The Canadian Broadcasting Company has launched a documentary and article calling into query the Indigenous heritage of Buffy Sainte-Marie. The embellished singer-songwriter, who launched a preemptive assertion yesterday, maintains that she has Native ancestry, “however there was no documentation as was frequent for Indigenous youngsters born within the 1940’s.”

Based mostly on its documentary collection The Fifth Property, CBC’s report cites members of the artist’s household, in addition to genealogical documentation, to recommend 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 beginning certificates obtained by CBC lists Sainte-Marie’s mother and father as Albert and Winifred Santamaria, the white couple from Massachusetts who Sainte-Marie has mentioned 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 mentioned she was considered one of many Native youngsters faraway from their properties, adopted, and “assigned type of a biography,” in a follow often known as the Sixties Scoop. “So, in lots of instances, adoptive individuals don’t actually know what the true story is.” However the Sixties Scoop, CBC notes, “is widely known to have began in 1951. Sainte-Marie was born in 1941.”

Stoneham’s city clerk, Maria Sagarino, who discovered the beginning certificates, mentioned, “I can say completely with 100 per cent certainty that that is the unique beginning certificates. Beverly Jean Santamaria was born in Stoneham, Mass., at New England Sanatorium and Hospital on Feb. 20, 1941.”

In an e-mail to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s lawyer contended, “Analysis has additionally revealed that youngsters adopted by mother and father in Massachusetts had been generally issued new Massachusetts beginning certificates with the title of their adoptive mother and father.”

Sagarino objected to Sainte-Marie’s lawyer’s assertion, telling CBC, “It doesn’t seem that she was adopted in any manner, form or kind.”

As well as, whereas Sainte-Marie’s lawyer mentioned the musician’s true beginning 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 document on file with the Ministry of Social Providers.”

Elsewhere within the article, Sainte-Marie’s niece Heidi St. Marie informed CBC, “No one apart from Buffy ever talked about Buffy being adopted.” Her cousin Bruce Santamaria mentioned 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 members of the family with authorized motion in the event that they spoke out.