The CBC says the birth certificate of legendary Canadian musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie as well as other documents and testimonies from members of her family contradict the singer’s claim that she is of Indigenous ancestry.
Before the broadcast of a report on the show “Fifth Estate” Friday evening, Buffy Sainte-Marie, aged 82, declared Thursday that she did not know who her biological parents were or where she came from precisely. But she said she was “a proud member of Canada’s deeply rooted indigenous community.”
“To those who question my truth, I respond with love: I know who I am,” she said in a statement on Thursday.
In its report, Radio-Canada English Television claims that it has found her birth certificate, which indicates that the singer was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and that her parents are Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie. However, according to this document signed by the attending physician, the baby and the parents are white.
The CBC also claims that Buffy Sainte-Marie’s marriage certificate, a life insurance policy and a US census record corroborate the information on this birth certificate.
Buffy Sainte-Marie wore her Aboriginal ancestry high as her fame began to grow throughout the 1960s. Her first album, It’s My Way!included several remarkable pieces, including Now That the Buffalo’s Gonea “protest song” linked to the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their ancestral lands.
She also introduced toddlers to First Nations culture on the cult show “Sesame Street” and is considered the first indigenous person to win an Oscar, in 1982. She co-wrote the ballad for the film Officer and Gentleman, Up Where We Belong.
But the story of his birth, childhood and nation has changed over the course of a decades-long career. The CBC cites news articles from the 1960s in which Buffy Sainte-Marie identifies as Mi’kmaq, then Algonquin, and later Cree.
“We cannot trust this document”
His 2018 authorized biography clarifies that there is no official record of his birth. We read that she was probably born Cree in the community of Piapot in Saskatchewan, in the early 1940s. Buffy Sainte-Marie was then adopted according to Cree traditions in her early twenties by a family from Piapot.
National Aboriginal television network APTN also obtained a copy of the birth certificate. APTN says Buffy Sainte-Marie’s team did not deny that it was her birth certificate, but indicated that the document could not be trusted.
Buffy Sainte-Marie claimed Thursday that her “adult mother,” Winifred Sainte-Marie, told her she was adopted and may have been born “out of wedlock.”
Conflicting accounts of her adoption have also been published, with some saying she was a baby and others saying she was a little girl when she was taken by an American family. Some accounts hold that his biological parents died or that his mother died in a car accident.
Buffy Sainte-Marie provided a sworn statement from her former lawyer, who was charged with looking into her Indigenous ancestry. According to “oral history” in Saskatchewan, the singer was born north of Piapot to an unmarried woman “who could not take care of herself.”
Members of her family in the United States, including the singer’s younger sister, also told the CBC that Buffy Sainte-Marie was not adopted and did not have indigenous ancestry.
The public broadcaster’s report also cites a 1964 article in which a man who claims to be Buffy Sainte-Marie’s uncle told the daily that she was not Indigenous — and more precisely: not Cree. The CBC maintains that members of her family did not want to contradict her because they feared that the singer would take legal action.
Mme Sainte-Marie said Thursday that she was contacted last month by the CBC about the matter. She called the allegations “deeply hurtful.”
“I don’t know where I come from, who my biological parents are or how I found myself misadjusted in a typical white Christian New England home,” she also pleaded. I realized decades ago that I would never have the answers. »
Buffy Sainte-Marie, 82, recently stopped touring, citing her health. She has received numerous honors during her career, including Juno Awards, a Gemini, a Golden Globe and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. She was also named to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1995.