Buffy Sainte Marie-background?

Documents uncovered Friday by CBC-TV’s Fifth Estate and Indigenous researchers showed Sainte-Marie was neither Indigenous nor Canadian, but an Italian-American born Beverley Santamaria on February 20, 1941 in Stoneham, Massachusetts, the daughter of a local electrician. The Santamaria family repeatedly denied Beverley was either Indigenous or adopted, records showed.

Sainte-Marie in an October 26 statement My Truth As I Know It again claimed to have “Indigenous ancestry” that was undocumented “as was common for Indigenous children born in the 1940s.” She did not answer the Massachusetts birth certificate but said her childhood was mysterious.

“I have struggled to answer questions about who I am,” wrote Sainte-Marie. “For a long time I tried to discover information about my background. Through that research what became clear and what I’ve always been honest about is I don’t know where I’m from or who my birth parents are and I will never know.”

Her brother, Alan Sainte-Marie also wrote to newspapers, including the Denver Post in 1972, to clarify that his sister was born to Caucasian parents and that "to associate her with the Indian and to accept her as his spokesman is wrong".[58] Alan's daughter, Heidi Sainte-Marie, claims in 1975 he met Buffy and a PBS producer for Sesame Street while working as a commercial pilot. She claims the producer would later ask her father if he was Indigenous because he did not look like it and her father would clarify they were from European ancestry and not Indigenous.[58] On November 7, 1975, he received a letter from a law firm representing Buffy Sainte-Marie, which said, "We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities" and the letter stated no expense would be spared in pursuing legal remedies.[58] Included with the law firm letter was a handwritten note from Buffy Sainte-Marie claiming she would expose her brother for allegedly sexually abusing her as a child if he continued speaking about her ancestry.[58] He decided to back off from his letter writing campaign afterwards and a month later, on December 9, 1975, Buffy made her first appearance on Sesame Street.[58]