Does it make sense to revoke Buffy Sainte-Marie's Juno Awards and Polaris Prizes?

The Juno Awards and the Polaris Music Prize have announced that they are rescinding the honours Buffy Sainte-Marie won from their organizations over her career.

The decisions were made in light of her recent acknowledgement that she is an American citizen.

The news comes over a year after an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate called into question whether the music icon's claims of Indigenous ancestry are true.

Marek Tyler is a nêhiyaw and Scottish musician, educator and entrepreneur. Kim Wheeler is an Anishinabe/Mohawk writer and producer.

Today on Commotion, Tyler and Wheeler join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to share their reaction to the award news, and whether it signals a greater hope for systemic change in the Canadian entertainment industry.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Marek, what was your reaction when you heard the news about Buffy being stripped of the Junos and the Polaris Prize?

Marek: My reaction? It was shrapnel. And what I mean by "shrapnel" is, for more than 100 years our identity has been systematically attacked…. I think about those families whose identities are constantly being questioned when they walk into a Walmart, when they go to the dentist, and when they go through security wherever they're at. And so for every newly-outed Indigenous person, I think there's shrapnel in the community, a feeling of betrayal at this level, because those scars of identity that we're still living with? They're new. That's where it leaves me. So when I think about that piece, then I go, okay, well, let's think about systemic change, not symbolic actions. The trophies and awards that we receive for these accomplishments, they're symbols of success. But what is required, in my opinion, is systemic change.

So yes, someone's symbol has been removed from them. But really what I'm thinking about now is to protect future generations so that they don't endure this shrapnel that we see in [our] community. That we right now require systemic change, and that, for me, is Indigenous-led conversations so that these organizations, who have antiquated policy, can make better, more informed decisions…. So yes, shrapnel, absolutely. But these symbolic actions need to be grounded in systemic change.

Elamin: Marek, I appreciate the image of shrapnel and the ways that it evokes a radiating hurt. I think you're trying to get at two different ideas: the idea of the story about Buffy being a story about ancestry coming into question, and the story of what that does to identity. Ancestry and identity are related, but they are two different things. And I think the idea of the questioning of Buffy's ancestry ending up introducing a whole terrain of doubt for people who are sort of trying to figure out their identity, I'm very sensitive to that. Kim, you're a Polaris Prize jury member, but you were not on the jury when Buffy's album Power in the Blood won in 2015. How are you feeling about that decision from Polaris to rescind Buffy's prize?

Kim: Well, I understand why they're doing it. The rules are you have to be Canadian, and she isn't. I don't know if she ever actually claimed to be Canadian, or if anybody ever asked if she was, if anybody ever asked to see her passport. We all just, when Buffy said that she was from Piapot, those were her people, we all just took it at face value. I think it's the right thing to do, to rescind it based on her being an American citizen.

I think that they've sidestepped the issue that she is being accused of being a "pretendian." And I say "accused" because I think I'm still on the fence. I'm still confused. I mean, you have to go through the seven stages of grief, right? And people are still dealing with that. There are people who are still angry. There are people who are still in denial. There are people who have totally come to accept it. So when we talk about should we take the prize away based on her citizenship? Yes. I really like what Marek said, that these are new conversations. These are conversations that we haven't had to have before, because our people have not been in the position to win these major awards. So when we have to have these conversations — and yes, they have to be Indigenous-led — we are all still doing this for the first time.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman and Jess Low.