Description
Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Authorized Biography by Andrea Warner includes a foreword by Joni Mitchell who like Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) has ties to Saskatchewan and writes songs with emotion and a message, both walking their own paths. In this 298-page book, the prologue describes Buffy Sainte-Marie’s early interactions with the music scene that included the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, her blacklisting, touring, show business perspective with Vanguard and other artists singing or using her songs like Elvis Presley, and the power and intrinsic value of music, resistance and protest. Her adoption from Piapot Reserve and early life in the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan in the 1940s, childhood in Maine and Massachusetts, musical improvising, early school life and relationships with her mother, brother and others introduce readers to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s musical life through songs such as It’s My Way, Cod’ine, Universal Soldier and many others. She attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and was interested in the National Indian Youth Council and the American Indian Movement always advocating her if-only-you-knew activism for Indigenous rights, broken treaties, exploitation, unfair treatment, and genocide but also for The Longest Walk. Her preference for playing music in coffee houses and recording country music tells a unique story of the music and TV scene as do her friendships with Robbie Robertson and other musicians. Buffy Sainte-Marie is also involved in education and her foundation, Nihewan, developed Cradleboard, which helped connect people in Indigenous communities to the rest of the world. She has also been actively involved in the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and a category for Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording category decolonizing the Juno Awards. Buffy Sainte-Marie has also worked on environmental issues such as No No Keshagesh in her expression of the circle of life. Photographs and short interludes by Buffy Sainte-Marie are also included. There is an Afterward: Buffy and me, acknowledgements, discography, notes, bibliography, and index. Highly recommended.