Allegations in a documentary that the popular American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie misrepresented her Indigenous roots have rattled First Nations communities in Canada, where she claims to have been born, highlighting the complex legacy of an artist whose decades-long career is defined by advocating for Indigenous rights.
Sainte-Marie describes herself as a “Cree singer-songwriter” has long traced her identity to the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, where she claims she was born in 1941. Sainte-Marie says she was taken from her biological mother when she was an infant and raised by a white family in the US.
