Column: Buffy the rogue and a punch to the gut of indigenous culture'Title: Buffy the rogue and a punch in the gut of indigenous culture

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The person I thought was Buffy St. Mary's is suddenly gone! The Native woman we all knew as Buffy, the one we saw on TV, the one we paid to see in concert, suddenly, tragically, dematerialized. Santa Maria! That hit me like a punch in the gut, and as I watched The Fifth Side, an investigative program on the CBC, I was hit again, blow by blow, as compelling evidence was presented that the person I knew as Buffy St. Mary was a fake not only of herself, but of me as an Indigenous person of the people. Dear Aunt Buffy, I thought. I was trying to make sense of it all.

At once there was a feeling of loss, abandonment, betrayal, and,''Above all, I could feel the spirits coming to change the axis of the Earth. I tried desperately to put the pieces together, but they scattered like fake beads and trinkets. I wondered if I would ever be able to trust again. CBC's "The Fifth Side" gathered evidence that this woman calling herself Buffy is actually named Beverly Joan Santamaria. She was born to white parents and raised in the United States. There is official documentation (birth certificate) and it is unalterable.

The person we knew as Buffy St. Mary's is a fraud. The irony doesn't escape me that Santa Maria is the name of one of Columbus' ships. Beverly St. Mary's father is apparently of Italian descent, and both of his grandfathers were born in Italy.''Intertwined throughout this farcical story. Much of the story invented by Buffy's image develops like the trickster in our Native cultural stories. The trickster is a cosplayer who can often take the form of someone else and make everyone believe that they are something they are not. And this fictional persona has led us to believe that she is one of us. This image has been created to reflect us, to use every stereotype possible, making it impossible to tell where she comes from. But trickster stories are meant to teach us something. There is always a lesson in them that we can use to learn to never be deceived again.

Buffy tricked us. "But she's done so much for us!" - some will say. That may be true, but such kindness is reminiscent of the same tactics that organized crime and physical and sexual abusers use to gain a foothold in your homes and communities around the world. The ploy is simple: make them believe that you are doing them good so that if your scheme ever comes to light, they will even stand up for you. She had power over us, and in many cases she still does. And even I defended her at first. I defended the Buffy I thought was the real Buffy. The Buffy I had personally met many times during my music career. The Buffy that one of my sons truly revered. Warm, friendly,'''The always fun Buffy who made you feel special every time you met her. So it's a punch in the gut to find out we've been deceived. And the actual reflection gives us a glimpse into how this deception was orchestrated as a fairy tale Disney production. It hurts those who are already suffering the effects of colonialism and the loss of culture, language and land. Now we are losing the man who gave us hope that we could somehow overcome all this loss. But this man was never real. This man is a liar, like the reserves and the Indian Act. This man is an identity thief born of colonizers who took away our hope and dignity.

So, we mourn again. We laugh, we cry, we comfort each other and we move on. So''that when I hear those non-indigenous voices defending this false image of Buffy Sainte Marie, telling me it's not that scary, she helped you in so many ways, I see how colonization came about. And I can't help but feel the anxiety that the Taino people felt when they found out that the man (Christopher Columbus) who had treated them, prayed with them, befriended them, was now going to attack them with his dogs. There's a lot more Buffy. And if we let her off lightly, be lenient with her, we're giving permission for more deception. Jeff Monague is a former chief of the Beausoleil tribe on Christian Island, former director of Treaty Studies with the Anishnabek (Union of Ontario Indians) and a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces. Monagyu, who taught the Ojibwe language in Simcoe County''District School Board and Georgia College, is currently the superintendent of Springwater Provincial Park. His articles are published regularly.