Buffy Sainte-Marie (born Beverley Jean Santamaria; February 20, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and social activist.More than 26.5 million copies sold worldwide as per Buffy Saint-Marie biography/profile
Sainte-Marie's singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism, and her work has often focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. She won recognition, awards, and honors for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. In 1983, her song "Up Where We Belong", for An Officer and a Gentleman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards. The song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song that same year.
From the early 1960s, Sainte-Marie stated she was of Indigenous Canadian ancestry. A 2023 CBC News investigation concluded she was born in the United States and is of Italian and English descent. Some Indigenous musicians and organizations called for awards she won while falsely claiming an Indigenous identity to be rescinded. Many of her awards and honors were subsequently revoked or surrendered due to her lack of Canadian citizenship, including her membership in the Order of Canada, her induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, her Juno Awards, and her Polaris Music Prizes.
Early life and education Sainte-Marie was born at the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to Albert Santamaria and Winifred Irene Santamaria, . The Santamarias were from Wakefield, Massachusetts. Her father's parents were born in Italy while her mother was of English ancestry. Her family changed their surname from Santamaria to the French-sounding "Sainte-Marie" due to anti-Italian sentiment following the Second World War.
Sainte-Marie taught herself to play piano and guitar before attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst.45 Profiles in Modern Music by E. Churchill and Linda Churchill, pgs. 110–2
Career 1960–1978: Rise to prominence
During the early 1960s, while still in college, her own songs such as "Ananias", the Indian lament "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and also "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (a Hindi Bollywood song "Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere" originally sung by the Indian singer Mohammed Rafi from the 1960 movie Barsaat Ki Raat) were in her repertoire. In her early twenties she toured, developed her craft, and performed in various concert halls, folk music festivals, and First Nations communities across the United States, Canada, and abroad. She spent considerable time in the coffeehouses of Yorkville and Greenwich Village as part of the 1960s folk scene, as did other emerging artists, including Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot.
In 1963, while suffering with a throat infection, Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine, an experience that became the basis for her song "Cod'ine",, later recorded by Donovan, Janis Joplin, and many others. That same year, Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War when the U.S. government was denying involvement. This inspired the composition of her widely acclaimed protest song "Universal Soldier",Folk and Blues: The Premier Encyclopedia of American Roots Music by Irwin Stambler, Lyndon Stambler, pp. 528–530 released on her debut album It's My Way! on Vanguard Records in 1964. It was later a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell.
Her 1965 album Many a Mile included "Until It's Time for You to Go", which has been covered by Neil Diamond, Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, and many others.SecondHandSongs, Until It's Time for You to Go. https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/375
In 1965, Billboard named Sainte-Marie "Favorite New Female Vocalist" in the folk genre in a poll of disk jockeys. Some of her songs addressing the mistreatment of Native Americans, such as "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" (1964) and "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, included on her 1966 album), were seen as controversial.Encyclopedia of the Great Plains entry by Paula Conlon, University of Oklahoma, edited by David J. Wishart
Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs include "Mister Can't You See" (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"; and the theme song of the movie Soldier Blue. In 1969 she released Illuminations, an early quadraphonic album on which she used a synthesizer.
She appeared frequently on television in Canada and the US, including American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She guest-starred in "The Heritage" episode of The Virginian in 1968, as a Shoshone woman sent to be educated at school, and acted and sang in "Mating Dance for Tender Grass", a 1970 episode of Then Came Bronson.
Sesame Street Sainte-Marie was hired in 1975 to present Native American programming for children for the first time on Sesame Street. Sainte-Marie wanted to teach the show's young viewers that "Indians still exist". She regularly appeared on Sesame Street from 1976 to 1981. Sainte-Marie breastfed her first son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild in a 1977 episode, which according to Sainte-Marie was the first representation of breastfeeding aired on television. Sesame Street filmed several episodes at her home in Hawaii in 1978.
1979–1999: Established career In 1979, Spirit of the Wind, a docudrama scored by Sainte-Marie, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The American Indian Film Festival, which exhibited the film in 1980, recognizes accurate historical and contemporary portrayals of Native Americans.
Sainte-Marie started using Apple II and Macintosh computers in 1981 to record her music.
