Canada Post paid a philatelic tribute to one of the country’s top singer-songwriters on Nov. 18, when it released its second final issue of the year honouring Buffy Sainte-Marie. Although uncertain of her origins, Sainte-Marie believes she was born in February 1941 on the Piapot Cree First Nation in Qu’Appelle Valley, Sask. According to the 2018 book, Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography, which Sainte-Marie co-authored with Andrea Warner, the future star was taken from her home as a precursor to the “Sixties Scoop,” which from 1951 through the 1960s saw the widespread removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities. Like Sainte-Marie, many Sixties Scoop victims were adopted into “predominantly non-Indigenous, middle-class families across the United States and Canada,” adds the Canadian Encyclopedia. “It had been going on for generations where native children were removed from the home,” Sainte-Marie told the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) in 2018. “What happens to children who are kind of lost in the system like that, they’re assigned a birthday, they’re assigned kind of a biography. So in many cases, adopted people don’t really know what the true story is.” Continue reading →
Canada Post featured long-time Canadian artist Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose life and career are the focus of a forthcoming documentary, on a new commemorative stamp and official first-day cover (shown) on Nov. 18.
