Buffy Sainte-Marie

[Tom from Rubicon]

Watching Antique Roadshow tonight and a name was spoken that sent me back 50 years. The name was Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Born in the Cree Nation in Canada. Vietnam War protester. Got Black listed by LBJ and Nixon. I remember her as a young handsome woman with a unsophisticated but compelling vocal style. Turns out YouTube has a bunch of her performances.
Enjoy.
Buffy Sainte-Marie | You Got To Run | CBC Music Festival - YouTube

Tom

[Jimmy W]

BUFFY SAINTE MARIE Universal Soldier

[JayInOz]

Everybody's on Youtube Tom- just a matter of finding them There's some Jim Croce there- another goodun from the same era https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk6PtxF6Nh4
I spend far too much time trawling through Youtube. I watch a lotta crap- but every now and then I find a gem JayInOz

[bamamick]

I was driving down the road the other day with two of my kids (aged 34 and 38) and a Joan Baez song came on, and I was telling them how Joan Baez was a factor in the Civil Rights Movement, protecting the environment, helping the California fruit and produce pickers earn better wages and living conditions, etc., and they were surprised that a popular recording artist would be involved in things like that. What a freakin' shame that all our children know is people like the Kardashians or whatever the latest television 'celebrity' is right now.

Mickey Lake

[Jimmy W]

Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, to Cree parents. At age two or three she was taken from her parents as part of the Sixties Scoop - a government policy where Indigenous children were taken from their families, communities and cultures for placement in non-Native foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. She was adopted by Americans, Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a "visibly white" Wakefield, Massachusetts couple, though her adoptive mother, Winifred, "self-identified as part Mi'kmaq."
She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating among the top ten members of her class.

In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow, she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot, who added to Sainte-Marie's cultural value and place in native culture.

[Gerarddm]

^ Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary once said that he believed folk music could change the world, and for a while, it certainly did.

[Jim Bow]

PBS!

https://youtu.be/LKQVXfsl2j0

[Breakaway]

It was once folk artists who largely called for human rights and societal change. Hip hop artists donned that mantle 40 years ago. Rappers continue to carry the musical torches of protest and societal change today.



Kevin

[Dave Hadfield]

Well, that's weird. What were Cree doing in the Qu'Appelle Valley, in south central Saskatchewan?

It's a long way from any trees. Traditionally the Cree fought with the people of the plains.

Sioux Lookout isn't named that for the pretty view.

[Tom from Rubicon]

Saw the Milwaukee PBS rebroadcast of a Canadian Documentary on Buffy tonight. Coincidence?
The clips of Buffy on Sesame Street lit a memory lamp.
Big Bird observing her breast feed her baby Cody as part of the program. It was a different time when people were open to life as it is. The Boomers had not Woke yet.

It was just fun to see her undiminished passion, and creativity.

Tom

[David G]

I was never one to develop crushes on famous women, but she was one of the few exceptions. Brilliant, beautiful, wise, feisty as he77, and a heart of gold. And a great attitude toward the music biz. I remember a quote from her saying that having hits would be fine but what she really wanted was to make music that made a difference that lasted a long time.

[Puttputt]

Well, that's weird. What were Cree doing in the Qu'Appelle Valley, in south central Saskatchewan?

It's a long way from any trees. Traditionally the Cree fought with the people of the plains.

Sioux Lookout isn't named that for the pretty view.

Saskatchewan has the second highest number of Cree in Canada…just behind Alberta and well ahead of Manitoba.

[sandtown]

Her peace anthem Universal Soldier was not a cover.

She wrote it.

[David G]

Her peace anthem Universal Soldier was not a cover.

She wrote it.

She was an outstanding and prolific songwriter. She did dozens of them. And some of them were covered by dozens of artists.

[Dave Hadfield]

Saskatchewan has the second highest number of Cree in Canada…just behind Alberta and well ahead of Manitoba.

In the north, yes. It's mixed woodland there.

But just north of Regina? That surprised me. Traditionally that's Sioux, and bordering Blackfoot.

[Puttputt]

^ you’re right that there are/were a great number north of the tree line. But the Cree were always nomadic...sometimes willingly.
If memory serves there are at least 25 First Nations covered by Treaty 4 in the central and southern regions of the Province.

[Chip-skiff]

My favorite—

[WX]

I saw her live in 1972, she was my first international artist.

[Dave Hadfield]

^ you’re right that there are/were a great number north of the tree line. But the Cree were always nomadic...sometimes willingly.
If memory serves there are at least 25 First Nations covered by Treaty 4 in the central and southern regions of the Province.

Did they move there after the buffalo vanished, and the plains people shrank?

[Three Cedars]

Buffy is great , quite the songwriter .

The Cree people were wide ranging and part of the diaspora out of the "woodlands" and onto the prairies, this happened beginning in the 1600's from what I've read . Exactly why so many of the plains tribes moved westward out of the woodlands seems to be as a result of warfare caused by European traders introducing new weapons . It didn't take a stone-age people long to learn to drop a bag of blackpowder down the smoke-hole of a lodge which would cause death and mayhem to your neighbours that spoke a different language and had some nice land allowing you to take all their goods and their territory . Disease likely played a part - the historic record is full of deadly outbreaks of foreign diseases that the native tribes had no immunity from . If you were away on trip from your village and came back to find everyone dead from no outward sign of violence , leaving the area would be an option.

Some of the tribes that moved out of the woodlands onto the northern plains are the Arapaho , Atsina , Assiniboine , Blackfoot , Cheyenne , Cree, Crow, Sioux , Sohto and Stoney - some of these tribes planted crops in their original homelands . So when someone says my people have always lived here for thousands of years maybe in North America that is true but in Alberta ... the Blackfoot only moved into it in the early 1700's pushing the Snake Indians further south all thanks to a few flintlock guns .