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.”
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.”
Ultimately, this is about who gets to police Indigenous identity, and regardless of whether the answer to that is “each tribe can decide its own membership” or “some significant number of Indigenous people have to agree”, it’s obvious that the correct answer is not “the government established established by European colonists decides” or “the news media decides”. The people involved need to argue it out. The opinions of those of us who aren’t Indigenous or claiming to be really aren’t important.
The answer is obviously the government because they are the ones with the resources to do so
I think your average First Nation can scrape together enough bureacracy to keep track of a few thousand members. Most of them aren’t huge groups.
But the average First Nation isn’t going to have the resources to enforce that Canada wide
Why does there need to be a single Canada-wide definition? We’re not talking about “who gets a government-issued status card” here—people can be unambiguously Indigenous and still not have one of those. We’re talking about who can stand up in a public venue and say “I’m Indigenous” without causing a scandal, and who gets to decide that.
What’s to stop someone from doing that
The fact that no single individual can control the “scandal” part.
I mean, what’s to stop anyone from claiming ancestry
How can people in Iqaluit monitor those claiming their status in Ontario?
It’s unfair and unreasonable to leave it up to the tribes
They don’t have to monitor it. They only have to respond to inquiries about people’s tribal membership, not proactively anticipate them.