Buffy Sainte-Marie says she never denied having American citizenship, has returned her Order of Canada

Buffy Sainte-Marie is photographed in a Toronto hotel as she promotes her album "Power in the Blood," on Tuesday, May 5, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO — Buffy Sainte-Marie says she has returned her Order of Canada “with a good heart” and reasserts that she never lied about her identity.

In her first statement since she was stripped of the award, the singer-songwriter says that she’s an American citizen and holds a U.S. passport but was adopted as a young adult by a Cree family in Saskatchewan.

She tells The Canadian Press that she “made it completely clear” she was not Canadian to Rideau Hall, as well as to former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau when he invited her to perform for Queen Elizabeth in 1977.

Rideau Hall has not given a reason for terminating her Order of Canada earlier this year. The Governor General’s website says non-Canadians are eligible “if their contributions have brought benefit or honour to Canadians or to Canada.”

Sainte-Marie has also been scrubbed from an exhibit at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights titled “human rights defenders.”

This all comes more than a year after a CBC report questioned Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous heritage after a birth certificate was found that indicated she was born in 1941 in Massachusetts.

In a statement provided Tuesday, Sainte-Marie expresses her “love and gratitude to Canada” and says she’s “overwhelmingly grateful that I’ve been able to make my contribution.”

“It was very lovely to host the medals for awhile, but I return them with a good heart,” she says.

Several Canadian institutions that bestowed honours on the acclaimed musician are grappling with how to proceed given the questions surrounding her Indigenous identity.

Sainte-Marie says she’s “lived with uncertainty” about her parentage and that she investigated the possibility she was born in Canada, but still doesn’t know.

Family members in the U.S. told CBC that Sainte-Marie was not adopted and doesn’t have Indigenous ancestry.

Sainte-Marie’s new statement says the report “didn’t interview anybody who knew me or my growing-up mother but instead constructed a false narrative and then asked people to comment on it.”

CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson says that the broadcaster stands by its reporting.

Rideau Hall did not immediately return a request for comment.

Sainte-Marie says her Cree family “adopted me forever and this will never change.”

“People in Canada have been so nice to me, particularly the arts community, and I’ve been so honored by this acceptance, I have truly felt ‘adopted’ by Canada although I can see today that not everybody in Canada sees it that way.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2025.

Article written by David Friend, The Canadian Press