Unraveling Buffy

As I read the news last night about the CBC (for the uninitiated, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s version of the BBC or NPR) questioning the authenticity of Buffy Sainte Marie’s Indigenous roots made me feel a type of way.

My gut screamed, “Leave this woman alone! How dare you come for an 82-year-old like this!” I mean first, it’s not like they can claim a slow news week. There’s the war between Isreal and Hamas, there’s a mass murderer at large in Maine and right here in Canada, there’s a guy who gunned down and killed his girlfriend, and his three children and shot his ex-wife before fatally shooting himself. All while having a history of domestic abuse and even a conviction for assaulting a peace officer.

But they want to come for a Canadian icon — a Canadian Indigenous icon. Is this all the CBC has to do?

Racial gatekeeping burns me, so this burned me. I’m of a mixed heritage. My father was Black. My mother was white. I am white-presenting, not passing, presenting. I don’t do anything to make people think I’m white, my face does that for me.

But that doesn’t change the facts. Out of 3 biological siblings, I got the pale skin. I also got the curly hair. You can go to any news outlet you want and try to claim I’m a liar, but family history and DNA are what they are.

I’ve been not Black enough. I’ve been not white enough. So, my gut wanted to fight for Buffy.

I’m no fan of her music, as a kid, it was too beatnik coffee house for me. I was into the pretty boys of pop, not folk music with a message.

But my mother was a HUGE fan! So Ms. Ste. Marie was always there. You’ll understand why in a bit.

I was livid at the CBC, but, as a former lawyer and also as a reasonably intelligent person, I watched the Fifth Estate broadcast for myself that called her claims of Indigenous ancestry into question.

The first thing that stood out was the birth certificate that states Beverly Santamaria was born to a white family in Massachusetts in February 1941.

Black and white documentation. Case closed.

Except, I have one too. My birth certificate lists me as the child of Reuben and Winnie, born on a hot summer day in 1971. I can assure you that those two folks, both Black, did not create me.

They did, however, adopt me. And, as was the practice at the time, a birth certificate was created to reflect the legal changes.

There are no differences between my birth certificate and my brother’s, who is their natural-born son.

And to get my original birth certificate bearing the names of my birth parents, well, I still haven’t been able to accomplish that despite knowing the names, dates, etc. It doesn't exist because my birth father wasn't listed, my birth mother's estranged husband was.

Oh, but wait, Buffy’s birth certificate called her white, born to white people. So not Indigenous.

However, my adopted mother was Black, only, not really. I have no clue about what the US did, I can only speak to Canada.

My mother was mixed too. We’re talking the mother who raised me, not my blood mother. Her dad was Black. Her mother was not. Her mother was a Mi'kmaq woman, on the Francis line.

But back in the day, if an Indigenous woman married a non-Indigenous man, she was stripped of her heritage, her lineage, and her status. I have the census records that show my adoptive grandmother as an Indigenous child and later, a Black woman.

I am entitled to Indigenous status in Canada and I have, literally 1 percent blood. But by adoption, I can reasonably claim to be part of a specific Nova Scotia nation.

So none of this persuades me.

But her story changed over the years.

Yeah, so did mine.

Here’s the thing, when you’re born on the wrong side of the blanket or the wrong side of the racial divide, there are stories. We’re fed a narrative and that narrative changes depending on who happens to be telling the story. I’ve been told more than a dozen stories about my life, a life that’s been buried under layer upon layer of secrets, lies, half-truths, and cover-ups. Some of them, I was able to resolve, others will remain a mystery. As a result of that, my own origin story, as told by me, changed over time.

Add all that to the time period we’re dealing with. Buffy was born in 1941. It was a time when family secrets and lies were much more common than you’d think, especially when it came to things that were considered taboo at the time, infidelity, race, and premarital sex.

People passed adopted children and their grandchildren off as their own offspring. My own grandparents did it. They covered up my aunt’s teenage pregnancy by a white man and just passed the baby off as another one of their children. Nobody knew but the kids who were old enough to understand at the time and they weren’t talking.

I didn’t even know until my father let it slip.

My birth mother had 4 children including me. Every document I’ve ever seen said she had 3, even her obituary. Nope, not 3, 4 and the only way I found out is because of a chance encounter that my father had with her ex-husband.

I know of several instances in which babies who were the product of an affair with a person of another race were just folded into the family like nothing ever happened. And when someone asks why little Johnny or Jenny appears to be darker, lighter, or to have some other racialized feature, it’s either deny, deny, deny, or invent a plausible story about an ancestor “fitting the description.”

I don’t know Buffy Sainte Marie. I know she’s a brilliant singer, songwriter, and a Canadian icon. But I don’t know her personally. I can’t attest to her lineage.

All I can say is the CBC investigation was compelling. They presented a lot of evidence.

However, as a mixed-race, adopted person, I can also say definitively from personal experience that the paper trail doesn’t always tell the tale. My paper trail says I’m Black and entitled to membership in a particular Indigenous nation. I’m mixed-race and my attachment to the tribe is an incident of legalities and not blood. But to look at it through documents, you wouldn’t know that.

To hear the family stories, on both sides, you'd get certain ideas about me and where I came from, none of them accurate.

That’s my point.

I want Buffy to be for real. I’m over here defending her. I know there’s more to her story, just like there’s more to mine.

If she’s misappropriated Indigenous roots for profit for all these decades, I will be devastated. And I will call her out without mercy should that be proven to be the case.

But right now, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt because I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. Race, adoption, and records are complicated. Families are complicated. The paperwork never tells the full story. And the people involved sometimes don’t either. There’s just too much uncertainty, too many layers of nuance, and too many unanswered questions to say case closed in 44 minutes.

My gut tells me she wasn’t and isn’t intentionally misleading anyone. I guess we’ll see.