Forgery: Modus operandi (British History)

[Hatty]

Another episode in the cameraman's film career describes shooting Dr Joann Fletcher finding what might turn out to be Nefertiti's elusive burial site, not in a grand pyramid but a dusty cave alongside two other mummies. The plan was to compare the presumed Nefertiti mummy with the bust excavated in 1912 at Amarna in a dig led by a German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt (1863–1938) which reminded me about the unresolved query re the bust's authenticity.

The only written account of the discovery of the bust is in Borchardt's diary. According to the entry for 6 December 1912, it coincided with a much-anticipated royal visit

[Mick Harper]

I'm not sure who the Ranke mentioned in Wiki is but the most famous name in German history is Leopold von Ranke. He died in 1883 but maybe his son? Your cousin seems to keep awesome company. I'm very surprised he gives you the time of day. Or me, I suppose, I have met him.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Rather than criticise Buffy St Marie, we should be learning from her.

It has been a good example of faking it.

For those who are not up to speed, Buffy Sainte-Marie was (sic) an Indigenous Canadian-American singer with, as they say, a large and devoted following, who won a Best Song Oscar for “Up Where We Belong.” and had been awarded a prestigious Order of Canada honour. All was good until a CBC TV investigation in 2023 revealed that the white parents she for decades claimed were her adopted parents were in fact her real birth parents. In short they have her birth certificate: she was born in 1941 in Massachusetts. She is “Beverly Jean Santamaria” and her parents listed as white. CBC said it had the document authenticated by the Stoneham town clerk, Maria Sagarino.

The fraud dates back to the early sixties and the launch of Buffy/Beverly's music career, at that time reports have her as "Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, half-Mi’kmaq, and Cree.” She seems to altered her story as she went along.

There is no doubt that the Buffy/Beverley music career both benefited from and aided Indigenous people. She has been worshipped by fans in part because of her fascinating invented backstory, which caught the spirit of the times. It is just she wasn't Indigenous, or.....even Canadian.

She was an American hippie chick.

[Mick Harper]

I didn't know about dear Buffy, a favourite of the long ago. Though in my own defence I didn't know she was claiming to be native American at the time. She was just a folk singer, and they're always a bit weird. You'll be telling me Joan Baez is Latino next. Or 'chicano' as we called them at the time. I used the term myself in America but was much mocked for pronouncing it to rhyme with Chicago.

This is quite a popular ruse nowadays. A white novelist said she was black and won some prize or other quite recently. And of course there's the equally mocked (Democrat) Senator Elizabeth Warren and her Cherokee ancestry. It stems from 'you're not allowed to ask' and is all highly ironic because 'a touch of the tarbrush' had previously been a deadly insult.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Buffy created a back story leaving the odd flag.

This might be of interest.

Firstly she faced the record problem. People want a written record, they want proof. Buffy had an explanation, lost records.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, the Burning Books book I mentioned in the TV thread is really eloquent on the advantage of destroying stuff. Especially stuff that never existed in the first place. This segment is the one to listen to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m56c The author, Richard Ovenden, is head librarian of the Bodleian so believes the full fairy story.

Which reminds me, it is narrated by Anthony Head, the librarian in Buffy (the vampire slayer, not the not-the-not French-Canadian-folk singer).