Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped of Honorary Degree Over Native American Ancestry Dispute
What To Know
- The University of Toronto rescinded Buffy Sainte-Marie’s honorary degree due to ongoing disputes over her claimed Indigenous Cree ancestry.
- It came after a 2023 documentary revealed her birth certificate and family testimony.
- Sainte-Marie has maintained that she has never lied about her identity.
Buffy Sainte-Marie — the Oscar-winning folk singer who claims to be an Indigenous woman of Cree descent — was recently stripped of an honorary degree over an ancestry dispute.
On Wednesday, May 13, the University of Toronto announced that it had rescinded Sainte-Marie’s honorary Doctor of Laws degree. She received the honor in 2019 for her “excellence in the arts, as a singer-songwriter, actress and visual artist.”
The decision, approved on May 13, came more than two years after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired a documentary from The Fifth Estate alleging that Sainte-Marie lied about her Native American ancestry. In it, a birth certificate indicated that she was born in Massachusetts to Italian-American parents. Family members also confirmed this.
However, Sainte-Marie, 85, insisted in March 2025 that although she is an American citizen with a U.S. passport, she was adopted as a young adult by a Cree family.
In November 2023, Billboard Canada published a statement from Sainte-Marie, just two months after she announced her retirement from live performances. “I have never lied about my identity,” she insisted. “The more I’ve known, the more I’ve pieced together a sense of self from what information has been available to me.”
Sainte-Marie continued, “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. 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.”
After detailing how she was adopted into a Cree family as an adult, she admitted, “I have always struggled to answer questions about who I am. For decades, I tried to find my birth parents and information about my background.”
Sainte-Marie explained, “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.”
Conversation14 Comments
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J
She related to Elizabeth Warren
54
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L
She ginned up the indigenous ancestry to take advantage of the 1960s renewed interest in First Nation citizens. It was a clever way to stand out from the rank and file folk music crowd she was trying to make her mark on. She got away with it for decades, and reaped fame and renown for it, until it all caught up with her. Oopsie!
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S
What is it with liberals….they are comfortable in their own skin so they have to make up who they are.
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T
She also fibbed or at least fails to correct her Oscar story. Jack Nitzsche asked her to write a song for the film Officer and a Gentleman, so she took an existing melody and wrote words to it. After several tries, Joel Sill of Paramount ended her involvement and brought in Will Jennings, who wrote the famous lyrics to Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong. He used bits and pieces of Nitzsche’s themes and interstitials to build the arrangement. Ultimately, none of Saint-Marie’s musical ideas were used, although she received writing credit for the phrase Up Where We Belong, which was the title of the original unrelated lyrics to the unrelated, unfinished song she attempted to finish for Nitzsche. So she received an Oscar for four words.
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N
She's a liberal. They are the worst people on the planet
16
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T
The worst people are conservatives, the main one is the POTUS. He has done everything in his power to destroy democracy and the economy. Have you put gas in your car lately?
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A
She's a fake and was "found out." I have indigenous friends who despise her fraud. They believe she took advantage of their heritage. They're glad that the truth was revealed.
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M
You can run, but you can't hide from the dna truth!
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R
Grifters gonna grift.
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J
Hey everybody, I’m Italian. Isn’t that weird?
5
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M
What if she "identifies" as indigenous Cree?
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E
Although she may have allegedly misrepresented her origins, Buffy Saint-Marie has done more to advance the story of the indigenous peoples of America through song, than any other artist. For that I commend her. There seems to be a two-tiered system at play here when Senator Warren lied about her Indian ancestry for years, and profited from it in many ways. She still serves in Congress.
It was not an easy job for her to rise to stardom; she poured her heart and soul into telling the story of the Cree, and this is how she is treated.
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G
Isn't Native American history all oral? What makes her's less genuine?
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T
The fact that native history between 7000BC and 1492AD precluded any foreign ancestry. So a native 5000 years ago could not possibly be lying about their full blood ancestry. Whereas she clearly is lying. Maybe she herself was told the lie as a child, which her white family disputes, but certainly today she knows it is a lie.
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