"Up Where We Belong" (written by Sainte-Marie with Will Jennings and Jack Nitzsche) was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman. It received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1982. On January 29, 1983, Jennings, Nitzsche, and Sainte-Marie won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.. They also won the BAFTA film award for Best Original Song in 1984.. On the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001, the song was listed at number 323.. In 2020, it was included on Billboard magazine's list of the "25 Greatest Love Song Duets". In the early 1980s, one of her songs was used as the theme song for the CBC's Native series Spirit Bay. She was cast for the TNT 1993 telefilm The Broken Chain. In 1989, she wrote and performed the music for Where the Spirit Lives, a film about Native children being abducted, forced into residential schools, and expected to give up their Native way of life.
Sainte-Marie voiced a Cheyenne character, Kate Bighead, in the 1991 made-for-TV movie Son of the Morning Star, telling the Indian side of the Battle of the Little Bighorn where the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, defeated Lieutenant Colonel George Custer played by actor Gary Cole. In 1992, after a sixteen-year recording hiatus, Sainte-Marie released Coincidence and Likely Stories. Recorded in 1990 at home in Hawaii on her computer, it included the politically charged songs "The Big Ones Get Away" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", both comments on the ongoing plight of Native Americans (see also the book and film with the same name). Also in 1992, Sainte-Marie appeared in the television film The Broken Chain with Pierce Brosnan.
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. In 1995, she provided the voice of the spirit in the magic mirror in HBO's Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, which featured a Native American retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. Also in 1995, the Indigo Girls released two versions of Sainte-Marie's protest song "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" on their album 1200 Curfews.
In 1996, she started the Nihewan Foundation, a philanthropic non-profit fund for American Indian Education devoted to improving Native American students' participation in learning. A Cree word, "nihewan", literally "talk Cree", in this context means "be your culture". Sainte-Marie founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project in 1996 using funds from her Nihewan Foundation and a two-year grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation with projects across Mohawk, Cree, Ojibwe, Menominee, Coeur d'Alene, Navajo, Quinault, Hawaiian, and Apache communities in eleven states, partnered with a non-Native class of the same grade level for Elementary, Middle, and High School grades in the disciplines of Geography, History, Social Studies, Music, and Science, and produced a multimedia curriculum CD, Science: Through Native American Eyes.
2000–2023: Later work
In 2000, Sainte-Marie gave the commencement address at Haskell Indian Nations University. In 2002 she sang 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. In 2002, a track written and performed by Sainte-Marie, titled "Lazarus", was sampled by Kanye West and performed by Cam'Ron and Jim Jones of The Diplomats under the title "Dead or Alive".
In 2008, a two-CD set titled Buffy/Changing Woman/Sweet America: The Mid-1970s Recordings was released, compiling the three studio albums that she recorded for ABC and MCA between 1974 and 1976 after departing Vanguard. In 2015, Sainte-Marie released Power in the Blood and appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the record and her musical and activist career. Power in the Blood won the 2015 Polaris Music Prize."Buffy Sainte-Marie wins Polaris Music Prize" . The Globe and Mail, September 21, 2015 That same year, A Tribe Called Red released an electronic remix of Sainte-Marie's "Working for the Government"."Buffy Sainte-Marie: "Working for the Government" (A Tribe Called Red remix)" . Exclaim!, July 2, 2015
Sainte-Marie was the subject of a 2022 documentary, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On.Becca Longmire, "‘Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On’ To Premiere At TIFF 2022" . ET Canada, August 10, 2022. In the same year the National Arts Centre staged Buffy Sainte-Marie: Starwalker, a tribute concert of Sainte-Marie's songs.Garret K. Woodward, "The Tragically Hip's Surviving Members Reunite to Pay Tribute to a Canadian Icon, Tease New Projects" . Rolling Stone, September 30, 2022.
Personal life In 1964, while on a trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in southern Saskatchewan for a powwow, she was adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot, and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot, in accordance with Cree Nation tradition.Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life (Director's Cut) DVD, distributed by Filmwest Associates of Canada and the US, , 2006
In 1970, she founded the Native North American Women's Association whose aim was "to call attention to the injustices done to Indian women" adding that "I think we are worse off than any other minority group".