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By Tom Fennario
Oct 26, 2023
''In anticipation of the documentary, Sainte-Marie posted a written and video statement online.
“For 60 years I’ve been sharing my story as I know it,” says Sainte-Marie in a video statement. “I count myself lucky to have two families, my growing up family, who are wonderful, and my Piapot family, who are also wonderful. But there are also many things I don’t know.”
That’s not new. In a 2018 authorized biography, Sainte-Marie is quoted as saying “… we never have known.”
In her statement, the singer-songwriter says she is traumatized by the questions about her Indigenous ancestry.
“To relive those times, and revisit questions I made peace with decades ago, has been beyond traumatic,” she wrote. “What I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my growing up mother [Winifred Sainte-Marie], who was part Mi’kmaq, and my own research later in life. My mother told me many things, including that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children born in the 1940s.”
Her online bio says, “Buffy Sainte-Marie is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and taken from her biological parents when she was an infant.” She was then “adopted by a visibly white couple and raised in Maine and Massachusetts.”
In her statement to the media, Sainte-Marie adds: “Later in my life, as an adult, she [Winifred Sainte-Marie] told me some things I have never shared out of respect for her that I hate sharing now, that I may have been born on ‘the wrong side of the blanket.’ This was her story to tell, not mine.”
Oct 26, 2023
''In anticipation of the documentary, Sainte-Marie posted a written and video statement online.
“For 60 years I’ve been sharing my story as I know it,” says Sainte-Marie in a video statement. “I count myself lucky to have two families, my growing up family, who are wonderful, and my Piapot family, who are also wonderful. But there are also many things I don’t know.”
That’s not new. In a 2018 authorized biography, Sainte-Marie is quoted as saying “… we never have known.”
In her statement, the singer-songwriter says she is traumatized by the questions about her Indigenous ancestry.
“To relive those times, and revisit questions I made peace with decades ago, has been beyond traumatic,” she wrote. “What I know about my Indigenous ancestry I learned from my growing up mother [Winifred Sainte-Marie], who was part Mi’kmaq, and my own research later in life. My mother told me many things, including that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children born in the 1940s.”
Her online bio says, “Buffy Sainte-Marie is believed to have been born in 1941 on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and taken from her biological parents when she was an infant.” She was then “adopted by a visibly white couple and raised in Maine and Massachusetts.”
In her statement to the media, Sainte-Marie adds: “Later in my life, as an adult, she [Winifred Sainte-Marie] told me some things I have never shared out of respect for her that I hate sharing now, that I may have been born on ‘the wrong side of the blanket.’ This was her story to tell, not mine.”
