Folk singer and social justice advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie has denied allegations that she misled the public about her Indigenous ancestry, after a Canadian documentary questioned the “shifting narrative” surrounding her Cree roots.
On Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative wing, the Fifth Estate, published an investigation into the singer’s ancestry, alleging her life story is part of a broader narrative “full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies”.
The controversial report from the national broadcaster comes after a string of high-profile “pretendian” allegations that raise broader questions about the appropriation of Indigenous identity.
Sainte-Marie’s website describes herself as a “Cree singer-songwriter” who is “believed to have been born” in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan. She was reportedly taken from her biological parents when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US. The singer has previously said that a hospital fire destroyed her birth records.
But the CBC, citing interviews with Sainte-Marie’s family and a birth certificate, suggests there is evidence she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and has no Indigenous ancestry.
“She wasn’t born in Canada … She’s clearly born in the United States,” Heidi St. Marie, daughter of Sainte-Marie’s older brother, Alan, told the CBC. “She’s clearly not Indigenous or Native American.”
Ahead of the report, Sainte-Marie released a statement on Thursday, calling the allegations “deeply hurtful”.
“I have always struggled to answer questions about who I am,” she said. “Through that research what became clear, and what I’ve always been honest about, is that I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents were, and I will never know.”
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Sainte-Marie, 82, acknowledged the difficulty in knowing her past.
“As adopted children, we don’t even know when our birthday is,” she said “You spend your entire life asking questions you can’t answer.”
Sainte-Marie has told media outlets she was eventually reunited with her relatives at the Piapot First Nation and adopted by the Piapot family. “My Cree name is Piyasees Kanikamut, which means ‘Singing Bird’. I’m a recognized member of the reservation now,” she told Boston Herald.
Members of the Piapot family said Thursday that questions over Sainte-Marie’s ancestry were “hurtful, ignorant, colonial – and racist”.
“No one, including Canada and its governments, the Indian Act, institutions, media or any person anywhere can deny our family’s inherent right to determine who is a member of our family and community,” Debra and Ntawnis Piapot said in a statement.
“Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could.”
An Oscar-winning musician, Sainte-Marie recently retired from live performances citing health issues. A fierce advocate of Indigenous peoples, Sainte-Marie has been key figure in social justice movements.
But the new questions over her roots come after a string of prominent “pretendian” cases, involving people who falsely adopt Indigenous identity. Earlier this year, former judge Mary-Ellen Turpel Lafond, who spent most of career advocating for Indigenous rights, was stripped of an award after she was accused of misstating her ancestry.
In some instances, “pretendians” have used false identities to access key services or funding allocated for Indigenous peoples.
In September, the Nunavut RCMP charged three women with fraud for claiming Inuit status to obtain scholarship funds meant for Inuit groups. Twin sisters Amira and Nadya Gill are alleged to have falsely identified as Inuit in order to access the money.
Ahead of the CBC report, prominent Indigenous voices questioned the broadcaster’s decision to probe Sainte-Marie’s ancestry, reflecting her complicated legacy as a beloved performer and role model.
Writer Robert Jago questioned the CBC’s decision to publish the report, suggesting Sainte-Marie’s case didn’t appear to reach the threshold for publicly investigating “pretendian” cases.
Pam Palmater, a professor and chair in Indigenous governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote that the revelations had left Indigenous peoples divided, with some feeling betrayed and others supporting her whole heartedly- but both groups were “upset [and] angered” from the story. “Let’s be gentle with one another,” she wrote.
“Buffy has lived her life as an Indigenous woman, and as such, has experienced all of the ‘lived experience’ that goes along with it- the good and the painful. What is gained by targeting her at this age?” wrote Robyn Michaud, an Indigenous studies professor at Conestoga College. “My heart hurts.”
