Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie is famous for singing folk songs and being a friend to native Americans. Buffy Sainte-Marie was born on a Cree Indian reserve in Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskachewan, Canada. She was adopted as a baby and grew up in Maine. Buffy liked the woods around her home. She taught herself to play the piano when she was four. She started composing songs and writing the words for them when she was older. Buffy sang about the things that were happening in her life, about her sad things and her happy things. When she was a teenager her Dad gave her a guitar. She played it in her own style. She still plays the guitar as a full grown lady. She learned to play the mouth bow, it's a Native American instrument. When Buffy went to the University of Massachusetts she wanted to become a veterinarian. She changed her mind and decided to be an elementary school teacher. Buffy became a song writer and singer by accident when a critic saw her and wrote about her in the New York Times. She recorded her first album on 1964. Her folk music was about love and war. In the mid 1970's Buffy retired from recording to raise her son Dakota in Hawaii. They appeared together on Sesame Street. In 1982 she won an Academy Award for the song "Up Where We Belong" from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.  She came back to music in 1993 with an album called Coincidence and Likely Stories.

Today Buffy works for native Americans and education with her Cradleboard Teaching Project. She lectures at colleges and she creates music and art with her computer. Here's a picture she sent us of herself that she made with her computer.

Images courtesy of Buffy Sainte-Marie

2000, by Joey, third grade

 

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