BUFFY THE TRUTH SLAYER

I would have taken her for a cowgirl.

 One of the mainstays of the Newport Folk Festival during the 1960s was the
annual appearance of Buffy Ste.-Marie, the young woman who held up her Canadian indigeneity with pride. 

Two years ago, the legend of Buffy Ste.-Marie collapsed like a teepee in a tornado. A Canadian news program discovered her birth certificate. She was, it was revealed, a white woman named Beverly Jean Santamaria, born in Stoneham, Massachusetts. After a two-year investigation, she was recently stripped of the highest civilian award her alleged home country could offer, the Order of Canada. I was shocked -- I thought the biggest order of Canada was the Saskatoon Berry Pie.

While crying over pollution, Iron Eyes
Cody was laughing all the way to
the bank.

And so Beverly Jean Santamaria joins Mary Louise Cruz  (a/k/a Sacheen Littlefeather and of Latino heritage), the Sicilian-born Espera Oscar de Corti (a/k/a Iron Eyes Cody), Rachel Dolezal (ofay who also claimed to be part black and Native Alaskan to boot), Johnny Depp (former pretty boy-turned-bloated wino), and Elizabeth Warren (remember "Lie-awhatha"?) who jumped on the "Pretendian" bandwagon in order to further their careers. 

Buffy's favorite song.

This could be considered this progress. I mean, after so many years of American Indians being looked down upon, it's become downright cool to lie about being a Native American. Or, in Buffy's case, Native Canadian, despite having the whitest first name in history. She claimed to have been taken from her "real" tribe as a child and adopted by an American family. This practice, known as the Sixties Scoop, should make the Canadian government fermer la bouche when it comes to criticizing our history in dealing with our first residents. 

Buffy claims not to know when she was born or to which tribe. Or as she puts it without a trace of irony, "I have always struggled to answer questions who I am."  Maybe she should read her bio on the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame website, which says, “Born into a Cree family on the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan in 1941, Beverly Sainte-Marie was raised by relatives in the Eastern USA.” What the bio doesn't mention is that she allegedly threatened the Santamaria family to keep quiet when she started out in show business. If anyone wants to remake Imitation of Life, you've got your story right here.

It's a long way from the Cree Nation  the
suburbs of Boston to the stage of the
Dorothy Chandler Pavillion.

Despite the controversy, boomers like me won't stop listening to Donovan's recording of her composition "Universal Soldier." Nor will the Academy of Motion Picture Arts demand the return of her 1983 Best Song Oscar for "Up Here Where We Belong" -- she and her co-writers got the award for its schmaltz, not anybody's heritage. 

 And, in a lengthy statement, the leaders of the Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation have announced they "unanimously stand by Buffy Sainte-Marie as an ally and advocate for the Sixties Scoop Survivor constituents of the Foundation, whether or not she is herself an actual Sixties Scoop Survivor."  Which is easier than saying, "We don't want to cause any more trouble than she has already." 

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Kids these days are also trying to pass themselves off as Korean, as I detail here.