Healing After Harm: The Buffy Sainte-Marie Investigation

A month has passed since the investigation into Buffy Sainte-Marie rocked the Indigenous community.

The CBC’s Fifth Estate aired the investigative documentary on Friday, October 27th. It cast doubts about the iconic musicians Indigenous identity. In the end the report labeled her a “Pretendian," the term used to describe people whose claims of Indigenous identity have been found false or built on distant family lineage.

The report was a bombshell and it hit the Indigenous community hard. Those with connections to Indigenous communities say the story has caused harm and division.

Today, we make space for grief: to mourn what Buffy meant in the Indigenous community, to learn why stories like this do so much harm and find out where the Indigenous-led solutions lie

to find our way forward.

Lori Campbell is using her roles as the Associate Vice-President of Indigenous Engagement at the University of Regina and as a community Aunty to keep dialogue open, and counter the negative comments and conversations that divide.

Michelle Cyca is a journalist who has been part of identity investigations in the past. She wrote an exposé for Maclean's magazine about Gina Adams, artist and former professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. But now she says she’s growing increasingly uncomfortable with the way the media – and the world – delivers and digests pretendian investigations while ignoring the bigger issues.

Shaneen Robinson is the Indigenous Music Development Coordinator at Manitoba Music.

In her industry, Indigenous music makers are coming together to talk about the pain and the solutions to the pretendian problem in the music world.