Buffy Sainte-Marie

Early life and education

Sainte-Marie was born at the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to parents Albert Santamaria and Winifred Irene Santamaria, . The Santamarias were an American couple 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 more French-sounding "Sainte-Marie" due to anti-Italian sentiment following the Second World War.

Sainte-Marie taught herself to play piano and guitar in her childhood and teen years. Sainte-Marie attended Wakefield High School. Then she attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Asian philosophy, where she says she graduated as one of the top ten students of her class.

Career

1960–1979: Rise to prominence

During the early 60s, as she attended the University of Massachusetts, some of her songs such as "Ananias", the Indian lament "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and "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 already in her repertoire. In her early twenties she toured alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals, and First Nations communities across the United States, Canada, and abroad. 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-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging artists such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, the latter of whom she introduced to Elliot Roberts who became her manager.

In 1963, while she was suffering from a throat infection, Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine. Recovering from that experience became the basis for her song "Cod'ine", which was later recorded by Donovan, Janis Joplin, the Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man, the Litter, the Leaves, Jimmy Gilmer, the Fireballs, Gram Parsons, Charles Brutus McClay, the Barracudas (spelled "Codeine"), the Golden Horde, Nicole Atkins and Courtney Love.

Also in 1963, Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement. This inspired the composition of her widely acclaimed anti-war protest song "Universal Soldier", which was released on her debut album It's My Way! on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell.

Her 1965 album Many a Mile included her most successful song "Until It's Time for You to Go", which has been recorded by many artists, including Neil Diamond, Roberta Flack, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Nancy Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Robert Goulet, Andy Williams and many others.

In a 1965 Billboard issue, folk-music disc jockeys voted Sainte-Marie "Favorite New Female Vocalist" in that genre. 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), created controversy at the time.

In 1967, she released Fire & Fleet & Candlelight, which contained her interpretation of the traditional Yorkshire dialect song "Lyke Wake Dirge", as well as a French language version of "Until It's Time For You to Go".

In 1968 she released her song "Take My Hand for a While" which was also later recorded by Glen Campbell and at least 13 other artists.

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. She appeared on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest with Pete Seeger in 1965 and several Canadian television productions from the 1960s to the 1990s, and other TV shows such as American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Sainte-Marie sang the opening song, "The Circle Game" (written by Joni Mitchell), in Stuart Hagmann's film The Strawberry Statement (1970); and in the TV show Then Came Bronson episode "Mating Dance for Tender Grass" (1970), she sang and portrayed Tender Grass, the episode's titular character. In 1970 she recorded the album Illuminations, an early quadraphonic vocal album on which she used a Buchla synthesizer.

Sainte-Marie appeared in "The Heritage" episode of The Virginian which first aired on October 30, 1968, in which she played a Shoshone woman who had been sent to be educated at school.

''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 over a five-year period from 1976 to 1981. Sainte-Marie breastfed her first son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild, during a 1977 episode. Sainte-Marie has suggested that this is the first representation of breastfeeding ever aired on television.{{Cite news | access-date= January 28, 2018 | archive-date= July 21, 2020 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200721055252/https://hazlitt.net/feature/short-lived-normalization-breastfeeding-television | url-status= live Sesame Street filmed several shows from her home in Hawaii in 1978.

In 1979, Spirit of the Wind, featuring Sainte-Marie's original musical score, including the song "Spirit of the Wind", was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a docudrama about George Attla, a "World Champion dog sledder". The American Indian Film Festival, which exhibited the film in 1980, recognizes accurate historical and contemporary portrayals of Native Americans.

1980–1999: Established career

Sainte-Marie began using Apple II and Macintosh computers as early as 1981 to record her music and later some of her visual art. The song "Up Where We Belong" (which Sainte-Marie co-wrote with lyricist Will Jennings and musician Jack Nitzsche) was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the film 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.

In 1986, British pop band Red Box covered her song "Qu'Appele Valley, Saskatchewan" (shortened to just "Saskatchewan") on their debut album The Circle & the Square. The song appears on Sainte-Marie's 1976 album Sweet America. 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. In 1992, after a sixteen-year recording hiatus, Sainte-Marie released the album Coincidence and Likely Stories. Recorded in 1990 at home in Hawaii on her computer and transmitted via modem through the Internet to producer Chris Birkett in London, England, the album included the politically charged songs "The Big Ones Get Away" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (which mentions Leonard Peltier), both commenting 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 Wes Studi and Pierce Brosnan along with First Nations Bahá'í Phil Lucas.

Her next album followed up in 1996 with 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. 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. The word nihewan comes from the Cree language and means "talk Cree", which implies "be your culture". Sainte-Marie founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project in October 1996 using funds from her Nihewan Foundation and with a two-year grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan, 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 and retirement

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 Hip Hop producer Kanye West and performed by Cam'Ron and Jim Jones of The Diplomats. The track is called "Dead or Alive". In June 2007, she made a rare U.S. appearance at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

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 Records and MCA Records between 1974 and 1976 (after departing her long-time label Vanguard Records). This was the first re-release of this material. In September 2008, Sainte-Marie made a comeback onto the music scene in Canada with the release of her studio album Running for the Drum. It was produced by Chris Birkett (producer of her 1992 and 1996 best of albums). Sessions for this project commenced in 2006 in Sainte-Marie's home studio in Hawaii and partly in France. They continued until spring 2007. In 2015, Sainte-Marie released the album Power in the Blood on True North Records. She had a television appearance on May 22, 2015, with Democracy Now! to discuss the record and her musical and activist career. On September 21, 2015, Power in the Blood was named the winner of the 2015 Polaris Music Prize. Also in 2015, A Tribe Called Red released an electronic remix of Sainte-Marie's song, "Working for the Government".

