Buffy Saint-Marie’s Order of Canada designation has been rescinded, in line with a press release printed yesterday (February 8) within the Canada Gazette, the Canadian Authorities’s official newspaper. It reads: “Discover is hereby on condition that the appointment of Buffy Sainte-Marie to the Order of Canada was terminated by Ordinance signed by the Governor Common on January 3, 2025.”
Saint-Marie, who rose to prominence within the Nineteen Sixties as a singer-songwriter and early digital music innovator, was initially Officer of the Order of Canada in 1997, and promoted to the title of Companion in 2017. Nevertheless, a 2023 documentary collection and report launched by the Canadian Broadcasting Firm (CBC) known as Saint-Marie’s Indigenous heritage into query when a start certificates obtained by CBC listed her mother and father as a white couple from Massachusetts. She had beforehand claimed she was born on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Canada’s Saskatchewan province.
In response, Saint-Marie shared a number of video and print statements. “I’ve at all times struggled to reply questions on who I’m,” she wrote in November 2023. “For many years, I attempted to seek out my start mother and father and details about my background. By way of that analysis what turned clear, and what I’ve at all times been trustworthy about: I don’t know the place I’m from or who my start mother and father are, and I’ll by no means know. Which is why, to be questioned on this means is painful, each for me, and for my two households I like so dearly.” Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Saint-Marie for remark.
