Buffy Sainte Marie
Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
A year ago this week, allegations surfaced in the media that the late Sacheen Littlefeather, best known for representing Marlon Brando on the Oscar stage in protest against the treatment of Native Americans, had invented her Native American heritage.
Now Buffy Sainte-Marie, considered the first Indigenous Oscar winner (for co-writing the pop standard “Up Where We Belong” from 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman”), is facing similar allegations.
On Friday, CBC newsmagazine The Fifth Estate is scheduled to air a documentary exploring the singer-songwriter’s roots. The episode description – the second of the 49th season of the Canadian public broadcaster’s long-running series – does not name the “icon” whose indigenous ancestry is being investigated, but Sainte-Marie came forward a day early as a precaution defend what she calls “[her] truth as [she] know.”
“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I am forced to respond to deeply hurtful allegations that I expect will soon be published in the media,” Sainte-Marie wrote in a personal statement as part of a response package to . She says the CBC reached out to her last month with questions about her heritage and to discuss her childhood sexual assault.
When asked for comment and more information about the upcoming episode, the CBC referred to the description posted in the listings: “An icon’s claim to Indigenous ancestry is supported by family members and an investigation that included genealogical documentation and historical research , questioned and personal accounts.”
Until now, the accepted details of Sainte-Marie’s biography were that she was born in 1941 on a Piapot Cree reserve in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and became one of tens of thousands of First Nations children who were forced from their homes and placed with white families Part of a Canadian government policy known as the Sixties Scoop. Her adoptive parents, the Sainte-Maries, raised her in New England, and as a young adult exploring her heritage, she made contact with the Piapot Cree people and was ceremoniously adopted (according to Cree custom) into the Piapot family.
“I consider myself lucky to have had two families to love,” Sainte-Marie said in a video statement posted to her social media accounts on Thursday. “A family growing up that was wonderful, and my Piapot family that was wonderful too.”
The ambiguities and potential contradictions are expected to center on the earliest chapter of Sainte-Marie’s life – namely, whether her birth parents were actually native and whether she was in fact a child of the Sixties. “What I have always been honest about is that I do not know where I come from or who my birth parents were, and I will never know,” she wrote in her statement, noting that there is often no written record of this Indigenous children born in the 1940s. “I can only say what I know to be true: I know who I love, I know who loves me. And I know who claims me.”
To support her report, Sainte-Marie’s team also provided THR with a statement from two grandchildren of the singer’s “adoptive parents,” Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket. “Our paths are so beautiful and deeply inclusive,” they wrote. “Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We refer to her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. For us, this carries far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record ever could.”
In addition, Sainte-Marie also filed an affidavit from her long-time attorney, Delia Opekokew (Canoe Lake Cree), stating that this was based on the consistent attestation of elders and others with knowledge of Sainte-Marie’s circumstances Given the context that indigenous personal history during this period was often based on oral memory rather than written records, she has “no doubt that Buffy Sainte-Marie is an indigenous woman, through her Piapot family “We have a collective responsibility in Saskatchewan.” (Read all three statements in full below.)
The allegations against Sainte-Marie come two months after the folk musician announced her retirement from live performances due to health reasons. As the CBC documentary acknowledges, she has long been revered as a cultural icon, both for her unique Oscar success and for her life’s work focused on Indigenous communities and identity. She is the third entertainment figure in the past 12 months to be accused of falsely claiming indigenous heritage, or “pretendianism,” after Littlefeather and independent film producer Heather Rae, who told THR in March that she now identifies as an ally , as she continues to examine her own family ties.
Authenticating Native identity is a nuanced and sensitive issue that varies from tribe to tribe. Some call for blood quantum, others a clear genealogical connection to early tribal census records. (Sainte-Maries’ situation is different from the other two high-profile cases because it is actually claimed by a tribe, albeit through adoption.) The systematic cultural erasure and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples by both the Canadian and U.S. governments has further clouded the ability to provide evidence of ancestral connections, and Native peoples are divided over how strictly to protect heritage claims, but also acknowledge that the opportunistic (and fraudulent) exploitation of Native culture by outsiders is personal and entrepreneurial advantage is widespread.
“My Indigenous identity is rooted in a deep connection to a community that has significantly shaped my life and work. “All my life, I have advocated for Native and Native American causes even though no one else wanted to or had the platform to do so,” Sainte-Marie wrote in her statement. “I may not know where I was born, but I know who I am.”