Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Canadian-American singer with a large and devoted following of fans and who won a Best Song Oscar for “Up Where We Belong,” has had her prestigious Order of Canada honor terminated following an investigation into her heritage that indicates she is not Indigenous as she has long claimed.
The termination was noted in a terse announcement in the federal government’s official publication Canada Gazette posted over the weekend. “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 January 3, 2025.” The date of the announcement was February 8, 2025.
Long considered one of Canada’s great musical heroes on par with Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, Sainte-Marie’s troubles began when a CBC TV investigation in 2023 revealed that the white parents she for decades had claimed were her adopted parents are, in fact, her birth parents. The singer-songwriter was born in 1941 in Massachusetts.
Watch on Deadline
Sainte-Marie’s Order of Canada was appointed in 1997.
At the time when the CBC documentary aired, Sainte-Marie said, “Being an ‘Indian’ has little to do with sperm tracking and colonial record keeping: it has to do with community, culture, knowledge, teachings, who claims you, who you love, who loves you and who’s your family.”
Among her many songs is “Up Where We Belong,” which she cowrote with Jack Nitzsche and Will Jennings and which won the Academy Award in 1983. The song appeared in the film An Officer and a Gentleman.
The post Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped Of Prestigious Order Of Canada Following Ancestry Investigation appeared first on Deadline.
