Welcome to the first real mini project! This one was only 2 weeks or so, and it was all about indigenous status and indigeniety. This turned out to be much more of an interesting topic than I thought it would be. There is a lot of controversies and is overall a very hard topic to discuss because of the sensitivity of the subject and the uncertainty of things.
The main person we looked at was Buffy Sainte-Marie. She’s a folk singer that claimed to be of indigenous decent. There are lots of controversies surrounding this person. As we looked deeper into the definitions of indigeniety and what it means to be indigenous, things quickly got complicated.
The driving questions for this project is “How might understanding the sensitivities around Indigeniety, help us understand B.C. First Peoples?” At the end of this project, we did a talking circle, discussing the these topics. My talking circle preparation document is below. It has my answers to the guiding questions of the talking circle.
One thing that I did mention at the talking circle that is not on my talking circle prep is the idea of reconciliation and how that relates to people falsely claiming indigeniety. A huge part of reconciliation is the teaching of indigenous knowledge and culture to more people. This could lead to someone who looks at the culture, and decide that they want to be a part of it. With the person already knowing a good amount of indigenous knowledge, it makes it harder for us to detect that they aren’t actually indigenous. They may know a lot of indigenous culture, but they won’t really understand the significance of indigeniety.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have reconciliation. It is still a very important process to have in the world, and especially in Canada. What we should be doing is teaching people that it is very wrong to falsely claiming indigeniety, and I think this responsibility falls on us. We are the ones we know about this and can actually do something about it. It may not have a very big impact, but it’ll still do something to help.
Understanding indigeniety and importance of eliminating pretendians can help us make connections to discrimination, reconciliation, and the role that status plays in the modern world. I found this mini project to be pretty interesting, and as we move forward in our studies of BC First People, I hope to be able to apply what I’ve learned to how I think and come to conclusions in future projects.