this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
49 points (91.5% liked)

Canada

7210 readers
290 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Universities


💵 Finance / Shopping


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Indigenous icon Buffy Sainte-Marie's identity was brought into question by a CBC investigation, her Piapot family says the accusations are "ignorant, colonial -- and racist."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'm not even disagreeing with you tbh.
My initial comment was poorly worded, I'm just tired of the fourth estate pulling their punches when it comes to bigger issues.

The world's going to shit because we let megacorps and rich fucks steal from the people.
This story is more than a distraction, but it's also a distraction.
While we argue about whose blood should have been worthy to receive whatever grant money scraps, we're not paying attention to the class war that robs infinitely more wealth from every community.

On this story? Her tribe claims her as their own.
She should probably give money back to support other indigenous artists if she's not doing that already.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I guess were in at least partial agreement. I do think that this story would have been better if the class warfare had been more explicitly called out. As it stands, it's about one person's bad behaviour, leave the class struggle as a secondary character.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The things that's unclear to me still is if she even knew about it from early on.
Like... I know where I was born but only from what I've been told, as I have no memory of that time.
Reality could be much different than my understanding of it.

From what I understand, she was still raised by indigenousparents from that tribe, she still grew up on a reserve with most of the difficulties associated with it. She's been an activist of indigenous issues for longer than most people on lemmy have been alive.
She still grew up in her tribe's culture and as such I think her art is still representative of indigenous roots. If anything, it highlights that the hardships of indigenous people aren't coming from their blood, which would be racist nonsense, but from the shitty position the rest of our society puts them in.

I understand how an actual indigenous artist might be angry in some sort of lost opportunitykind of way, but I also understand that her family must feel really fucking insulted.

What's the next step? Requiring DNA testing before giving grants money to indigenous artist doesn't seem like a positive to me and I'm fine with indigenous people doing their own gatekeeping into who's one of theirs instead of some bureaucrat somewhere.

Supporting more indigenous artists shouldn't require burning down what she's done.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My understanding is that she was raised in a non-indingenous household in a non-indingenous community from birth through high school and was claiming Indigenous heritage before she was ever adopted into the community of which is now a member.

To me, her marriage certificate says it all. It is a clear and direct refutation of her public claims to ignorance or confusion. Not because she was telling a different story for a different purpose, but because she was acknowledging the reality of her upbringing.

I'm reluctant to suggest that DNA testing is required. Many of the indigenous peoples of at least North America have a long and well documented practice of adopting even adults and former enemies into their families and communities as full fledged members with all the associated privileges, rights, and responsibilities.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)