Buffy Sainte-Marie

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Buffy Sainte-Marie (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American singer-songwriter, composer, educator, pacifist, and social activist.

Her career has concentrated on problems facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Her singing and writing collection also includes topics of passion, war, faith, and mistrust.

She has received acclaim for her music, as well as her work in education and social activism.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar in 1983.

An Officer and a Gentleman was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational program devoted to better understanding Native Americans in 1997.

Personal life

Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, to Cree parents. She was arrested as an infant as part of the government's effort to remove Native children from their parents and give or sell them to white families. She was adopted by Americans, Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi'kmaq descent. She obtained degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy, as well as graduating among the top ten students in her class.

She was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by Chief Piapot's youngest son, Emile Piapot, and his partner, Clara Starblanket Piapot, who contributed to Sainte-Marie's cultural prominence and position in indigenous history in 1964.

She married surfing instructor Dewain Bugbee of Hawaii in 1968; they divorced in 1971. Sheldon Wolfchild, a Minnesota girl, was born in 1975, and the couple's son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild, has been born. The marriage ended in divorce. On March 19, 1982, she married Jack Nitzsche in "Up Where We Belong" and they will remain together for seven years. Sainte-Marie has characterized their relationship as invasive and coerced, and they eventually left LA due to a fear for her and her son's safety. She also blames Nitzsche for her career's stagnation at this time. She returned to Hawaii, where it has been her primary home ever since.

Though she isn't a Baháhu, she has been an active member of the Bahá' Faith and has appeared at concerts, conferences, and conventions of the faith. She appeared in the cultural preview to the Bahá's World Congress in 1992, as part of a double concert "Live Unity: The Sound of the World" with video broadcast and documentary. Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show describing the Bahá's teaching of progressive revelation. She appeared in Douglas John Cameron's 1985 film Mona With The Children. However, although she favors a universal understanding of faith, she does not subscribe to any particular faith.

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Career

Sainte-Marie played piano and guitar, and she was self-taught in her childhood and teenage years. "Ananias," the Indian lament "Now That the Buffalo's Gone," and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (a cover of a Hindi Bollywood song "Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere) sung by the Indian singer Mohammed Rafi from the 1960 film Barsaat Ki Raat) were already in her repertoire in college.

She was touring alone, learning her craft, playing in numerous concert halls, folk music festivals, and First Nations reservations throughout the United States, Canada, and other countries by 1962. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-'60s folk scene, often alongside other young Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. (She also introduced Mitchell to Elliot Roberts, who later became Joni's boss).

Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine in 1963, after recovering from a throat infection, and the study became the foundation of her song "Cod'ine," which was later covered by Donovan, Janis Joplin, the Charges, Jimmy Gilmer, Gram Parsons, and Courtney Love. She saw wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War in 1963 at a time when the US government was refusing to participate, and her debut album "Universal Soldier" was released on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell.

She was then named Best New Artist by Billboard magazine. "Now That The Buffalo's Gone" (1964) and "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, which were included on her 1966 album) caused controversy at the time. Fire & Fleet & Candlelight, which featured her interpretation of the classic Yorkshire dialect song "Lyke Wake Dirge," was released in 1967. "Mister Can't You See" (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972), "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"), and the movie Soldier Blue's theme tune were among Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs. She appeared in Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest (1965) and many Canadian television shows from the 1960s to the 1990s, including American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; 1966; "Tender Grass" (written by Joni Mitchell) performed and acted.

She made the album Illuminations in the late 1960s with a Buchla synthesizer, which did not get much attention. It was the first fully quadraphonic electronic vocal album.

She appeared in "The Heritage" episode of The Virginian, the first episode to air on October 30, 1968. She was born as a Shoshone girl who had been sent to be trained at school.