In 2016, 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 Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind)", a collaboration with fellow Polaris Music Prize laureate, Tanya Tagaq. The song was inspired by George Attla, a champion dog sled racer from Alaska. On November 29, 2019, a 50th-anniversary edition of Sainte-Marie's 1969 album, Illuminations, was released on vinyl by Concord Records, the company that bought Vanguard Records, the original publisher of the album. Sainte-Marie is the subject of Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, a 2022 documentary film by Madison Thomas. In the same year the National Arts Centre staged Buffy Sainte-Marie: Starwalker, a tribute concert of musicians performing Sainte-Marie's songs. On August 3, 2023, Sainte-Marie issued a statement announcing her retirement from live performances, due to health concerns.

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.

Although not an adherent, Sainte-Marie became an active friend of the Bahá'í faith, appearing at concerts for and conferences and conventions surrounding the religion. In 1992, she appeared in the musical event prelude to the Baháʼí World Congress, a double concert, "Live Unity: The Sound of the World" (1992) with video broadcast and documentary. In the video documentary of the event Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show explaining the Bahá'í teaching of progressive revelation. She also appears in the 1985 video Mona With The Children by Douglas John Cameron. However, while she supports a universal sense of religion, she does not subscribe to any particular religion. "I gave a lot of support to Bahá'í people in the '80s and '90s ... Bahá'í people, as people of all religions, is something I'm attracted to ... I don't belong to any religion. ... I have a huge religious faith or spiritual faith but I feel as though religion ... is the first thing that racketeers exploit. ... But that doesn't turn me against religion ...

Sainte-Marie applied for Canadian citizenship through her Cree lawyer, Delia Opekokew, in 1980. In 2017, she stated that she does not have a Canadian passport and is a US citizen.

In 1968, Sainte-Marie married a surfing instructor, Dewain Bugbee, but later divorced. She then married Sheldon Wolfchild with whom she had a son. After a second divorce, she then married Jack Nitzsche, her co-writer on "Up Where We Belong" to whom she was married for seven years during the 1980s.

Claim of Indigenous identity

Sainte-Marie has claimed that she was born on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, to Cree parents. She has also claimed that, at the age of two or three, she was taken from her parents as part of the Sixties Scoop—a government policy, started in 1951, by which Indigenous children were taken from their families, communities, and cultures for placement with families that were not of First Nations heritage.

Early in her career, various newspapers referred to her as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi'kmaq, and half-Mi'kmaq. The first reference to Sainte-Marie being Cree that CBC News could locate during its investigation of her identity came in December 1963, when the Vancouver Sun called her a "Cree Indian". Sainte-Marie reiterated that she has community ties with the Piapot First Nation and that she was adopted as an adult by Chief Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket. Emile's great-granddaughter Ntawnis Piapot has corroborated this, saying Sainte-Marie was adopted according to traditional Cree customs over "days and months and years".

Some members of the Sainte-Marie family had attempted to clarify her European ancestry in the 1960s and 1970s, but the singer threatened them with legal action for doing so. In December 1964, Arthur Santamaria, Sainte-Marie's paternal uncle, wrote to the Wakefield Daily Item, which published his editorial that Sainte-Marie "has no Indian blood in her" and "not a bit" of Cree heritage. Her brother, Alan Sainte-Marie, also wrote to newspapers, including the Denver Post in 1972, to clarify that his sister was not born on a reservation, has Caucasian parents, and that "to associate her with the Indian and to accept her as his spokesman is wrong".

Alan Sainte-Marie's daughter Heidi has stated that, in 1975, her father had met Buffy and a PBS producer for Sesame Street while working as a commercial pilot. She has said that the producer later asked her father if he was Indigenous because he did not look like he was. Her father clarified that they were of European ancestry and not Indigenous. On November 7, 1975, Alan Sainte-Marie received a letter from a law firm representing Buffy Sainte-Marie, which said, "We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities." The letter also stated that no expense would be spared in pursuing legal remedies. Included with the law firm letter was a handwritten note from Buffy Sainte-Marie to her brother stating that she would expose him for allegedly sexually abusing her as a child if he continued speaking about her ancestry. He decided to back off from his letter-writing campaign and a month later on December 9, 1975, Buffy made her first appearance on Sesame Street.

On October 27, 2023, an investigation by the CBC's The Fifth Estate television program contradicted Sainte-Marie's career-long claims of Indigenous ancestry. It included interviews with some of her relatives and located her birth certificate which listed her as white and her supposed adopted parents as her birth parents. In contrast, Sainte-Marie's 2018 authorized biography states she was "probably born" on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, and throughout her adult life she claimed she was adopted and does not know where she was born or who her biological parents are. There is no known official record of her adoption.

