Buffy Sainte-Marie. Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images.
Celebrated singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has shared a statement pre-empting a documentary that apparently questions the veracity of her claims of indigenous heritage. Making an Icon, an installment in the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s series The Fifth Estate, airs tonight (October 27) at 9 p.m. CDT/10 p.m. EDT. The episode’s description reads as follows: “Buffy Sainte-Marie’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being called into question by family members and an investigation that included genealogical documentation, historical research, and personal accounts.”
Sainte-Marie says she felt the need to speak directly to her fans after the CBC contacted her last month “to question my identity and the sexual assault I experienced as a child.”
Responding to the Toronto Star, a CBC rep declined to comment, saying, “Beyond what’s in the program description, we have nothing more to add.”
A Polaris Prize and Academy Award winner, Sainte-Marie has used her platform to champion indigenous causes in Canada throughout her career. A bio on her official website lays out her account of her ancestry and upbringing: “Buffy Sainte-Marie is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and taken from her biological parents when she was an infant. She was adopted by a visibly white couple and raised in Maine and Massachusetts.”
In her new statement, she elaborates: “What I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my growing up mother, who was part Mi’kmaq, and my own research later in life. My mother told me many things, including that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children born in the 1940s. As a young adult, I was adopted by Emile Piapot (son of Chief Piapot, Treaty 4 Adhesion signatory), and Clara Starblanket Piapot (daughter of Chief Starblanket, Treaty 4 signatory), in accordance with Cree law and customs. They were kind, loving, and proud to claim me as their own. I love my Piapot family and am so lucky to have them in my life.”
In addition to the written statement Buffy Sainte-Marie shared on X, she posted a video on Instagram further addressing tonight’s documentary, maintaining that she is “a proud member of the Native community with deep roots in Canada.” Her story was defended by descendants of Chief Piapot in a statement published by The Globe and Mail:
We spent our entire lives together with Buffy as a family, decades together, and we will continue to love and support one another. She has been committed to our family and community and has worked tirelessly to inspire, support, uplift our family, and share our community knowledge and ways and those of other Indigenous Peoples all over the world.
We grew up knowing that Buffy and our grandparents [Emile and Clara Starblanket Piapot] adopted each other and how deeply committed and loving they were to one another. We heard from older family about how my grandmother cried when she had to leave after an extended family visit on our homelands or after the pow-wow.
Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could.