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Originally Posted by Cheese
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there is a response to the Piapot comments in the article.
n an email to The Fifth Estate, some members of the Piapot family said: “Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us.”
They said Sainte-Marie’s adoption by Emile and Clara Piapot makes her part of the Piapot First Nation and that community acceptance “holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial recordkeeping ever could.”
“Every understanding of our spiritual practices, the history our grandparents shared with us and the traditions of the Cree refute your suggestion that our Auntie Buffy is not Indigenous or a member of our community,” they wrote.
However, Teillet has a different view, saying being adopted “doesn’t make you Indigenous.”
“It simply makes you a member of that family. It’s a very serious and lovely thing that they’re bringing you into their family and that gives you lifelong familial obligations, which are serious. But it doesn’t have anything to do with whether you’re Indigenous or not.”
TallBear said it’s clear the Piapot family have long-standing personal relations with Sainte-Marie, but she agrees with Teillet that relationship doesn’t make her Indigenous.
“I don’t think anyone is probably going to disrespect their decision to continue claiming her as kin,” said TallBear.
However, she said, Sainte-Marie’s ancestry claims went well beyond her adoption by the Piapots.
“That does not contradict or make up for five decades of fabrication of one’s story of origin, one’s childhood, the disavowal of one’s biological family,” said TallBear.
If you didn't read the whole article from CBC
here are the people I quoted
Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear, a professor of Native studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a member of Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, say it’s unacceptable for non-Indigenous people to speak for Indigenous people and take honours set aside for them.
Sainte-Marie’s story fits an all-too-familiar pattern, said Métis lawyer Jean Teillet of Vancouver.
who in 2022 completed a comprehensive study called Indigenous Identity Fraud for the University of Saskatchewan.