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

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.

On Saturday, Feb. 8, the Canadian government published the announcement in the most recent edition of the Canada Gazette, writing: "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 on Jan. 3, 2025."

The Toronto Star was 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 film An Officer and a Gentleman, according to CBC, 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.

CBC's Fifth Estate show, published in October 2023 and now viewed on YouTube 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.

CBC reported in 2023 that Sainte-Marie had long said she was "Cree Indian" and had once claimed to have been born "on the Piapot Cree reservation near Craven, [Saskatchewan]." Sainte-Marie also claimed to have been adopted by a Massachusetts couple, Albert and Winifred Santamaria, who raised her near Boston, and that she met her relatives later in life.

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Sainte-Marie has denied CBC's claims, writing in a lengthy statement titled "My Truth as I Know It," which she shared on social media soon 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."

She also stated "what I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my mother" and concluded by writing, "I may not known where I was born, but I know who I am."

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

According to the Toronto 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 to Variety that only nine out of 7,600 people who have received the Order of Canada honor since 1967 have had their status terminated.

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