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Although Buffy Sainte-Marie issued a statement, explaining how she is Indigenous (but at the same time not refuting evidence she is white) it appears that Sainte-Marie is another Italian American pretending to be Native American, such as the previous celebrity Pretendian, Iron Eyes Cody. She also appears to be a fake Canadian as well, having been born in Massachusetts and raised in New England.
Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) investigative reporters uncovered her actual heritage on October 27, although as far back as 1972, attempts had been made by other members of Sainte-Marie’s family to inform the public they were white, not Native American. The question remains, how was Sainte-Marie able to maintain and profit from her Pretendian ruse all those years when it was so easy for investigative reporters to ferret out the truth?
In 1962, a young Sainte-Marie went north into Canada, already a noted folk singer with compelling promise. She befriended Cree elders and reiterated to the Vancouver press in 1963 that she had ties to the Piapot First Nation and that she had been adopted by Chief Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket. This was confirmed by relatives of the Cree couple but Sainte-Marie’s assertion she was born on the Cree Reserve and then adopted out to white people as an infant could not be corroborated. What was corroborated by the CBC was that Sainte-Marie was actually born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, in 1941 to white parents, Albert and Winifred Santamaria. Sainte-Marie claimed her biological white parents were her adoptive parents. Beyond the verification of documentation and damning testimony from relatives, a DNA test confirmed that Saint-Marie’s sister was her biological sister and so Saint-Marie’s adoptive parents must be her biological parents. The test concluded that Saint-Marie’s blood sister had “almost no” Native DNA, the only DNA other Natives had that the sister had was foundational DNA common to all peoples across the planet. Sainte-Marie’s biological son, Sheldon Wolfchild, son of a Dakota father, has confirmed she is a “naturalized” Indigenous person, and is not Indigenous by birth.
The most disturbing aspect of the CBC documentary was the history of her family’s attempts to step away from her Pretendian identity. As far back as 1964, in an editorial to the Wakefield Daily Item, Sainte-Marie’s paternal uncle, Arthur Santamaria, stated that Buffy Sainte-Marie “has no Indian blood in her” and “not a bit” of Cree. Her brother Alan also attempted to clarify his sister’s identity in a 1972 letter to the Denver Post, in which he wrote: “… to associate her with the Indian and to accept her as his spokesman is wrong”.
On the set of Sesame Street in 1975, Alan’s daughter said her father was asked by a Sesame Street producer if he was Indigenous because he looked white, and Alan informed the producer that his family was of European ancestry and had no Indigenous blood. A letter was sent to Alan threatening legal actions and said: “We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities.”
A handwritten letter from Buffy accompanied the letter in which she threatened to accuse her brother publicly of sexually abusing her as a child if he brought up her ancestry again.
When the facts prove you are not Indigenous, like they did with Sacheen Littlefeather, the alleged Native woman who turned down Marlon Brando’s best actor award for the Godfather, this does not mean you will lose support from the Native American community. Realizing her predicament, Sainte-Marie released a statement addressing the Pretendian accusation: “All I can say is what I know to be true: I know who I love, I know who loves me. And I know who claims me.”
Unable to refute the hard evidence against her, Sainte-Marie argued that being Indigenous was “her truth,” and that regardless of her actual heritage, she had the support of the grandchildren of her adoptive Cree parents: “Our ways are so beautiful and profoundly inclusive. Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us. We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could.”
The grandchildren also characterized the allegations against Sainte-Marie as being “hurtful, ignorant, colonial and racist,” even though most of those leading the effort to expose her as a Pretendian are Indigenous themselves, the foremost being noted Navajo journalist, Jacqueline Keeler.
Keeler has played a huge role in bringing to light other infamous Pretendians like Rachel Dolezal, Ward Churchill, Rebecca Roanhorse and Sacheen Littlefeather. Before these Pretendians entered the public spotlight, history was full of earlier Pretendians. Some of these people had the identity thrust on them, others thought they were actually Native, but it turned out later, they had been lied to by parents, who perhaps were lied to by their parents. But the deliberate cynical attempt to steal Native identity took center stage first with an Englishman, Archie Belaney, who claimed to be Grey Owl, a half Apache living for some bizarre reason in central Saskatchewan. He was quite famous back in the 1920’s. Parks Canada still honors the man as Canada’s first environmentalist, and it is not that Pretendians aren’t gifted people who contribute to society, they are just liars.
The second major Pretendian was Iron Eyes Cody. This from the APTN Investigates website: “Iron Eyes Cody played a Native American on television quite regularly though he was actually Italian.
Cody is most well-known for a campy 1970s public service announcement that has become commonly referred to as the ‘crying Indian’. He is shown canoeing along until he portages on a rocky beach and walks up to a highway full of traffic where he has trash thrown at him. As he slowly turns his head toward the camera, a single tear streams down his face.”
What is not addressed in Sainte-Marie’s damage control statement, or from any support from others in her statement, is that the facts indicate she has been lying about her heritage for over a half century, and that she has benefited enormously both financially and socially, and she threatened family members with legal action for attempting to distance themselves from her Pretendian ruse.
Whether Sainte-Marie committed a crime with her deception is not something with which previous Pretendians have ever had to contend. Fraud does not seem to come into play as it is hard to directly tie such activity to a victim, at least, not so it can be adjudicated.
(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)
