Legendary Native American Singer-Songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie
http://i3.democracynow.org/2009/11/26/democracy_now_special_an_hour_of
November 26, 2009
In a Democracy Now! special, an hour of conversation and music with
Cree Indian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. In the turbulent
1960s, she was just out of college but already famous for her
beautiful voice and moving lyrics in songs like "Universal Soldier"
and "Now that the Buffalo's Gone." Over the years, Buffy Sainte-Marie
has worked with the American Indian Movement, but also with Sesame
Street, and even Hollywood, winning an Academy Award for the song "Up
Where We Belong" in 1982. She's won international recognition for her
music, has a PhD in fine arts, and began a foundation for American
Indian Education that she remains closely involved with. We speak
with the folk icon about her life, her music, censorship, and her
singing and speaking out about the struggles of Native American
peoples for the past four decades. She also performs live in the
firehouse studio.
--
Guest:
Buffy Sainte-Marie, Canadian First Nations singer-songwriter and
activist. Her latest album, her eighteenth, is called Running for the Drum.
--
AMY GOODMAN: Today an hour of conversation and song with
award-winning folk icon, Buffy Sainte-Marie.
In the turbulent 1960s, she was just out of college but already
famous for her beautiful voice and moving lyrics in songs like "My
Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying," "Universal Soldier" and
"Now that the Buffalo's Gone." Over the years, Buffy Sainte-Marie has
worked with the American Indian Movement, but also with Sesame
Street, and even Hollywood, winning an Academy Award in 1982 for the
song "Up Where We Belong." She's won international recognition for
her music, has a PhD in fine arts, and began a foundation for
American Indian Education that she remains closely involved with.
Today we spend the hour with the Buffy Sainte-Marie about her life,
her music, censorship, singing and speaking out about the struggles
of Native American peoples for the past four decades. But first, a
tribute to the folk icon from the documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: A
Multimedia Life.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: This is called "Cripple Creek."
I sometimes get funny reactions, I think, because of being female,
because of being Aboriginal, and certainly because of being original.
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: Buffy Sainte-Marie, she was a pioneer. You know, I
just applaud those instincts.
UNIDENTIFIED: I'd put her amongst the top five female artists in
North America.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: A lot of people are taught in this world that,
you know, a doctor does doctoring and a lawyer does lawyering,
therefore a singer does singing. And that's crazy, you know? Creative
people do a wealth of things.
MASTER OF CEREMONIES: She was inducted into the Juneau Hall of Fame.
She won an Oscar for the title song from the film An Officer and a
Gentleman. She appeared as a regular on Sesame Street for five years.
The incredible, beautiful, legendary Buffy Sainte-Marie.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: For a long time I've been a multimedia person.
BILL COSBY: You don't forget people like Buffy.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Here's a love song I wrote a long time ago.
When I was just starting out, they were calling what I did folk
singing, which is OK with me, but I didn't know very many folksongs,
you know? Came to folksongs, you know, there were great real folk
singers out there like Joan Baez, you know, and they'd be singing
real folksongs, you know, like 400-year-old Welsh folksongs. And I
sang a few of those, too, but most of mine I had written a couple
weeks before. So, somehow all us songwriters, we came up at, I think,
a wonderful time, and we were kind of in the same place as the folk singers.
But, you know, I'd go and I'd sing things like "Cod'ine" and
"Universal Soldier" and, you know, really kind of unusual kinds of
songs. And everybody, "Yeah!" They liked it, so… Then in the middle
of my set, I'd throw in this love song that I had written, because,
you know, I was in love, and I found out that, you know, sometimes
you just have to leave a space in your life for life to happen, see?
And I had written this love song, but I didn't say that I wrote it,
'cause it was kind of a pop song. And then Bobby Darin recorded it.
Bobby Darin, "Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath," "Mack the Knife"
Bobby Darin. The song started getting around. Roberta Flack sang it.
Sonny and Cher sang it. You know, Barbra Streisand sang it. Neil
Diamond sang it. Elvis Presley did it. Pretty soon I admitted I wrote
it. It's just a real simple love song.
