The Canadian Broadcasting Company has launched a documentary and article calling into query the Indigenous heritage of Buffy Sainte-Marie. The adorned singer-songwriter, who launched a preemptive assertion yesterday, maintains that she has Native ancestry, “however there was no documentation as was widespread for Indigenous kids born within the 1940’s.”
Based mostly on its documentary sequence The Fifth Property, CBC’s report cites members of the artist’s household, in addition to genealogical documentation, to counsel that Sainte-Marie’s “story is constructed on an elaborate fabrication.” Her account of her ancestry, CBC provides, “has been a shifting narrative, stuffed with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.”
A start certificates obtained by CBC lists Sainte-Marie’s dad and mom as Albert and Winifred Santamaria, the white couple from Massachusetts who Sainte-Marie has stated adopted her. The certificates is signed by the identical physician who delivered Sainte-Marie’s sister, Lainey, in 1948.
In a 2018 interview, Sainte-Marie stated she was considered one of many Native kids faraway from their houses, adopted, and “assigned sort of a biography,” in a observe often called the Sixties Scoop. “So, in lots of instances, adoptive folks don’t actually know what the true story is.” However the Sixties Scoop, CBC notes, “is well known to have began in 1951. Sainte-Marie was born in 1941.”
Stoneham’s city clerk, Maria Sagarino, who discovered the start certificates, stated, “I can say completely with 100 per cent certainty that that is the unique start certificates. Beverly Jean Santamaria was born in Stoneham, Mass., at New England Sanatorium and Hospital on Feb. 20, 1941.”
In an electronic mail to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s lawyer contended, “Analysis has additionally revealed that kids adopted by dad and mom in Massachusetts had been generally issued new Massachusetts start certificates with the identify of their adoptive dad and mom.”
Sagarino objected to Sainte-Marie’s lawyer’s assertion, telling CBC, “It doesn’t seem that she was adopted in any approach, form or kind.”
As well as, whereas Sainte-Marie’s lawyer stated the musician’s true start certificates was destroyed by Canadian governments, the federal government for the province of Saskatchewan informed CBC, “All adoptions that occurred throughout the province of Saskatchewan have an adoption file on file with the Ministry of Social Providers.”
Elsewhere within the article, Sainte-Marie’s niece Heidi St. Marie informed CBC, “No person apart from Buffy ever talked about Buffy being adopted.” Her cousin Bruce Santamaria stated his household denied Sainte-Marie’s declare that she was adopted, and believed her declare to Indigenous ancestry was a publicity stunt. He added that his household informed tales of Buffy Sainte-Marie threatening relations with authorized motion in the event that they spoke out.