Buffy sainte-marie autobiography
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Singing a concert with the Regina Symphony with her magnificent huge digital paintings exhibited in the foyer of the concert hall, her continuing theme Cyberskins: Live and Interactive crossed media boundaries, always emphasizing how Indians are alive and thriving even within the digital revolution. In 1994, she helped to found the Juno Awards category Music of Aboriginal Canada.
Her critically acclaimed albums, Power in the Blood (2015) and Medicine Songs (2017) collectively won multiple awards including the highly coveted Polaris Music Prize.
Buffy likens electronic painting to "painting with light". In July, she headlined a group of indigenous concert artists out on the arctic tundra of Lapland, with the national television stations of Norway, Sweden, Germany and Finland smiling on. The next day's newspaper headlines described Buffy's concert as "superb, powerful, and moving, drawing a roaring and deserved standing ovation".
As Herbert Kupferberg wrote in The Boston Globe in 1970 – using language many modern ears would deem unsuitable for publication – “the best-known fighter for the American Indian since Geronimo is a spunky, sexy, 100-pound girl named Buffy Sainte-Marie” and as NPR music critic Ann Powers wrote in 2015 – using language considered more appropriate in the 21st century – she’s “more Bjork than Baez, more Kate Bush than Laurel Canyon…a risk-taker, always chasing new sounds, and a plain talker when it comes to love and politics.”
As for music, Sainte-Marie has recorded 16 studio albums with consistent lyrical themes of love, war, religion and mysticism and her best-known song, “Universal Soldier” (written in 1963), has inspired 157 cover versions, according to a feature in The Guardian in November 2022, by singers as diverse as Elvis Presley, Donovan, Janis Joplin, Barbara Streisand, Glen Campbell, Courtney Love and Neko Case.
EARLY YEARS, ANCESTRY/ADOPTION CONTROVERSY
Throughout her career, Sainte-Marie has said that she was born on an Indian reserve in Canada – the biography on her official website says it was Piapot (Cree) Indian Reserve No.
75 in Saskatchewan – and adopted before the age of two following the deaths of her parents, as noted in the book A to Z of American Indian Women (Facts on File, 2008). She also took home a Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Television Special, and a British academy award (BAFTA). Regardless of her ancestry, that adoption in our culture to us is legitimate.”
MANY A MILE, NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL DEBUT, OTHER ‘60S ALBUMS
In 1965, between appearances on American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show and The Tonight Show, Sainte-Marie recorded her second LP for Vanguard, Many a Mile, which included “Until It’s Time For You To Go” – covered by Bobby Darin, Roberta Flack, Elvis Presley, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, Sonny & Cher, Bette Davis and others – and in 1966 she debuted at the Newport Folk Festival.
Vanguard issued four more of her albums before the end of the ‘60s, Little Wheel Spin and Spin (1966), Fire & Fleet & Candlelight (1967), I’m Gonna Be a Country Girl Again (1968) and Illuminations (1969), the last of which was hailed as a creative tour de force – it was recorded in quadrophonic using a Buchla synthesizer – but was a commercial nonevent.
1970S ALBUMS, SESAME STREET
The first half of the 1970s was relentlessly busy for Sainte-Marie, who played shows from Toronto to Tokyo.
in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts. in Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts.
Throughout her career, Buffy has devoted much of her time and resources to supporting Indigenous peoples through a variety of educational programs. “To those who question my truth, I say with love, I know who I am.”
Winifred Santamaria (née Kenrick), an editor at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, was of English ancestry and claimed to be part Mi’kmaq, Albert Santamaria was Italian-American and Sainte-Marie told The Guardian in November 2022 that her family was “more The Sopranos than Dances with Wolves.”She completed her K-12 education in Wakefield and spent most summers in Maine.
MUSICAL BEGINNINGS, EARLY PERFORMANCES
At age three, Sainte-Marie, started teaching herself how to play piano.
In 1996 Buffy released her seventeenth album Up Where We Belong (EMI), a collection of new songs with new recordings of her best-loved songs. The American Indian College Fund presented her with their Lifetime Achievement Award.
Advance praise for Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography
"Buffy Sainte-Marie is an icon and inspiration.
In March 2025, after Sainte-Marie confirmed to national news agency The Canadian Press that she’s a US citizen, not a Canadian citizen or a permanent legal resident of Canada, the organizations that award the Polaris Prize and the Juno Awards revoked all honors that they’ve bestowed on her over the decades. Beginning in 1969, her Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education provided scholarships for Indigenous studies and students, two of whom became presidents of tribal colleges; and her Cradleboard Teaching Project provided accurate core curriculum including science, government and geography based in Native American cultural perspectives for all grade levels.
Her appearances on “Sesame Street” enriched public-access television with important subjects such as breast feeding, sibling rivalry, and Native American languages and cultures.
The tune won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Original Song. With songs like “Universal Soldier” and “Until It’s Time for You to Go“, Buffy established herself among the ranks of songwriter greats. Sainte-Marie is a true star, and this book goes a long way toward showing us how and why.” Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker: A Biography
"A wonderful read!
Buffy continues to draw huge crowds on the concert circuit - she played to 210,000 people in Denmark and a million people in Washington DC for the Smithsonian's 150th birthday – but she never forgets her own people and performs regularly on the smallest of reservations across North America.
As a college student in the early 1960s, Buffy Sainte-Marie became known as a writer of protest songs and love songs.
Cradleboard’s interactive multimedia CD-ROM SCIENCE: Through Native American Eyes features Buffy on camera as well as producer and director. Buffy Sainte-Marie helped us to realize that not everything can be taken away. Upon graduation, she began singing in coffee houses in New York’s Greenwich Village, leading to her first recording contract and the extensive touring that launched Buffy to international stardom.