Oscar-Winning Canadian Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped of Honors After Allegedly Lying About Indigenous Heritage

Officials have stripped Oscar-Winning Canadian Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie of her Order of Canada honor after years of controversy over her false claims of indigenous heritage.

It was revealed on Saturday that the 83-year-old singer was stripped of one of Canada’s highest civilian honors, which celebrates an honoree’s “extraordinary contributions to the nation.”

Sainte-Marie, who won an Academy Award in 1982 for co-writing the soundtrack song Up Where We Belong, had received the Canadian honor in 1997.

But over the weekend, the Canadian government rescinded the award in a curt notice published on the Canada Gazette.

In his message, Secretary General of the Order of Canada Ken MacKillop wrote, “Notice is hereby given that the appointment of Buffy Sainte-Marie to the Order of Canada was terminated by Ordinance signed by the Governor General [Mary Simon] on January 3, 2025.”

Sainte-Marie has made a 60-year career out of claims of Native heritage even as evidence continued to suggest she was born to a white family in the US. An extensive 2023 expose of her false claims stirred the controversy to a high pitch by following all the evidence that seemed to prove she has been peddling false claims for decades.

The Universal Soldier and Now That the Buffalo’s Gone singer has made a string of claims over the years of being related to several different native tribes, but mostly claims her mother was a Cree Indian.  Despite the Cree claim, she has also claimed at various times to have Algonquin and Mi’kmaq tribal heritage.

Buffy Sainte-Marie performs during the Bread & Roses Festival at the Greek Theatre on October 9, 1977 in Berkeley, California. (Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images)

The extensive expose from 2023, though, proved that she was actually born as Beverly Jean Santamaria to white parents in Massachusetts, not to a Cree woman from Saskatchewan’s Piapot First Nation.

But even her claims about her mother have varied over the years.

Sainte-Marie has floated several conflicting stories about her “Indian mother.” At one point she claimed to have been adopted by a white family and said she did not know her Indian mother, then claimed her Indian mother told her she could not keep her, later said her Indian mother died young in a car accident, and still later claimed her Indian mother died giving birth to her at the Piapot First Nation in Canada.

She also claimed that she was a victim of “big scoop,” a Canadian practice in the 50s and 60s of taking native children away from indigenous parents and giving them to a white family to raise.

When the expose was released two years ago, Sainte-Marie denounced the story on her heritage and insisted it was built on lies. She posted a long message on social media denying that she has lied about her heritage for personal gain.

In her reply to the accusations of stolen ancestry, Sainte-Marie said, “I am proud of my Indigenous-American identity, and the deep ties I have to Canada and my Piapot family.”

She also reiterated that her mother was “part Mi’kmaq” and that her adopted mother told Sainte-Marie all about her Indian heritage when she was a child. She also alleges that “there was no documentation” for her birth, “as was common for Indigenous children born in the 1940’s.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston