Buffy Sainte-Marie speaks out as she returns her Order of Canada
Musician said she never claimed to be Canadian, following an investigation that called her purported Indigenous heritage into question
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Folk singer and social justice advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie has said she has returned her Order of Canada “with a good heart”, following allegations that she fabricated claims of her Indigenous ancestry, which she has denied.
The prolific musician spoke out for the first time since being stripped of the award in February. Sainte-Marie, 84, said she is an American citizen and holds a US passport, but was adopted as a young adult by a Cree family in Saskatchewan.
Sainte-Marie told the Canadian Press she made it “completely clear” to government representatives and to former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau that she was not Canadian, when she was asked to perform for Queen Elizabeth II in 1977.
In a statement issued on Tuesday (4 March), the singer expressed her “love and gratitude” to Canada and said she felt “overwhelmingly grateful that I’ve been able to make my contribution”.
She added: “It was very lovely to host the medals for a while, but I return them with a good heart.”
Sainte-Marie said she had lived with “uncertainty” about her parentage and unsuccessfully explored the possibility that she was born in Canada.
“I’ve never treated my citizenship as a secret and most of my friends and relatives in Canada have known I’m American, and it’s never been an issue,” she said.
Her statement comes as Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor general of Canada, said it had also terminated two jubilee medals given to Sainte-Marie in 2002 and 2012, both associated with her membership to the Order of Canada, which she received in 1997.
Sainte-Marie, who won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1983 for co-writing “Up Where We Belong”, for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, has long been associated with the struggles of Native Americans.
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She has won seven Juno Awards – Canada’s equivalent to a Grammy – including 1997’s Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording and 2009’s Aboriginal Recording of the Year. In 2018, she was awarded the prize for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.
Last year, a CBC news report for the show Fifth Estate called into question her Indigenous heritage, discovering a birth certificate that indicated she was born Beverly Jean Santamaria in 1941 in Massachusetts, while both she and her parents were listed as white.
Variety reports that biographical information supplied by Sainte-Marie’s team over the years stated that she was born on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, while her 2018 authorised biography also states that she was likely born Cree.
The publication reports that her website also once stated that she was “believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and taken from her biological parents when she was an infant.”
In an email sent in September to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s Ontario-based lawyer said: “At no point has Buffy Sainte-Marie personally misrepresented her ancestry or any details about her personal history to the public.”
She said that any perceived consistencies CBC had found in Sainte-Marie’s story can be explained by the truth”.
In October 2023, Sainte-Marie issued a statement online with the headline, “My Truth as I Know It,” calling the questions surrounding her heritage “deeply hurtful allegations”.
“I have always struggled to answer questions [about] who I am,” she said, maintaining that she was “proud of my Indigenous-American identity, and the deep ties I have to Canada and my Piapot family”.
“What I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my mother,” she said. “I may not know where I was born, but I know who I am.”
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