Controversy over the ancestry of Buffy Saint-Marie

[barkley]

It would now seem she was born and raised in Massachusetts by her natural family -

is there something in the water in Massachusetts? just saying-buffy st marie, 'hilaria' baldwin (no offense intended to the state or the people of but i've been getting bombarded the last couple of days with coming attractions on TLC for the new baldwin reality show and I noticed 'hilaria' has seemingly lost her accent and no longer struggles with english so she's been on my mind).

 

[bcla]

I have news alerts set from CBC so I heard about this situation when The Fifth Estate first did their story. I'm not surprised that Mary Simon has now chosen to rescind Buffy's Order of Canada. It's a sad story but CBC really has the receipts, and nothing Buffy has said has convinced me otherwise.

I was curious about the powers of the Governor General of Canada. I guess the Governor is the legal representative of the monarchy in Canada and typically chosen by the Prime Minister. But I guess this is theoretically a ceremonial power wielded by the King but delegated to a representative as a practical matter.

 

[bcla]

Not the way it works

you get 50% of your dna from each parent. After that people talk in averages. So they "say" you get 25% of your dna from each grandparent and 12.5% from each great grandparent and so on. But that is just an average. You can get 5% of your dna from one of your grandparents and 45% from the other in that couple. That's an extreme, but lets say it's 15% from one and 35% from the other. At that point the maximum amount you can get from the 15% grandparent's parent drops considerably. It does not take long until you inherited 0% from an ancestor. And therefore 0% from all of their ancestors.

DNA apparently isn't 50/50 from parents. Apparently some types of genetic material is only passed down from the mother, and other genetic material can be randomly passed down. It's certainly not a precise split because of a number of factors.

 

[irlandaise]

Not the way it works

you get 50% of your dna from each parent. After that people talk in averages. So they "say" you get 25% of your dna from each grandparent and 12.5% from each great grandparent and so on. But that is just an average. You can get 5% of your dna from one of your grandparents and 45% from the other in that couple. That's an extreme, but lets say it's 15% from one and 35% from the other. At that point the maximum amount you can get from the 15% grandparent's parent drops considerably. It does not take long until you inherited 0% from an ancestor. And therefore 0% from all of their ancestors.

DNA apparently isn't 50/50 from parents. Apparently some types of genetic material is only passed down from the mother, and other genetic material can be randomly passed down. It's certainly not a precise split because of a number of factors.

Thanks to both for the clarification. Nonetheless, Buffy was claiming to have been born in Canada to First Nations parents, not that she had Indigenous blood further back, so we aren't talking fractions.

 

[irlandaise]

I was curious about the powers of the Governor General of Canada. I guess the Governor is the legal representative of the monarchy in Canada and typically chosen by the Prime Minister. But I guess this is theoretically a ceremonial power wielded by the King but delegated to a representative as a practical matter.

Right. I don't know whether recommendations for honors are vetted by the king's staff people back in the UK, or whether GG Simon's office discussed this matter with anyone there before withdrawing the award. I would guess that they gave the PM a heads up. The notice was buried in a routine report of actions by the GG's office, but of course the Canadian news media spotted that section right away.