Local Music Spotlight
Recently, CBC television’s weekly investigative program The Fifth Estate dropped a bombshell on Canadian culture when it provided irrefutable evidence that celebrated Canadian Indigenous musician and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie was neither Canadian nor Indigenous. Birth records, a family insurance policy dating back to her youth, and a marriage license revealed that Buffy, or Beverley as she was named, was born in Massachusetts to a white family of Italian origin with the surname Santamaria.
I had the pleasure of spending several days with Buffy in Vancouver about 15 years ago as the writer for a BRAVO television documentary entitled Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multi-Media Life. She was extremely gracious, generous, and open as I asked questions about her life and career. We met up several times after that and she was the epitome of grace and approachability. Her story of being born on the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan and adopted as an infant by an American family who raised her in rural Massachusetts was deeply ingrained in her narrative for more than 60 years. I had no reason to doubt the veracity of her story. After all, she was an icon of the highest magnitude and beyond reproach and held in the highest esteem.
While we were in Vancouver conducting interviews for the documentary, Buffy briefly met my wife, Harriett. As we were passing through the hotel foyer, I introduced Harriett to Buffy. The encounter couldn’t have been more than two or three minutes. Some six months later, my wife and I were walking down the backstage corridor of Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall following a performance by Buffy. As we approached her, Buffy called out, “Harriett, so nice to see you again!” It was a sincere welcome and made us both feel special. That’s the kind of warmth and class Buffy exuded with everyone.
When the documentary was previewed at the annual Manito Ahbee celebrations at the Bell MTS Centre, I was there seated with Buffy. In the intervening years I have interviewed her for newspaper articles on her CD releases.
Watching The Fifth Estate I was overcome with a sense of betrayal. Not just to me personally but to Canada and, more significantly, to Indigenous peoples everywhere who regarded Buffy Sainte-Marie as a hero. For many years she was the lone voice speaking out for Indigenous cultures and almost single-handedly pushed the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) to create a long-overdue Indigenous (titled Aboriginal) Music category at the annual Juno Awards. She has received dozens of music awards including a recent Polaris Music Prize, is a companion to The Order of Canada, Academy Award recipient, and has been feted worldwide for her pioneering work connecting young Indigenous students in remote areas with their counterparts in urban centres across North America through her Cradleboard project. Her groundbreaking appearances on Sesame Street introduced a generation of young people to North American Indigenous cultures.
In recent years, I have been privileged to meet and write about many Indigenous musicians here in Manitoba. To a person, they held Buffy up as a role model and a hero.
The evidence presented on The Fifth Estate exposed Buffy as a fraud who engaged in a calculated deceit for decades. Personal letters were shown revealing she had threatened her brother with destroying him both legally and publicly if he ever dared to reveal the truth of her birth and race. Clearly, she burned her familial bridges long ago.
The reality is that Buffy’s life is a lie perpetrated on the very people who loved, respected, and supported her. There have been ample opportunities in her 60-year career to “come clean” on her falsehoods but instead she continually modified her story, doubling down, obfuscating and waffling. Her defense has been to state that she does not know the details of her birth, presented for so many years is “my truth”. I find it disingenuous that Buffy cites “my truth” to deflect from what is clearly “the truth”.
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the evidence provided in The Fifth Estate episode. I do not subscribe to anti-CBC conspiracy theories. What the episode presented shook me to my core. I remain troubled by these revelations, especially in her treatment of her birth family. Whether or not she was adopted as an adult into an Indigenous Canadian family, as she claims, cannot obscure the facts of her non-Indigenous, non-Canadian birth.
That, to me, is unforgiveable and all her great works are now stained by dishonesty. I cannot excuse or ignore her deceit when measured against the good she has done. When I contemplate all the honours and awards bestowed on her over several decades based on false claims of being an Indigenous Canadian, it is heartbreaking to consider all those legitimate Indigenous Canadian artists who were passed over in the rush to celebrate a fake. They are the true heroes and pioneers, not “Pretendians”.
I have loved Buffy Sainte-Marie’s music since first hearing her in 1964 and I have a deep appreciation of her many accomplishments and contributions to Indigenous peoples everywhere. But I can no longer respect her and that hurts more than you can ever understand.
