Canada

There is a big gulf between “belonging to a tribe” and claiming to be a Sixty’s Scoop survivor born at a hospital that never existed.

I don’t think anyone (certainly not the CBC) is claiming that the Cree Nation and the Piapot family weren’t allowed to adopt her, and that she isn’t a member of that nation. But the evidence points, beyond the shadow of doubt, that she was born to a white Italian American family in Boston. And that she has a long history of lying about her original heritage (often changing the story when it’s convenient for her), and threatening her own family if they outed her.

So she’s perfectly allowed to be “tribal” — that seems to not be in contention. But she shouldn’t be lying about being a Sixty’s Scoop baby who never knew her birth mother (which is odd, considering she would have been a teenager when the Scoop started in the 50’s), or about being born in Canada and adopted (both her birth certificate and her own family refute this), or about her birth certificate having been destroyed in a fire in a facility that never existed, or about her changing tribal heritage (first Mi’kmaq, then Algonquin, then Cree), or about whether her mother was dead or alive…

The lies are the problem, along with the benefits she’s obtained from those lies. If the relevant Cree Nation wants to keep her, and the Piapot family claims her as one of their own — that’s perfectly fine and within their right. But that doesn’t give Ms. St-Marie the right to rewrite her own personal history. There is a big difference between “citizenship”, “family bonds”, and “heritage” — and it’s the latter of which she appears to have lied about for a very, very, very long time.