- Buffy Saint-Marie, 82, has always said she is part of the Cree tribe from 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 CBC segment that claimed 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 fame in the 1970s.
She has always described herself as a member of 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 for Canada since she rose to fame in the 1970s
But now members of her family are telling CBC that she is lying.
CBC also claims to have unearthed a birth certificate that proves her roots in 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 native heritage later in life and was welcomed into the community.
In a Facebook video posted this week following the CBC report, Saint-Marie affirmed her ancestry and said she was a “proud” member of the native community. She also claimed that her adoptive mother gave her reason to believe she was indigenous.
She refers to the Piapot First Nation as her “chosen family.”
“They took me in as an adult and claimed me as their own. That was and remains my truth.
“There are those who want to question me… I have been sharing my story as I know it for 60 years.” I am an artist, activist, mother, survivor and proud member of the indigenous community with deep roots in Canada.
“There are also a lot of things I don’t know that I’ve always been honest about.” I don’t know where I come from, where my birth parents are, or how I ended up as an outsider in a typical, white, Christian town in New England .
“I realized decades ago that I would never have the answers to these questions,” she said.
The CBC article suggests 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 is clearly not Native American or Native American.”