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The seeds for the play were sown long before the controversy surrounding Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous ancestry, but there’s no denying that Six Nations artist January Rogers’ new work is timely.

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The premise of “Blood Sport” involves a fictitious game show in which contestants compete for Indigenous heritage. It was selected for a staged reading Nov. 10 at the Weesageechak Begins to Dance festival in Toronto.

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The allegations and headlines surrounding Sainte-Marie followed a CBC report last month that she falsely claimed her Indigenous roots. However, Rogers began working on the play well before that.

Coming off shooting her web series “NDNs on the Airwaves” last year, one of Rogers’ frequent collaborators, Yuma Dean Hester, commissioned her to write a play about the subject of people who claim to be Indigenous but aren’t.

Approaching the situation through the lens of satire, Rogers took inspiration from factual experiences “that we see happen in the Native community, more often than not these days,” she said.

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The play also touches on the emotional aspects, addressing both what Rogers described as the “ridiculousness of folks who are trying to pass themselves off,” as well as some of the “real, lived-experiences by people who are attempting to come back home in a really honourable, and serious and authentic way.”

That coming home experience is something Rogers herself experienced when she returned to her...

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