In the 60s, Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie was one of America’s favorite folk artists.
With her passionate lyrics and dynamic singing style, she electrified audiences with her songs of protest. In many of her most popular songs, such as “Native American Child,” “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone,” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying”, she spoke out against the many injustices suffered by Native Americans throughout North American history.
Beginning in 1975, Sainte-Marie took on a second career as an actress. From 1976 to 1981, Sainte-Marie was a cast member of the children’s television series Sesame Street. She has also appeared in the television films Son of Morning Star and The Broken Chain.
During the 1990s, Sainte-Marie has explored the creative possibilities of the computer. She records music from her own home studio in Hawaii and creates paintings by scanning nineteenth-century photographs of Indians and using her computer to color the pictures.
In 1996, she established the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational program that allows Indian and non-Indians students to talk with one another over the Internet.
Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot Cree Indian reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada.
