of these main the hassle to show her as a Pretendian are Indigenous themselves, the foremost being famous Navajo journalist, Jacqueline Keeler.
Keeler has performed an enormous function in bringing to mild different notorious Pretendians like Rachel Dolezal, Ward Churchill, Rebecca Roanhorse and Sacheen Littlefeather. Earlier than these Pretendians entered the general public highlight, historical past was stuffed with earlier Pretendians. A few of these folks had the id thrust on them, others thought they had been truly Native, however it turned out later, that they had been lied to by mother and father, who maybe had been lied to by their mother and father. However the deliberate cynical try to steal Native id took middle stage first with an Englishman, Archie Belaney, who claimed to be Gray Owl, a half Apache dwelling for some weird motive in central Saskatchewan. He was fairly well-known again within the 1920’s. Parks Canada nonetheless honors the person as Canada’s first environmentalist, and it isn’t that Pretendians aren’t gifted individuals who contribute to society, they’re simply liars.
The second main Pretendian was Iron Eyes Cody. This from the APTN Investigates web site: “Iron Eyes Cody performed a Native American on tv fairly usually although he was truly Italian.
Cody is most well-known for a campy Nineteen Seventies public service announcement that has change into generally known as the ‘crying Indian’. He’s proven canoeing alongside till he portages on a rocky seashore and walks as much as a freeway stuffed with visitors the place he has trash thrown at him. As he slowly turns his head towards the digicam, a single tear streams down his face.”
What just isn’t addressed in Sainte-Marie’s harm management assertion, or from any assist from others in her assertion, is that the details point out she has been mendacity about her heritage for over a half century, and that she has benefited enormously each financially and socially, and he or she threatened members of the family with authorized motion for trying to distance themselves from her Pretendian ruse.
Whether or not Sainte-Marie dedicated against the law together with her deception just isn’t one thing with which earlier Pretendians have ever needed to contend. Fraud doesn’t appear to return into play as it’s laborious to straight tie such exercise to a sufferer, no less than, not so it may be adjudicated.
(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)
