Oscar-winning artist Buffy Sainte-Marie has honorary degree revoked after faking Indigenous ancestry
An Oscar-winning musician has lost her honorary degree amid fallout after an investigation found she allegedly faked her Indigenous ancestry.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, 85, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the University of Toronto in 2019.
At the time, university officials said she was being recognized for her work in music and the arts, as well as for her advocacy for ‘the rights and dignity of all people.’
But on Wednesday, a governing council at the university voted to rescind Sainte-Marie’s honorary degree following a petition, CBC reports.
The decision marks just the latest honor the singer, who won an Academy Award for co-writing Up Where We Belong, has lost since a 2023 investigation revealed she may have built her entire career on deception.
As Sainte-Marie rose to fame with her anti-war anthems Universal Soldier and Now That the Buffalo’s Gone in the 1970s, she told heartfelt stories about having Mi’kmaq heritage through her adoptive mother.
Yet the CBC revealed that the singer’s birth certificate showed she was actually born Beverly Jean Santamaria to white parents in Massachusetts – not the Cree woman from Saskatchewan’s Piapot First Nation she has claimed to be since the 1960s.
Sainte-Marie has since denied those allegations, as she insisted the investigation into her ancestry included ‘fabricated’ evidence.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, 85, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the University of Toronto in 2019
A 2023 investigation revealed the singer may have faked her Indigenous ancestry
‘My growing up mom, who was proud to be part Mi’kmaq, told me many things, including that I was adopted and that I was native,’ Sainte-Marie said.
‘And later in life, as an adult, she also told me some things that I’ve never shared out of respect for her. That I hate sharing now, including that I may have been born on the wrong side of the blanket.’
The singer went on to claim the CBC relied on fabricated accounts from her brother Alan, who she says sexually abused her, and two estranged family members that she does not know.
‘This has been incredibly re-traumatizing for me and unfair to all involved,’ she said.
‘It hurts me deeply to discover that my estranged family grew up scared of me and thinking these lies because of a letter I sent intended to protect me from further abuse from my brother.’
Sainte-Marie also claimed she had never seen the birth certificate the CBC published before and did not know the family members listed on it.
‘I have never lied about my identity. The more I’ve known, the more I’ve pieced together a sense of self from what information has been available to me,’ she said.
‘What I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my growing up mother, who was of Mi’kmaq heritage, and my own research later in life.
Sainte-Marie won an Academy Award for co-writing Up Where We Belong. Above, holding the award with her then-husband, American composer and producer Jack Nitzsche, in April 1983
‘My mother told me that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation, as was common for Indigenous children at the time.
‘For decades, I tried to find my birth parents and information about my background. Through that research, what became clear, and what I’ve always been honest about: I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents are, and I will never know.
‘Which is why, to be questioned in this way is painful, both for me, and for my two families I love so dearly.’
Sainte-Marie has always described herself as belonging to the Cree tribe, and says she was adopted as a child by a white family as part of the infamous Sixties Scoop, when Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their families and adopted by white parents.
But despite Sainte-Marie’s assertions that she is Indigenous, the singer has lost several of the honors that she once claimed.
Last year, Sainte-Marie was stripped of her prestigious Order of Canada award, which she received in 1997 for her supposed work championing Indigenous causes.
The Order of Canada represents the country’s highest form of recognition for ‘extraordinary contributions to the nation.’
In January, Dalhousie University in Halifax also decided to rescind her honorary degree after a Mi’kmaw student raised questions about the ethics of maintaining the honor.
As Sainte-Marie rose to fame with her anti-war anthem ‘Universal Soldier’ and ‘Now That the Buffalo’s Gone’ in the 1970s, she told heartfelt stories about having Mi’kmaq heritage through her adoptive mother
Sainte-Marie is now just the second person to have their honorary degree from the University of Toronto rescinded since the school created a Standing Committee on Recognition in 2023.
Last year, the school also announced it had rescinded the honorary degree that had been awarded to Duncan Campbell Scott in 1921 in recognition of his contributions to Canadian literature as a poet.
But Scott also worked in the Department of Indian Affairs from 1879 to 1932, serving as deputy superintendent for the last 19 years.
In that role, he pursued assimilation policies like the expansion of Indian Residential Schools and was quoted as saying he wanted to ‘get rid of the Indian problem.’
Audra Simpson, a professor of political anthropology at Columbia University, who is a member of the Kanien’keha:ka from Kahnawa:ke tribe, told CBC she thought the University of Toronto’s decision was long overdue.
She called the revocation of both Sainte-Marie and Campbell’s honorary degrees ‘a just consequence for both him and her, who have both acted on the imperatives of settler colonialism in different ways and in different time periods.
‘I hope it sends a message,’ Simpson said.
