Buffy Saint-Marie is accused of faking Indigenous heritage: Birth certificate suggests she was born in Massachusetts and not on Indian reservation in Canada
- Buffy Saint-Marie, 82, has always said she is part of the Cree tribe of Canada
- Her family says she was born in Massachusetts and not on an Indian reservation
- She insists that the Cree tribe and the Piapot nation are her “chosen family.”
Canadian singer Buffy Saint-Marie has been accused of faking her indigenous heritage in a bombshell film from the CBC claiming that she was born in Massachusetts to a white family and not, as she claimed, on an Indian reservation.
Saint-Marie, 82, has been a folk music icon and an Indigenous success story in Canada since she rose to prominence in the 1970s.
She has always described herself as belonging to the Cree tribe, and says she was adopted as a child by a white family as part of the infamous Sixties Scoop, when indigenous children in Canada were removed from their families and adopted by white parents.
Saint-Marie has been a folk music icon and an Indigenous success story in Canada since she rose to prominence in the 1970s
But now members of her family are claiming to CBC that she is lying.
CBC also claims to have unearthed a birth certificate that traces her roots back to Massachusetts, where she grew up.
She has always maintained that she was born on the Piapot First Nation reserve near Regina, Saskatchewan and then adopted by Massachusetts couple Albert and Winifred Santamari.
She says she rediscovered her indigenous heritage later in life and became part of the community.
In a Facebook video Published this week after the CBC report, Saint-Marie doubled down on her heritage, emphasizing that she is a “proud” member of the Indigenous community and claiming her adoptive mother gave her reason to believe she was Indigenous.
She calls the Piapot First Nation her “chosen family.”
‘They took me in as an adult and claimed me as their own. This is and always will be my truth.
‘There are people who want to question me… for sixty years I have been sharing my story as I know it. I am an artist, an activist, a mother, a survivor and a proud member of the Indigenous community with deep roots in Canada.
‘There are also many things I don’t know and that I have always been honest about. I don’t know where I came from, where my birth parents are, or how I came to be an outcast in a typical white, Christian New England town.
“I realized decades ago that I would never have the answers to these questions,” she said.
The CBC article suggests that her story has changed many times over the years when it comes to where she comes from.
Saint-Marie’s niece Heidi – the daughter of Saint-Marie’s older brother Alan, says: ‘She wasn’t born in Canada… she was clearly born in the United States.
“She’s clearly not Native or Indian.”