Huffy Buffy Sainte-Marie, Is She Cree, or Who She Be?

Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie (b. 1941) was back in the news just a couple of weeks ago, and I bet she’s glad that we’re living under a tsunami of catastrophic headlines, for hers was bad news.

Before we get to the that contretemps though, a little primer on who she is, for the benefit of young ‘uns and non-folks fans. Sainte-Marie emerged from the Canadian folk scene which also gave us Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot,Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. Her first LP It’s My Way! arrived in 1964, containing songs like the anti-war “Universal Soldier”, which was covered by Donovan; the widely covered “Cod’ine”, and most notably perhaps “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone”. Most people who know about Buffy St. Marie have thought about her as “the Native American folk-singer,” with a natural assumption perhaps as well that she was part-Quebecois, having that French name, and all. She came along right at the moment when there was vogue for Native American rights. Around this time, there were records like As Long as the Grass Shall Grow: Peter La Farge Sings of the Indians (1963), and Johnny Cash’s 1964 Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. For most of her career, Sainte-Marie’s repertoire was actually pretty diverse, including blues and traditional folk classics alongside the occasion song with a Native American themed number. But she was widely known as an activist for Native American rights.

She was not exactly a chart topper, but critics praised her to the skies, she won many awards, and she was presented off on television. I certainly remember my friends’ liberal parents having her LPs in their collections. Her highest charting single was “Mister Can’t You See”, which went to #38 in 1972. She’s also known for the theme song to the revisionist western Soldier Blue (1970), about the Sand Creek massacre, and “Circle Game”, which was used in the movie The Strawberry Statement (1970) and the tv show Then Came Bronson (1969-70). From 1975 to 1981 she presented Native American related segments to children on Sesame Street. She scored the 1979 movie Spirit of the Wind starring Chief Dan George. And in 1982 she had was probably her greatest success when a song she cowrote “Up Where We Belong” was recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes and used as the theme to the music to the hit movie An Officer and a Gentleman.

But the main theme of her career, through oft-covered songs that she wrote, and films she contributed to, and benefit concerts she participated in, to out and out protest and advocacy, was that she was a kind of poster girl for Native American culture. And the public can perhaps be forgiven for having the impression that she is of indigenous heritage. It’s been more than implied throughout the decades, and she has reinforced the impression that she is of Cree heritage. But the truth turned out to be more complicated than that. And I will double down on that. Complicated. Me personally, it’s not the sort of thing I would knock myself into a tizzy about. I can see certain people being outraged, others being hurt, but most people really shouldn’t bother their pretty heads about it. It’s show biz.

The truth is, Sainte-Marie was ADOPTED into the Cree tribe. As an adult. In 1964. In reality she’s half Italian, half Anglo and was raised in Wakefield, Mass., about a half hour west of Salem. Her original last name was rendered Santamaria; the family changed it during World War Two to distance themselves from a guy named Mussolini. She went to Amherst and began singing folk songs, and that’s where and when the myth arose that she herself was Native American, and she just went with it. The list of entertainers who gave out phony stories about their backgrounds is long. Only a couple of years before Sainte-Marie was signed, Bob Dylan was joshing along reporters with tales of being a rail-riding hobo and a guy who’d studied at the feet of Delta bluesmen. Sainte-Marie’s relatives and others have reportedly attempted many times to make the press aware of the subterfuge since the very beginning, but apparently the powers-that-be liked Buff’s narrative better. And she fought hard to make the whistle blowers stay silent. Meanwhile, she continued to get bookings on the strength of the fraudulent identity, and things like awards and grants and honorary degrees.

On the other hand, she has advocated so strongly and so effectively for Native American rights that surely it complicates the picture. And technically, she is a Cree. She can say that she is. Whites have been adopted into tribes many, many times. In fact, I’ve written about two of them, distant relatives of mine, on this very blog. (For the record, they are William Holland Thomas, chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee; and Cynthia Ann Parker, whose capture by Comanches became the basis of the movie The Searchers). If people from other lands become naturalized Americans, the opposite process ought to be true as well — short of colonialism, at any rate. The giving of oneself: that is good; it’s the taking that is bad. And we are also reminded that there is an actual history of what might be called “redface minstrelsy”, starting in the days of Indian medicine shows, and continuing in stage plays and Hollywood movies. And remember the controversy around Nkechi Amare Diallo (Rachel Anne Dolezal), that white woman who “identified as black”?

The jig was up in the wake of the award-winning documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On (2022). The CBC dug into her past, got the goods and delivered them in a 2023 tv special. Just a couple of weeks ago the Canadian government announced that they had rescinded the Order of Canada medal they had bestowed upon her in 2019. Indian Givers! (Sorry! Sorry! I said I’m sorry!)

To complicate matters, when the news broke Sainte-Marie leaned on another claim: that she was actually Mi’qmak, and that she had been adopted by her parents. She even had the temerity to declare: “My mother told me that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children at the time…I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents are, and I will never know…I have never known if my birth certificate was real”. Which was satisfactorily refuted by in a roundabout way by DNA. Her sister’s DNA revealed “almost no Native American ancestry”…while also showing a close genetic relationship to Buffy’s son. Asked and answered.

Naturally, certain people are pissed. If I were a songwriter of Native American heritage and some middle class American woman from Amherst walked off with an opportunity I deemed to be mine, you bet I’d be angry. As would I if I’d embarrassed myself by pinning a ribbon on her lapel. And if I were part of her actual family, I’d also be hurt. I get all that. But I have to confess I myself can’t bring myself to judge Buffy Sainte-Marie. The path she chose took her very far in show business. And again, she was genuinely adopted into a tribe 60 years ago. I think her best play would be to set up some kind of scholarship or charity of something for ethnic Native Americans. That is, if she hasn’t already done something like that. And if she has, maybe she should do it again. And, um, retire? Change her name? Sing Italian opera?

For more on the history of show business,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.