An honorary degree awarded to Buffy Sainte-Marie by the University of Toronto has been revoked.
In a bulletin posted to its website, the school said the revocation was a result of a petition sent to its standing committee on recognition in 2025.
“The Committee unanimously recommended the rescindment of the honorary degree awarded to Buffy Sainte-Marie,” it said of the degree which was given to her in 2019. The details of the petition, and the reasoning behind the committee’s decision, were not revealed publicly.
The musician, whose claimed Indigenous identity was central to her rise in the ‘60s folk scene, has faced questions about her heritage following a 2023 CBC investigation which suggested she is of Italian-American descent and was born in Massachusetts.
She was also stripped of the Order of Canada in 2025.
The 85-year-old singer has denied the accusations.
Sainte-Marie previously claimed 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.”
In response to losing the Order of Canada, Sainte-Marie said she never denied her U.S. citizenship and defended her Indigenous identity by stating her “Cree family adopted me forever and this will never change.”
Her family members in the U.S. told the CBC that Sainte-Marie was not adopted and doesn’t have Indigenous ancestry.
She has not publicly responded to the revocation of her honorary degree.
With files from The Canadian Press
