Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie
Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie
In 1968, Buffy was asked to take a lead role in an episode of The Virginian, a ninety-minute television drama.
Buffy made sure her role was a positive reflection of an Indigenous character. Buffy had seen how indigenous roles were depicted on TV and in movies. Often they were written as lazy, portrayed as thieves or villains who were played by non-Indigenous actors wearing bad wigs and makeup.
The producers thought there weren’t enough professional Indigenous actors for all the parts. But Buffy knew lots of people at the Indian Actors’ Workshop in Hollywood. She arranged that they play all the characters.
This was the first production that used Indigenous actors for all the Indigenous roles. Buffy proved that it was possible for shows to be more diverse, and that diversity made them better.
Singer-songwriter, musician, educator, artist, philanthropist, activist – to be any of these (and to have success at them) is an accomplishment, but to be all of them, as Buffy is, is an amazing feat. Beverly (Buffy) Sainte-Marie’s birth is thought to have been on a First Nation in Saskatchewan sometime in the 1940s. She was adopted as an infant and was raised in the northeastern United States. As she grew up, Buffy showed musical talent, playing piano and guitar by ear. The first person in her family to attend university, Buffy studied Education and also sang in clubs, eventually playing music full-time. Over the years, Buffy released several albums, had a lead role in a television drama and appeared on the TV show Sesame Street from 1975-1981. She won an Oscar for “Up Where We Belong”, co-written for the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
Despite the accolades that came her way, Buffy’s music career had its low points. Though her music was popular among her fans, she was blacklisted by American radio stations for her views and her protest songs, some of them anti-war and others about the ways in which the government was treating Indigenous peoples and taking away their land.
As an advocate for higher learning, Buffy started the Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education, a foundation that helps Indigenous high school graduates to pay for university. In 1996, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project which employs online interactive media to teach classes a variety of subjects from an Indigenous perspective and to create cross-cultural understanding. Her children’s book, Hey Little Rockabye: A Lullaby for Pet Adoption, encourages people to adopt rescue pets, with the proceeds of the book going to Humane Canada, an animal care organization.
Buffy’s many other accomplishments are also mentioned, either in the main body of the text or in the timeline at the back of the book. There is not much information about Buffy’s private life other than she has lived on a farm in Hawaii since 1966, tending to her cats, dogs, goats and horses, all of them shelter animals. Most people know Buffy through her music and her unwavering commitment to advocacy for the environment and for Indigenous and, in fact, all human rights. She has travelled the world with her message of peace and understanding in her desire to make the world a better place.
With so many of Buffy’s accomplishments to write about, MacLeod does a great job without overwhelming the young reader. The main body of the text is simply written and easy to comprehend. Cartoonlike mixed media illustrations (digital tools, gouache and watercolor paints and black ink lines) accompany the text. These cartoons have speech bubbles, but the bubbles rarely add any new facts and the illustrations would have worked perfectly well without them. A timeline of Buffy’s life and her many achievements and awards is provided along with a few photographs.
Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie is an educational and inspiring read about an exceptional person!
Gail Hamilton is a former teacher-librarian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.