BU urged to revoke Sainte-Marie honour

Brandon University is being urged to immediately revoke an honorary doctor of music degree given to singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie in 2011.

The request to the BU Senate by Alex Lacharité, who refers to the singer by her birth name Beverley Jean Santamaria, cites a 2023 investigation by the CBC’s “The Fifth Estate” that found her claims to Indigenous ancestry were false.

“She has since been stripped of her Order of Canada and other honours by the Governor General of Canada, honorary degrees from the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, Juno Awards, and the Polaris Prize,” Lacharité wrote in email to the university’s senate, president and other officials on Oct. 25.

“Her actions of assuming the identity of an Indigenous person who was adopted into the United States as part of the ’60s Scoop, generally pretending to be an Indigenous person, and taking awards, space, and opportunities from actual Indigenous people were and are harmful to our society and are morally wrong,” he wrote.

Lacharité declined an interview, but in an email said they are trying to draw attention to the universities that have failed to revoke honorary doctorates and degrees.

“It seems entirely appropriate that these degrees are rescinded, and I hope that Brandon University moves quickly to do so,” Lacharité said in an email to the Sun.

Sainte-Marie is now 85 and has retired from performing.

BU spokesperson Grant Hamilton said the university is not able to share specific information on “deliberations related to honorary degrees,” adding that confidentiality is a “core” part of the process.

The university’s honorary degree committee and senate can revoke degrees if a recipient “engages in actions seriously injurious to the reputation of Brandon University,” a regulations page for the university’s honorary degrees states.

The committee would need a two-thirds vote in favour of revoking the degree, and the senate would also need to approve the move.

“Discussions would be confidential and only a final decision to revoke an honorary degree would be shared — if and when such a (decision) is taken,” Hamilton said in the email.

In April 2011, then-BU president Deborah Poff called Sainte-Marie a “talented, eclectic, internationally renowned artist and activist.”

According to Sainte-Marie’s website, she has honorary doctorates from 15 universities or colleges, 14 of which are in Canada.

Her official website once said she was “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,” The Canadian Press reported last year. Records show she was actually born in Massachusetts.

Sainte-Marie was stripped of the Order of Canada, her Juno awards, Polaris Music Prize and several Hall of Fame inductions in March 2025.

Last year, Sainte-Marie said she never lied about her identity and made it clear she was not Canadian.

The Sun emailed Sainte-Marie’s management team but did not hear back on Wednesday.

Multiple Indigenous and Native Studies professors from different universities weren’t available for interview requests.

» alambert@brandonsun.com