Sainte-Marie was contacted by Sesame Street's Dulcy Singer in late 1975 to appear on the program for a one-shot guest appearance. Sainte-Marie told Singer that she had no intention in doing a children's television show but that she reconsidered after asking, "Have you done any Native American programming?" Singer wanted her to count and recite the alphabet, but Buffy wanted to inform the show's young viewers that "Indians still exist." Over a five-year span from 1976 to 1981, she appeared on Sesame Street regularly. During a 1977 episode, Sainte-Marie breastfed her first son, Dakota "Cody" Wolfchild, which is believed to be the first representation of breastfeeding on television. Alaina Reed, who played Olivia Robinson on the program, was her closest friend from the Sesame Street cast members.

Spirit of the Wind, a 1979 film festival that featured Sainte-Marie's original musical score, as well as "Spirit of the Wind," was one of three entries this year. The film is a docudrama about George Attla, the "winning dog musher of all time," as the film depicts him, with all parts played by Native Americans except one by Slim Pickens. In the early 1980s, the film was first seen on cable television and then released in France in 2003.

Sainte-Marie began using Apple II and Macintosh computers in 1981 to record her music and later some of her fine art. Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes produced the film An Officer and a Gentleman, which Sainte-Marie co-wrote with Will Jennings and musician Jack Nitzsche. In 1982, it received the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Jennings, Nitzsche, and Sainte-Marie received the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song on January 29, 1983. In 1984, they also received the BAFTA Best Original Song award for Best Original Song. The song appeared on the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001, ranking it at number 323. It was on Billboard magazine's list of the "25 Greatest Love Song Duets" in 2020.

One of her native songs, in the early 1980s, was used as the theme tune for the CBC's native program Spirit Bay. She appeared in TNT's 1993 film The Broken Chain. It was entirely shot in Virginia. Where the Spirit Lives, a film about native children being kidnapped and coerced into residential schools, was written and performed by her in 1989.

"Qu'Appele Valley, Saskatchewan," the British pop band Red Box's debut album "The Circle & the Square" appeared on her debut album "Saskatchewan" in 1986.

In the 1991 made-for-TV film Son of the Morning Star, Sainte-Marie told the Indian side of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Sioux Chief Sitting Bull defeated Lt. Col. George Custer.

Sainte-Marie released the album Coincidence and Likely Stories in 1992, following a sixteen-year recording hiatus. The album was recorded on her computer and then sent via modem to producer Chris Birkett in London, England, and both sang of Native Americans' continuing suffering. (See also the book and film with the same name). Sainte-Marie appeared in the television film The Broken Chain starring Wes Studi and Pierce Brosnan and First Nations Bahár Lucas in 1992. Up Where We Belong, an album on which she re-recorded a number of her greatest hits in more unplugged and acoustic versions, including a re-release of "Universal Soldier." Sainte-Marie has exhibited her art at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Emily Carr Gallery in Vancouver, and the American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She appeared in HBO's Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, which was a Native American retelling of the Snow White fairy tale in 1995.

The Indigo Girls also released two versions of Sainte-Marie's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" on their live album 1200 Curfews in 1995. The song appears to be approaching the end of Disc One in a live format, and it was shot at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage, Alaska. Emily says in the intro, "every word is true." A studio recording was found at the end of Disc Two.

Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education, a philanthropic non-profit organization established in 1996, devoted to improving Native American students's involvement in learning. The word "Nihewan" comes from Cree's language and means "talk Cree," which means "Be Your Culture."

Sainte-Marie founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project in October 1996, with support from the Nihewan Foundation and a two-year grant from the W.K. Battle Creek, Michigan, was named a member of the Kellogg Foundation. With projects in eleven states, Mohawk, Cree, Ojibwe, Menominee, Menominee, Coeur D'Alene, Nahajo, Quinault, Hawaiian, and Apache, the communities in eleven states collaborated with a non-native class in Elementary, Middle, and High School science, as well as a multimedia curriculum CD, Science: Through Native American Eyes.

Sainte-Marie delivered the commencement address at Haskell's Indian Nations University in 2000. In 2002, she worked at the Kennedy Space Center for Commander John Herrington, USN, a Chickasaw and the first Native American astronaut. In 2003, she became a spokesperson for the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network in Canada.

The Diplomats' Cam'Ron and Jim Jones sampled a track written and performed by Sainte-Marie titled "Lazarus" in 2002. "Dead or Alive" is the track. She appeared at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, in June 2007.

