- published: 28 Mar 2013
- views: 72355
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She recorded one country album, I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, in Nashville, and her Academy Award-winning "Up Where We Belong" is considered "pure pop".
She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
She was born Beverly Sainte-Marie in 1941 on the Piapot Cree Indian reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, who were related to her biological parents. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy. and graduating in the top ten of her class.