Buffy Sainte-Marie Artistfacts

February 20, 1941
Buffy Sainte-Marie claims she was born on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation Reserve in Saskatchewan's Qu'Appelle Valley, and after being orphaned, she was adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie and raised in Stoneham, Massachusetts. A 2023 investigation by the CBC uncovered her birth certificate, which says she was born in Stoneham, but Sainte-Marie says it's a fake. "It was common for birth certificates of Indian children to be 'created' by western governments after they were adopted or taken away from their families," she said in a press release refuting the allegations that she fabricated her ancestry.
While she's known for writing serious protest songs that touch on the plight of Native Americans ("Now That The Buffalo's Gone") and the horrors of war ("Universal Soldier"), Buffy has also written popular love songs, including "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and A Gentleman and Elvis Presley's 1972 hit "Until It's Time For You to Go."
In 1963, a year before releasing her debut album, It's My Way!, the 22-year-old singer developed an addiction to codeine while recovering from bronchial pneumonia. The harrowing experience inspired her song "Cod'ine."
When "Up Where We Belong" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1982, Sainte-Marie was acknowledged as the first indigenous person to win an Oscar. This milestone was called into question following the CBC investigation.
Sainte-Marie, who always had trouble reading music, discovered she is actually dyslexic in music. She told the Huffington Post: "I had never heard of such a thing, but it does explain why I can write for an orchestra but then I can't read it back the next day. It's like trying to write with my left hand. It can be done but it doesn't make any sense for me, so I'm totally by ear and I record into anything - a tape recorder, a computer - rather than write things down that I can't read back."
Joni Mitchell was inspired to write her first song, "Day After Day," after seeing Buffy perform at the 1964 Mariposa Folk Festival.
She frequently appeared on Sesame Street in the late '70s and early '80s. In one memorable episode from 1977, she taught Big Bird all about breastfeeding with the help of her infant son Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild.
Her 1969 album, Illuminations, which featured electronic synthesizers, was the first quadraphonic vocal album ever made. While it wasn't a commercial success upon release, it's now regarded as a classic.
Although she didn't know it at the time, Buffy was blacklisted in the US during the tenures of presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson because her songs' anti-war messages, and other strong stances against the status-quo, were deemed anti-American. "They put out the idea to some very influential people - record companies, radio people - that I may be suspect," she told Vogue in 2018. "At the time, I was performing all over the world - but my career in the US was very quiet."

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