Buffy Sainte-Marie, Academy Award-Winning Songwriter, Has Indigenous Roots Questioned In CBC Report
28.10.2023 - 15:43
/ deadline.com
A detailed investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has raised questions about the indigenous persona of singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Sainte-Marie has been feted as the first Indigenous person to win an Academy Award for cowriting the song Up Where We Belong for the film An Officer and a Gentleman.
Sainte-Marie, 82, has claimed that she was born on Tribal land and adopted by white parents. The CBC countered that in a report published Friday and in an accompanying episode of the documentary series The Fifth Estate. The media outlet obtained a birth certificate saying Sainte-Marie was born to parents of European ancestry in Massachusetts.
The CBC reported that the birth certificate from Stoneham, Mass. showed “Beverly Jean Santamaria” and her parents listed as white. The CBC said it had the document authenticated by Stoneham town clerk Maria Sagarino.
Sainte-Marie, alerted to the revelations that would be coming, issued a statement posted to social media Thursday.
“I am proud of my Indigenous-American family, and the deep ties I have to Canada and my Piapot family,” Sainte-Marie wrote. The Piapot are the Cree family that officially adopted her as a young adult in the ’60s.
She added, “My Indigenous identity is rooted in a deep connection to a community which has had a profound role shaping my life and my work.” She added that the CBC allegations “forced me to relive and defend my experience as a survivor of sexual abuse, which I endured at the hands of my brother,” Alan St. Marie.
The CBC’s report said Sainte-Marie did not raise such allegations against her brother until he started disputing her claims of Indigenous ancestry in correspondence with various media outlets (including the Denver Post