Buffy Sainte-Marie to Lose Juno Award Honors Following Indigenous Ancestry Investigation

American singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has been stripped of more Canadian music awards and honors.

On Friday, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences said it was revoking the Juno Awards and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame prizes earlier given to the Oscar winner. The move follows a 2023 investigation by the CBC’s The Fifth Estate series that alleged Sainte-Marie had been fraudulently posing as Native throughout her 60-year career.

The singer-songwriter earlier this week confirmed she had returned her Order of Canada honor – the country’s highest civilian honor – after she confirmed she’s an American citizen and holds a U.S. passport, but insisted she had been adopted as a young adult by a Cree family in Saskatchewan. In a statement, CARAS confirmed Sainte-Marie was American, making her ineligible for Canadian music prizes and honors.

“Following a thorough review, consultations with the CARAS Indigenous Music Advisory Committee, and in light of recent information, including Ms. Sainte-Marie’s confirmation that she is not Canadian, CARAS will revoke Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Juno Awards and Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction in accordance with its eligibility requirements,” the Juno Awards organizer stated.

Sainte-Marie, in 1982, won an Oscar for best original song for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” as part of the score for the movie An Officer and a Gentleman. She shared the trophy with lyricist Will Jennings and co-writer Jack Nitzsche.

Her authorized biography stated she was born in 1941 on Cree land in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and removed from her birth family and adopted by a white American family, the Sainte-Maries, as part of a notorious government policy known as the Sixties Scoop.

But the CBC show claimed it had found Sainte-Marie’s purported birth certificate, which stated that she was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to Albert and Winifred Santamaria, her supposed adoptive parents, who are listed as white.

Also on Friday, organizers of the prestigious Polaris Music Prize announced they had revoked two awards earlier given to Sainte-Marie after confirmation that she was not a Canadian citizen.