[singing] You're not a dream
You're not an angel
You're a man
And I'm not a queen
I'm a woman
Take my hand
We'll make a space
in the lives
that we'd planned
And here we'll stay
Until it's time
for you to go
Yes, we're different
Worlds apart
We're not the same…
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: You have to break through. It isn't like they got
the door wide open and saying, "Hey, all you Indians, come on in!" It
isn't like that in the real world, you know? So this girl had to
stand up and, you know, and break through barriers. And I'm very
proud that she's done it.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I always thought it was going to be over
tomorrow. I never, ever thought that any of my songs would be
remembered today or that I'd be sitting here at this age getting
ready to go into a concert with the Winnipeg Symphony and visit
reserves. But that's the way that my life has turned out, and I'm
very, very grateful for it.
UNIDENTIFIED: This is called tuning Buffy's guitar.
I'm in DI2. We haven't done this one yet. This is a new one.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: It's just a treat. I mean, there are times, you
know, I'm singing my song that I'd been singing, you know, like a
song I've been singing for a long time, and, oh, man, you feel like
you're going to levitate. You feel all these violins under you, and
it's exciting. You know, Iwhat a great life I have!
JOHN KAY: She seems to be unintimidated by exploring a variety of
areas in the musical realm that are not the typical prescribed, you
know, write your song, do an album, do a tour. She's tried her hands
in differenton different levels of all of that. And I think she's
done phenomenally well. I think the life she's lived and the songs
she's written will speak volumes.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: We're going off to an adventure. We don't know
what it's going to be. But I drank some coffee, so I'm still awake.
We've got to get up at the crack of dawn, but we're going to go and
have some fun withwe hopewith the Sadies.
DALLAS GOOD: If you wouldn't mind please making welcome to the stage
Ms. Buffy Sainte-Marie. She's going to do some songs with us.
I'm a huge fan of Buffy, and I didn't expect to have her come here
tonight. I'm really honored. It's such a thrill for me. I just
absolutely adore her early work. She's one of the greatest
songwriters of our time.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: This is a song I wrote about 1963. Dallas
requested it. And Janis Joplin, it was one of the first songs that
she used to do onstage.
My influences had been rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues and Edith
Piaf and Miles Davis and, you know, a great variety of musicians.
The first time I sat down at a piano, I was probably around three,
and it was like a toy. And my mom took me to a piano teacher one time
who said the best thing. He said, "Don't ever force her to take
lessons," because I played for him. You know, I could already play. I
didn't have any lessons. "Don't make her take lessons unless she begs
for them." And I never did.
And later on, I found out that I was kind of dyslexic when it comes
to reading music. I've always had a hard time trying to learn how to
read music. And in school, it was just hopeless. That class that they
called music class was theit was just terribly frustrating for me.
I started playing music in my head, and I thought everybody did. And
I remember one time my mom saw me going like this. She said, "What
are you doing?" I said, "I'm keeping time to the music."
But I was a songwriter, and I had my guitar in the dorm, and I would
sing my songs for the girls in the dorm.
Taj Mahal was around. By God, he was hot then. He's hot still. There
was likealmost like a folk society in and around the campuses. This
was 1959, '60, '61. And I started singing at a little off-campus
coffeehouse called the Saladin.
TAJ MAHAL: I mean, she really had a great fan base there at the
university. And if she was going to play, we were there. And I
remember, because she played this stuff, and it was like, "Whoa!
Yeah!" You know, she's like [inaudible]. It was like, "No, like,
well, let's dress it up so that they don't really know what they're
getting." Uh-uh. It was like straight shot.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I'd sing, you know, songs that had a topical kind
of message. I was writing love songs, you know, "Until It's Time for
You to Go" type; country songs; songs in weird tunings. When it came
time to graduate, I thought I was going to continue studying. I
thought I was going to go to India and study at a school that was
founded by Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and I never got
there. I went to New York and started singing in coffeehouses there,
and people liked it a lot.
AMY GOODMAN: Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, a new
documentary, which is just out along with her latest album, her
eighteenth. It's called Running for the Drum. It's her first album in
thirteen years and won the Canadian Juno Award for Aboriginal Album
of the Year.
