Buffy Sainte-Marie

Singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator, social activist, and philanthropist, born February 20, 1941 in Stoneham, Mass.

At times she has self-identified as Cree and stated she was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, to an indigenous family, but averred that her Canadian birth certificate from back then was lost or destroyed. She came under fire in late 2023 for allegedly manufacturing this indigenous background and hiding her Massachusetts birth to white parents of Italian ancestry, according to a CBC documentary that found her original 1941 U.S. birth certificate. Sainte-Marie’s Order of Canada appointment was terminated by an ordinance signed by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon on January 3, 2025; no reason was given for the termination.

She came up in the Greenwich Village scene in New York in the 1960s and her music has generally been categorized as folk and traditional music (although she did record one mostly-country album in Nashville: "I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again".) She won an Oscar in the mid-1980s for co-writing the hit "Up Where We Belong" for the "Officer And A Gentleman" film soundtrack.