Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is no longer appointed to the Order of Canada.
Her appointment to one of the country’s highest honors has been terminated by the Governor General, as announced in the Canada Gazette on Feb. 8. The termination Ordinance was signed on Jan. 3.
Sainte-Marie is one of the country’s most-celebrated musicians and has been a leader on Indigenous issues for decades, but her reputation has shifted over the last year. In the fall of 2023, a CBC Fifth Estate investigation cast doubt on her claims of Indigenous ancestry.
Sainte-Marie had previously claimed she believed she was born on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan. She said she had been adopted by the Santamaria family that raised her in Wakefield, Massachusetts, attributing her adoption to the Sixties Scoop, a period in the 1960s when many Indigenous babies were taken from their parents and adopted by white families.
CBC‘s investigation produced a birth certificate for Sainte-Marie which lists her presumed adoptive parents as her birth parents. It also features interviews with Sainte-Marie’s family members calling her claim to Indigenous identity “an elaborate fabrication,” and contextualizes Sainte-Marie’s career within a phenomenon of high-profile public figures who have fabricated Indigenous identity.
As a young adult, Sainte-Marie was adopted by Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket Piapot of the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan in accordance with Cree law and customs.
Sainte-Marie issued a statement around the investigation. “For a long time, I tried to discover information about my background,” she wrote. “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 follow-up statement, she affirmed her truth. “I have never lied about my identity,” Sainte-Marie said, adding that the investigation included “mistakes and omissions.”
The investigation prompted calls from some Indigenous groups and artists for major organizations to rethink their celebration of Sainte-Marie.
In a career spanning six decades, Sainte-Marie has won an Oscar and a Golden Globe (both for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman), the Polaris Music Prize, seven Juno Awards (including four in categories honoring aboriginal or indigenous music), and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, in addition to her appointment to the Order of Canada. She was first appointed to the Order in 1997, and in 2019 was made a Companion of the Order, the highest level within the Order.
Sainte-Marie, 83, had a top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972 with “Mister Can’t You See.”
A group called the Indigenous Women’s Collective called on the Junos to rescind Sainte-Marie’s 2018 award for Indigenous Album of the Year, with Cree opera singer Rhonda Head supporting the call.
The Canada Gazette provides no detail on the termination of Sainte-Marie’s Order of Canada. The Order of Canada Termination Policy states that an Advisory Council can recommend termination to the Governor General if an appointee’s conduct departs significantly from their standard of public behavior and may undermine the credibility of the Order.
CBC reports that in its 50-year history, Sainte-Marie is the ninth person to have their appointment to the Order terminated.
This story was originally published by Billboard Canada.
