I think she's always had a darker skin complexion which isn't uncommon with Italian heritage.
This all reminds me of Espera Oscar DeCorti, aka Iron Eyes Cody, known as "The Crying Indian" from that famous anti-pollution campaign in the seventies. Guy made a career of playing indigenous characters but was Sicilian with absolutely no Native American ancestry.
Thanks, Sopranos.
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Nothing to be gained? There was a renewed interest in all things native in the 60s, the CBC article itself reminds the reader of the hippies and how they loved all that stuff. Without a doubt it started as a little white lie in an interview and when she noticed it was gaining her attention she went it and eventually went full on lunatic, pathological liar. It's show business and this was her angle, her schtick.
These types of stories are incredible, I'm fascinated by the massive amount of bull#### they tell and how stressful it must be to keep track of it.
Her career started in the early sixties, I don't think there was any benefit and a vast downside to claiming native heritage in 1963 or 4 when she was establishing herself, maybe if we were talking the late 60's I could see it but not in 63
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Alright, sure. Let's go under the premise that she decided to construct an elaborate plan to present herself as a different race to make succeeding in the music industry more challenging just for the hell of it. Because it's always been very easy to become popular and set yourself apart from other performers and ask for thousands in appearance fees and hundreds of thousands over decades. What an incredible feat!
She's a lunatic and one of the most profilic liars in the history of the music business but she's not that stupid.
Alright, sure. Let's go under the premise that she decided to construct an elaborate plan to present herself as a different race to make succeeding in the music industry more challenging just for the hell of it. Because it's always been very easy to become popular and set yourself apart from other performers and ask for thousands in appearance fees and hundreds of thousands over decades. What an incredible feat!
She's a lunatic and one of the most profilic liars in the history of the music business but she's not that stupid.
I suspect she perhaps had some interest in Native American culture, or maybe got started just wearing beads and stuff that she liked. Maybe some people started referring to her as the "Indian singer" and her talent was enough that she overcame that. Remember, she still had the benefit of living in a white American family with none of the challenges an actual Indigenous person would face(and lets be realistic, you think she was actually thinking of the racial challenges of entering the music biz?). So she noticed she was getting more attention and embraced the look more. Once that train is rolling, you aren't going to jump off and risk it tanking your popularity, so she ran with it.
I haven't seen the documentary yet, that's just one way I could imagine it playing out.
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I think she's always had a darker skin complexion which isn't uncommon with Italian heritage.
She has a very brown/orange tone to her skin. It's possible it's natural, but also looks like what you get from using an artificial toner.
I'd like to give her some benefit on the doubt here, but there also seems to be some flat out lies about where she was born, who her parents were, being taken away from her parents, etc...
I suspect she perhaps had some interest in Native American culture, or maybe got started just wearing beads and stuff that she liked. Maybe some people started referring to her as the "Indian singer" and her talent was enough that she overcame that. Remember, she still had the benefit of living in a white American family with none of the challenges an actual Indigenous person would face(and lets be realistic, you think she was actually thinking of the racial challenges of entering the music biz?). So she noticed she was getting more attention and embraced the look more. Once that train is rolling, you aren't going to jump off and risk it tanking your popularity, so she ran with it.
I haven't seen the documentary yet, that's just one way I could imagine it playing out.
Maybe you guys need to go chat with a native person in their 80's or 90's about life in Canada in the early sixties, how utterly despised they were, no one in their right mind would claim native roots as a career move prior to the late sixties and even then it wasn't in any way going to make you richer, by the nature of my work I have spent a lot of time around older native people, life as a native here in the 60's was no different than being black in South Africa.
Skip, a lady I worked with who was on parole for murder in her late 60's, she'd been in jail since 1965 when she had stabbed to death a guy who raped her in a rooming house in the DTES, he passed out and she used his knife that he had held her down with to stab him, but he was white and she was native and she did 25 years in jail
Robbie Robertson never mentioned his roots until the 70's I quote
'In the 1998 film Robertson said he couldn't tell people he was First Nations early in his career because there weren't a lot of Indigenous musicians.
But Bomberry said once Robertson started telling people about his identity, it was empowering for musicians in Six Nations.'
"I never talked about my heritage much," Robertson told an interviewer in 2017 while promoting the publication of his memoir "Testimony." His mother was Indigenous, having spent her childhood years on a Six Nations Reserve outside of Toronto. She told her son, "Be proud that you're an Indian, but be careful who you tell." Having spent time in a school – not a residential one, but still oppressive – that tried to "take the Indian out of the Indian," Robertson's mother was painfully aware of the threat of racism. She indicated to Robertson that outwardly expressing his Indigenous ancestry would invite hatred, harassment and eventually lead to his exclusion from institutions and networks crucial to mainstream success.
I have no idea if Sainte-Marie is native or not but I do not doubt for one minute she claimed she was native because she believed it, there was no upside to being native and almost all native Canadians that could hid their roots back in the 60's, just so we're clear how exactly is she using her fake native heritage here singing in '64? if you can accuse her of anything it's a shameless cop of Joan Baez's look
Last edited by afc wimbledon; 10-31-2023 at 02:45 AM.
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Maybe you guys need to go chat with a native person in their 80's or 90's about life in Canada in the early sixties, how utterly despised they were, no one in their right mind would claim native roots as a career move prior to the late sixties and even then it wasn't in any way going to make you richer, by the nature of my work I have spent a lot of time around older native people, life as a native here in the 60's was no different than being black in South Africa.
So your argument is "But there was racism!"
We know. Everyone knows that native people were and still are treated terrible and subject to racism. What Buffy did was pure cultural appropriation during a time time in the 60s when there was a renewed interest in all things native and it absolutely helped her career.
There likely wasn't such a peak in interest in North American natives since Buffalo Bill toured England with the Wild West Show in the early 1900s. She was not a criminal or rough looking native as you are apparently so familiar with, she was a white person presenting a sanitized version of an "indian girl" singer. It was how she marketed herself, might not have been her plan from the start but she went with it and started fabricating a story and telling lies because it got her attention and a career.
What other reason would she have to tell such elaborate lies over decades, and threaten people? Because she liked beads?
She also wasn't pretending to be indigenous in Canada when she got started. I have no idea how they were treated where she was, but it's not beyond possibility it was different for her. I mean, obviously it was, it worked. If it hadn't she wouldn't have kept it up. So I don't really buy AFC's argument.
Given the threats to her brother, there is just no possible way I can buy the story she didn't know what she was doing and thought she was adopted. It makes no sense, and she's not offered any explanation other than saying it is "her truth". Well her truth is clearly a lie.
Hopefully your browser can translate to english, or you're bilingual. Basically describes how real indigenous artists failed to win accolades in the shadow of Buffy and have fallen upon hard times.
The whole situation reminds me Sacheen Littlefeather, the woman Marlon Brando had representing him during the 1973 Oscars to protest the treatment of native Americans. According to her family, she also fabricated her native ancestry (her family was European/Mexican).
There's no doubt that life in the 60/70s was rough for your typical indigenous person (not that things are perfect now), but the timeframe does coincide with increased public attention of native issues, and thus the inevitable pretendians. Some people just love attention, even if means taking it from actual victims. Add in the self-absorbed personalities of many actors or performers, and it's even less of a surprise that they continue it once it gains traction and feeds their ego.
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