Oscar-Winning Canadian Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped of Honors After Allegedly Lying About Indigenous Heritage
by Warner Todd Huston
Officials have stripped Oscar-Winning Canadian Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie of her Order of Canada honor after years of controversy over her false claims of indigenous heritage.
It was revealed on Saturday that the 83-year-old singer was stripped of one of Canada’s highest civilian honors, which celebrates an honoree’s “extraordinary contributions to the nation.”
Sainte-Marie, who won an Academy Award in 1982 for co-writing the soundtrack song Up Where We Belong, had received the Canadian honor in 1997.
But over the weekend, the Canadian government rescinded the award in a curt notice published on the Canada Gazette.
In his message, Secretary General of the Order of Canada Ken MacKillop wrote, “Notice is hereby given that the appointment of Buffy Sainte-Marie to the Order of Canada was terminated by Ordinance signed by the Governor General [Mary Simon] on January 3, 2025.”
Sainte-Marie has made a 60-year career out of claims of Native heritage even as evidence continued to suggest she was born to a white family in the US. An extensive 2023 expose of her false claims stirred the controversy to a high pitch by following all the evidence that seemed to prove she has been peddling false claims for decades.