On the day before the broadcast of The Fifth Estate, the Descendants of Piapot and Starblanket issued a statement defending Sainte-Marie's ties to the Piapot First Nation, saying: "We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could." They also criticized the allegations against Sainte-Marie as being "hurtful, ignorant, colonial—and racist".

As part of its reporting, the CBC also published Sainte-Marie's official birth certificate. It indicates that she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to her white parents, Albert and Winifred Santamaria. Her son Cody says she obtained Native identity through "naturalization" and not by birth. To verify Sainte-Marie's early Mi'kmaq identity claims, her younger sister took a DNA test which showed that she had "almost no" Native American ancestry and she says she is genetically related to Sainte-Marie's son, which would not be possible if Sainte-Marie was adopted as she claimed.

Responding to the CBC News findings, the acting chief of the Piapot First Nation, Ira Lavallee, noted that despite her false claims of Indigenous ancestry, Sainte-Marie remained accepted, saying: "We do have one of our families in our community that did adopt her. Regardless of her ancestry, that adoption in our culture to us is legitimate." In late November 2023, Sainte-Marie deleted all claims of being Cree and born on Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan from her official website. Lavallee said that Sainte-Marie should take a DNA test to clear up the confusion: "That's something that anyone in my community can do and would not have fear of doing because we know who we are and what we are, and it's easily provable through a DNA test. If Buffy did that, that's one thing that could clear all this up." Cree author Darrel J. McLeod said that Sainte-Marie is an honorary member of the Piapot family, but that growing up with a white family allowed her to develop her talent and audience from a young age and that she should "apologize, come clean, stop gaslighting us and find a way to make amends".

In late November 2023, following the award of an International Emmy to a documentary film about her life (Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On), Sainte-Marie stated, "My mother told me that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children at the time" adding that "I don't know where I'm from or who my birth parents are, and I will never know." She also stated, "I have never known if my birth certificate was real."

In March 2025, she confirmed to The Canadian Press that she returned her Order of Canada "with a good heart" and reasserted that she never lied about her identity, as well, she said 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. In the days that followed, her five Juno awards were revoked, as well as other honours, including the Polaris Music Prize and her induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Honors and awards

Honorary degrees

Sainte-Marie has been awarded 15 honorary doctorates. With regard to the University of Massachusetts, her website states that she was awarded an "Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts" in 1983. However, in an interview published in 2009, she stated that "I also got a teaching degree from the University of Massachusetts and later, a PhD in fine arts".

Personal awards

Performance awards

Other

• In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Sainte-Marie's name and picture.
• Canada Post stamp of Sainte-Marie in 2021

Award-related reactions following ancestry controversy

In 2023, Buffy Sainte-Marie's false claims to an Indigenous identity were revealed by The Fifth Estate. Since then, there have been calls to rescind awards given to Sainte-Marie that were meant for Indigenous people. Indigenous musicians who lost to Sainte-Marie have expressed their disappointment. Issiqut Anguk, sister of singer Kelly Fraser who lost the 2018 Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year to her, wrote that Fraser "respected Buffy so much and it hurts to hear that maybe, just maybe it would've changed Kelly's life if she won the Juno award and Buffy didn't." The Indigenous Women's Collective expressed dismay at Sainte-Marie's winning a 2023 International Emmy Award for her documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On and have asked the Juno Awards to revisit the 2018 category to "explore ways of righting a past wrong. All Indigenous artists in this 2018 category should be reconsidered for this rightful honour." Tim Johnson, the former associate director of the National Museum of the American Indian says her Juno awards should be rescinded and the Indigenous musicians who lost against Sainte-Marie should be considered her victims. Rhonda Head, an award-winning opera singer from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation says, "She won awards that were an accolade, that were meant for Indigenous musicians and that's what really hurts me the most. I would like to see that her awards be taken away forever, for her not being truthful and taking up space."

On November 8, 2023, the University of British Columbia First Nations House of Learning issued a statement explaining that, in light of the ancestry issues of Buffy Sainte-Marie, they were deciding on the next steps regarding the honorary degree UBC had awarded Sainte-Marie in 2012. The university removed that statement from their website at some point after April 2024 with no further explanation on the status of the honorary degree.

On February 7, 2025, the Government of Canada published a document stating that Sainte-Marie had been removed from the Order of Canada by Governor General Mary Simon on January 3, 2025. Appointments and terminations to the Order of Canada are both made on the basis of an advisory council. In March 2025, Sainte-Marie had her Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Polaris Music Prizes, Juno Awards, and Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction rescinded because she was deemed no longer to meet eligibility criteria owing to her not being a Canadian citizen.

On January 21, 2026, CBC reported that the Dalhousie University in Halifax would revoke the honorary degree it awarded to Sainte-Marie in 2018. Although Dalhousie University confirmed that the revocation occurred in December, they did not provide further details.

Discography

Albums

Compilation albums

Singles

Soundtrack appearances

Notes

References

Bibliography

References

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