Write a response to the following "Just this morning, I read yet another article that continued the conversation about Buffy Sainte-Marie's identity, the story that has been making headlines since CBC published its lengthy investigative article on October 27 of this year (Leo et al., 2023). This is a story that focuses almost exclusively on how identity influences public perception and it has touched many nerves across the country. The original CBC article thoroughly reviewed Sainte-Marie's own descriptions of her origins and identity and provided evidence that contradicted many of her assertions.  

Subsequent articles by Cosh (2023) and Jago (2023) touch on the question of whether it may do more harm than good to expose untruths about someone’s identity, partly because of how it negatively affects public perception and emotions, perhaps without any real benefit. Jago (2023) writes “Every time one of these stories comes out, the public understanding of what Native identity means seems to decline a little more” and continues later with the conclusion: “The net effect of CBC’s report on her is negative. It was an unnecessary story to tell in 2023”. 

Throughout her career, much of the public perception and adoration of Buffy Sainte-Marie was deeply intertwined with the belief that she was an Indigenous Canadian. RBC, in a social media post earlier this year, called her "one of the most important and impactful Indigenous artists of all time” (RBC, 2023) and she has won many Indigenous music awards. Identity is closely bound to public perception – the average person doesn’t intimately know the person in the public-eye – we feel like we know them by how they’ve identified themselves. Buffy Sainte-Marie historically identified herself in the media as an Indigenous-born Canadian from a Cree reserve in Saskatchewan (Leo et al., 2023) and this is how the Canadian public has perceived, and revered, her for decades. When the evidence indicates that she’s not Indigenous or Canadian, the public may not know what to feel anymore, because perception has been dependent on this identity for so long."