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

David Friend · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Mar 04, 2025 3:11 PM EST | Last Updated: March 4

Buffy Sainte-Marie says she has returned her Order of Canada "with a bully heart" and reasserts that she ne'er lied astir her identity.

In her archetypal connection since she was stripped of the award, the singer-songwriter says that she's an American national and holds a U.S. passport, but was adopted arsenic a young big by a Cree household successful Saskatchewan.

She told The Canadian Press that she "made it wholly clear" she was not Canadian to Rideau Hall, arsenic good arsenic to erstwhile premier curate Pierre Elliott Trudeau erstwhile helium invited her to execute for Queen Elizabeth successful 1977.

Rideau Hall has not fixed a crushed for terminating her Order of Canada earlier this year. The Governor General's website says non-Canadians are eligible "if their contributions person brought payment oregon honour to Canadians oregon to Canada."

Sainte-Marie has besides been scrubbed from an grounds astatine Winnipeg's Canadian Museum for Human Rights titled "human rights defenders."

This each comes much than a twelvemonth aft a CBC study questioned Sainte-Marie's Indigenous heritage aft a commencement certificate was recovered that indicated she was calved successful 1941 successful Massachusetts.

In a connection provided Tuesday, Sainte-Marie expresses her "love and gratitude to Canada" and says she's "overwhelmingly grateful that I've been capable to marque my contribution."

"It was precise beauteous to big the medals for awhile, but I instrumentality them with a bully heart," she says.

Several Canadian institutions that bestowed honours connected the acclaimed instrumentalist are grappling with however to proceed fixed the questions surrounding her Indigenous identity.

Sainte-Marie says she's "lived with uncertainty" astir her parentage and that she investigated the anticipation she was calved successful Canada, but inactive doesn't know.

Family members successful the U.S. told CBC that Sainte-Marie was not adopted and doesn't person Indigenous ancestry.

Sainte-Marie's caller connection says the study "didn't interrogation anybody who knew maine oregon my growing-up parent but alternatively constructed a mendacious communicative and past asked radical to remark connected it."

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

Rideau Hall did not instantly instrumentality a petition for comment.

Sainte-Marie says her Cree household "adopted maine everlastingly and this volition ne'er change."

"People successful Canada person been truthful bully to me, peculiarly the arts community, and I've been truthful honoured by this acceptance, I person genuinely felt 'adopted' by Canada though I tin spot contiguous that not everybody successful Canada sees it that way."