Buffy Sainte-Marie returns Order of Canada, says she never denied having U.S. citizenship – National [Video]

Buffy Sainte-Marie says she has returned her Order of Canada “with a good heart” and reasserts that she never lied about her identity.

In her first statement since she was stripped of the award, the singer-songwriter says that she’s an American citizen and holds a U.S. passport but was adopted as a young adult by a Cree family in Saskatchewan.

She tells The Canadian Press that she “made it completely clear” she was not Canadian to Rideau Hall, as well as to former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau when he invited her to perform for Queen Elizabeth in 1977.

Rideau Hall has not given a reason for terminating her Order of Canada earlier this year. The Governor General’s website says non-Canadians are eligible “if their contributions have brought benefit or honour to Canadians or to Canada.”

Sainte-Marie has also been scrubbed from an exhibit at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rightstitled “human rights …