UPDATE: Fallout from Buffy Sainte-Marie‘s confirmation that she is not a Canadian citizen continues as two of the country’s most prestigious arts honors have been rescinded.
According to the CBC today, the singer-songwriter’s Polaris Music Prizes and Juno Awards will be rescinded because she is not Canadian. Sainte-Marie won the Polaris Music Prize in 2015 for her album Power in the Blood, and the Polaris Heritage Prize in 2020 for her 1964 album It’s My Way!.
“The Polaris Music Prize recognizes and celebrates artistic excellence in Canada,” the Polaris organization said in a statement. “Our eligibility criteria requires all nominees to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, with proof of status provided through government-issued documentation, including passports, birth certificates, permanent resident cards, and/or secure certificates of Indian Status.”
The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that runs the Juno Awards, announced today that it will revoke Sainte-Marie’s seven Juno Awards as well as her 1994 induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
Sainte-Marie’s heritage has come under question since a 2023 CBC TV investigation. Last month, after being stripped of an Order of Canada honor, the singer-songwriter confirmed that she is an American citizen but was adopted as a young adult by a Cree family in Saskatchewan.
PREVIOUS, February 10: Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Canadian-American singer with a large and devoted following of fans and who won a Best Song Oscar for “Up Where We Belong,” has had her prestigious Order of Canada honor terminated following an investigation into her heritage that indicates she is not Indigenous as she has long claimed.
The termination was noted in a terse announcement in the federal government’s official publication Canada Gazette posted over the weekend. “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 on January 3, 2025.” The date of the announcement was February 8, 2025.
Long considered one of Canada’s great musical heroes on par with Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, Sainte-Marie’s troubles began when a CBC TV investigation in 2023 revealed that the white parents she for decades had claimed were her adopted parents are, in fact, her birth parents. The singer-songwriter was born in 1941 in Massachusetts.
Sainte-Marie’s Order of Canada was appointed in 1997.
At the time when the CBC documentary aired, Sainte-Marie said, “Being an ‘Indian’ has little to do with sperm tracking and colonial record keeping: it has to do with community, culture, knowledge, teachings, who claims you, who you love, who loves you and who’s your family.”
Among her many songs is “Up Where We Belong,” which she cowrote with Jack Nitzsche and Will Jennings and which won the Academy Award in 1983. The song appeared in the film An Officer and a Gentleman.
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