Oscar-Winning Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped of Her Order of Canada Honor After Indigenous Heritage Scandal

Mar. 15, 2025

Buffy Sainte-Marie in 2022.Photo:Unique Nicole/Getty

Unique Nicole/Getty

Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductee Buffy Sainte-Marie has been stripped of her prestigious Order of Canada appointment, more than one year after a scandal that found the singer allegedly lied about her Indigenous heritage.

TheToronto Starwas the first to report the news.

Known for her songs of activism including “Universal Soldier” and “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone,” Sainte-Marie, 83, was once considered to be the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar for co-writing the song “Up Where We Belong” for the 1982 filmAn Officer and a Gentleman, according toCBC, which first investigated Sainte-Marie’s alleged lies about her ethnicity in 2023.

Sainte-Marie has also received numerous Indigenous music awards over her decades-long career, including four Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, two Indigenous Music Awards, four Junos designated for Indigenous people and four Indigenous lifetime achievement awards, CBC previously reported.

Buffy Sainte-Marie performs in California 1977.Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty

Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty

CBC’sFifth Estateshow, published in October 2023 and now viewed onYouTube more than 1.5 million times, alleges that Sainte-Marie fabricated her heritage. Reporters showed a birth certificate on camera that stated her birthplace as Stoneham, Mass., her “color of race” as “white” and her birth name as Beverly Jean Santamaria.

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Sainte-Marie has denied CBC’s claims, writing in a lengthy statement titled “My Truth as I Know It,” which sheshared on social mediasoon after the report was published in 2023, that the allegations were “deeply hurtful.”

“I have always struggled to answer questions about who I am,” she wrote at the time, adding that she is “proud of my Indigenous-American identity and the deep ties I have to Canada and my Piapot family.”

In 2023, Piapot First Nation acting Chief Ira Lavallee asked Sainte-Marie to take a DNA test, telling theCanadian Press, “I do believe that we deserve a definitive answer from her.”

According to theToronto Star,a representative for the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General said in a statement: “The Office of the Secretary to the Governor General does not comment on the specifics of termination cases.”

The representative added toVarietythat only nine out of 7,600 people who have received the Order of Canada honor since 1967 have had their status terminated.

source: people.com