The Mid-1970s Recordings was released in 2008, compiling the three studio albums she performed for ABC Records and MCA Records from 1974 to 1976 (after departeding her long-time name Vanguard Records). This was the first time that this data had been re-released. Sainte-Marie made a comeback to the Canadian music scene in September 2008 with the launch of her studio album Running for the Drum. It was produced by Chris Birkett (producer of her 1992 and 1996 best of albums). In 2006, the first sessions for this project began in Sainte-Marie's home studio in Hawaii and a small area in France. They didn't stop in 2007 until spring.

On True North Records, Sainte-Marie released the album Power in the Blood in 2015. She appeared on Democracy Now! on May 22, 2015. To talk about the album and her musical and activist careers, she will explore her career. Power in the Blood was proclaimed the 2015 Polaris Music Prize winner on September 21, 2015.

A Tribe Called Red released an electronic version of Sainte-Marie's "Working for the Government" in 2015.

Sainte-Marie toured North America with Mark Olexson (bass), Anthony King (guitar), Michel Bruyere (drums), and Kibwe Thomas (keyboards).

In 2017, she released the single "You Gotta Run (Spirit of the Wind), a joint effort with fellow Polaris Music Prize laureate Tanya Tagaq. George Attla, a champion dog sled racer from Alaska, inspired the song.

Concord Records, the company that bought Vanguard Records, the original publisher of the album, released a 50th anniversary edition of Sainte-Marie's 1969 album, Illuminations, on November 29, 2019.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, a 2022 documentary film directed by Madison Thomas, she is the subject of Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On.

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Honours and awards

• Academy Award for Best Original Song – "Up Where We Belong" (1983)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song – "Up Where We Belong" (1983)
• BAFTA Award for Best Original Song Written for a Film – "Up Where We Belong" (1983)
• Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts – University of Massachusetts (1983)
• Best International Artist (France; 1993)
• Canadian Music Hall of Fame aka JUNO Hall of Fame – 1995 inductee
• Honorary Doctor of Laws – University of Regina (1996)
• Juno Award – Aboriginal Recording of the Year for Up Where We Belong (1997)
• Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Television Special (1996 variety special, Up Where We Belong) (1997)
• Dove Award (Gospel; 1997)
• Officer of the Order of Canada (1997)
• Star on Canada's Walk of Fame (1998)
• Honorary Doctor of Letters – Lakehead University (2000)
• Honorary Doctor of Humanities – University of Saskatchewan (2003)
• Honorary Doctor of Letters – Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design – (2007)
• Honorary Doctor of Laws – Carleton University (2008)
• Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame – 2009 inductee
• Honorary Doctor of Music – University of Western Ontario (2009)
• Juno Award – Aboriginal Recording of the Year for Running for the Drum (2009)
• Honorary Doctor – Wilfrid Laurier University (2010)
• Honorary Doctor – Ontario College of Art and Design (2010)
• Honorary Doctor of Letters – Wilfrid Laurier – Letters (2010)
• Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts – Ontario College of Art and Design (2010)
• Governor General's Performing Arts Award (2010)
• Honorary Doctor of Letters – University of British Columbia (2012)
• Americana Music Honors & Awards – Spirit of Americana/Free Speech in Music Award (2015)
• Polaris Music Prize (2015) (for Power in the Blood)
• Juno Award – Aboriginal Album of the Year (2016) (for Power in the Blood)
• Juno Award – Contemporary Roots Album of the Year (2016) (for Power in the Blood)
• Allan Waters Humanitarian Award, 2017
• Juno Award – Indigenous music album of the year (2018) (for Medicine Songs)
• Indigenous Music Awards – Best Folk Album (2018) (for Medicine Songs)
• Indigenous Music Awards – Best Video (2018) (for The War Racket)
• Frank Blythe Award for Media Excellence (2018)
• Honorary Doctor of Laws – University of Toronto (2019)
• Companion of the Order of Canada (2019)
• Polaris Heritage Prize – It's My Way! (2020)
• New stamp honours renowned singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie November 18, 2021