The Fifth Estate‘s Geoff Leo has uncovered documented proof that Buffy Saint Marie is not an indigenous Canadian ((Piapot Cree Nation), despite her having claimed decades ago and throughout her life that she was adopted and “probably born” on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan.

Various bios have referred to the 82-year-old Buffy as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq and half-Mi’kmaq. Leo, however, has found her birth certificate, which states that she was born Beverly Jean Santamaria in Stoneham, Massachusetts on 2.20.41. Her parents are/were Albert and Winifred Santamaria.

Buffy is now bonded with other “pretendians” including the late Sacheen Littlefeather, Sen Elizabeth Warren and producer Heather Rae.

Until recently and for over four decades, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been regarded as the first Indigenous Oscar winner for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” from 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman. There goes that distinction!

The Native American community can at least take comfort in the apparent fact that Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone is a genuine member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe. Specigically Gladstone is “of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage and grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation. on her mother’s side of the family she’s a firs cousin, 4 times removed, of 19th Century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. One of Lily’s paternal great-great grandfathers was Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief.