Buffy Sainte-Marie

+Matriarch Monday+

Buffy Sainte-Marie

She's been sampled by Kanye West, sang at Kennedy Space Center, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Polaris and Juno awards, among other honors. Buffy starred on Sesame Street from 1975 to 1981. The Canadian First Nations artist says that she hoped her role on the show would teach children that "Indians still exist."

Buffy Beverly Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on a Cree Indian reservation in Canada. She was orphaned  and later adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, and grew up in Wakefield, MA.  She's worked with everyone from the Muppets of "Sesame Street" to Pete Seeger, survived being blacklisted by American radio, earned a doctorate in fine art, and has long been an advocate for education and justice for indigenous people. Buffy used her knowledge and talents to call attention and to educate those who didn't have the benefit of hearing another perspective other than that of their history books. She wrote many songs about Native American rights and histories. She's been sampled by Kanye West, sang at Kennedy Space Center, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Polaris and Juno awards, among other honors. Buffy starred on Sesame Street from 1975 to 1981. The Canadian First Nations artist says that she hoped her role on the show would teach children that "Indians still exist." Perhaps her most memorable appearance was when she breastfed her son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild, in 1977, which was her idea. “At the time, breastfeeding was totally overwhelmed by the formula companies so that young mothers recovering from childbirth, they would have a big basket of formula. The doctors didn’t understand how to teach them how to breastfeed,” she said. 

“Write it, refine it and give it to as many people as you can. Build from within your own niche and your own truths, and stay real flexible, as things are always growing and changing around us and within us.”

— Buffy Sainte-Marie

In the clip above, the singer gently rocks her son as she explains to Big Bird what breastfeeding is all about. 1966, Buffy released her album, Little Wheel Spin and Spin, with the most scathing and controversial song she wrote during her entire music career:

My Country 'Tis of thy People You're Dying

Now that your big eyes are finally opened.

Now that you’re wondering, “How must they feel?”

Meaning them that you’ve chased cross America’s movie screens;

Now that you’re wondering, “How can it be real?”

That the ones you’ve called colorful, noble and proud

In your school propaganda,

They starve in their splendour.

You asked for our comment, I simply will render:

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Now that the long houses “breed superstition”

You force us to send our children away

To your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions

Forbid them their languages;

Then further say that American history really began

When Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress

That the nations of leeches who conquered this land

Were the biggest, and bravest, and boldest, and best.

And yet where in your history books is the tale

Of the genocide basic to this country’s birth?

Of the preachers who lied?

How the Bill of Rights failed?

How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?

And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell

As it rang with a thud over Kinzua mud?

Or of brave Unlce Sam in Alaska this year?

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for West,

With her shivering children in zero degrees.

“Blankets for your land” – so the treaties attest.

Oh well, blankets for land, that’s a bargain indeed.

And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected

From smallpox diseased dying soldiers that day.

And the tribes were wiped out

And the history books censored

A hundred years of your statesmen

say, “It’s better this way”.

But a few of the conquered have somehow survived

And their blood runs the redder

Though genes have been paled.

From the Grand Canyon’s caverns

To Craven’s sad hills

The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.

From Los Angeles County to upstate New York,

The white nation fattens while other grow lean.

Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean:

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

The past it just crumbled; the future just threatens

Our life blood is shut up in your chemical tanks,

And now here you come, bill of sale in your hand

And surprise in your eyes, that we’re lacking in thanks

For the blessings of civilisation you brought us

The lessons you’ve taught us;

The ruin you’ve wrought us;

Oh see what our trust in America got us.

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity.

Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws.

Now that my life’s to be known as your heritage.

Now that even the graves have been robbed.

Now that our own chosen way is your novelty.

Hands on our hearts

We salute you your victory:

Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy.

Pitying your blindness; How you never see -

that the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory,

Were never no more than buzzards & crows:

Pushed some wrens from their nest;

Stole their eggs; changed their story.

The mockingbird sings it;

It’s all that she knows.

“Oh what can I do?”, say a powerless few.

With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye:

Can’t you see how their poverty’s profiting you?

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

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