I sat down with Buffy Sainte-Marie here in our firehouse studio to
talk about her life, music, activism and politics. I began by asking
her where she began, where she was born.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I'm told I was born in Canada, but I was adopted
and I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts.
AMY GOODMAN: And your family there?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: My family in Maine and Massachusetts are part
Native American and part everything else.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, where did you go from there? How old were you
when you left?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, I was an infant when I was born. I mean, I
was an infant when I was living in Canada, but when I was adopted, I
was a baby, so I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, and I returned
to Saskatchewan asin my late teens. And from my early twenties on, I
spent a lot of time there. I was reunited with people who may or may
not be my real relatives, but we've made family together, and we're close.
AMY GOODMAN: And when did you discover music as a way to express yourself?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I think I was about three. I mean, it's my
earliest memory of music. And I saw a piano. And I didn't play
Barbies, and I didn't play sports. I played art. I made pictures, and
I danced, and I listened to music, and I played piano. And I found
out two years ago that I'm actually dyslexic in music, so I can write
for an orchestra, but I can't read it back. I learn by ear instead of by eye.
AMY GOODMAN: Did people in your family play music?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: A few did. A few did, yeah. But it's not as
though there was any kind of professional musicianship or
AMY GOODMAN: It was just in you?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Yeah, it was in me. It wasand I think that most
people are naturally what we call talented, like when you take a
bunch of little kids to the beach, they all make music, and they make
rhythm, and they dance, and they use their imaginations, and they
make drama, and they make sandcastles and architecture. So I think
that I'm one of the lucky few who have just managed to hold onto that
through school and business. And I still feel like a kindergartner
about the arts.
AMY GOODMAN: When, Buffy, did you start to perform publicly? And were
you afraid at the beginning?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: You know, I was in college. I went to the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst. And I started playing songs
for the girls in my dorm and my housemother Theresa de Kerpely, who
was from Europe. She really encouraged me, and she encouraged me to
listen to people like Edith Piaf, Carmen Amaya, the flamenco
dancer-singer, people from other countries. So, from the start of
playing for other people, I was absorbing and reflecting, I think, a
very wide world culture. International students at the university
were a big influence on me.
So it was kind of natural to me when thewhat they were calling folk
music, which also included singer-songwriters, it was very natural
for me to fall into that time in the early '60s when students ruled
and the venues were coffeehouses, not beer halls. And
coffeehousetalk, talk, talk, listen, listen, listen. So it just
became a way of life for me to have a little, small concert somewhere
off campus.
And then, in the early '60s, I went to Greenwich Village, although I
had just graduated, and I thought I was going to continue my studies
in oriental philosophy, which was my major. But I didn't. I got real
lucky, and I got bus tickets and airplane tickets and started
traveling around to safe places, which coffeehouses were. It was a
quite a different time for a young artist. And you could do that
safely and sing for your peers.
And the songs that I was writing withthat was the only thing that
kept me from being unafraid onstage. I didn't think I was going to
last more than, you know, the next month. And the songs that I was
writing, I thought people sort of ought to hear, but also deserve to
hear, because I knew I was reflecting some points of view that
weren't being verbalized, but they were felt by fellow students, like
things about Native American stuff and love songs with more feeling
than just, you know, "I'm going to die if I don't get you in bed
tonight," or things like "Universal Soldier."
AMY GOODMAN: When did you write "Universal Soldier"? How did you write it?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I wrote "Universal Soldier" very early in the
'60s. And it was justit was both original to me, but it was also an
absorption and a reflection of what I was seeing in the streets and
on college campuses.
[singing] He's five foot two, and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
And he knows he shouldn't kill
And he knows he always will
Kill you for me, my friend, and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada
He's fighting for France
He's fighting for the USA
And he's fighting for the Russians
And he's fighting for Japan
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for democracy
And fighting for the reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon to a war
And without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier
And he really is to blame
But his orders comes from far away no more.
They come from him and you and me
And brothers can't you see
This is not the way we put an end to war.
AMY GOODMAN: Did it just explode on the scene as soon as you started
to sing it? I mean, we're talking about now in the '60s the Vietnam War.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Yeah, early '60s. Yeah, it kind of did. I mean, I
got popular and famous right away. And I was very, very fortunate, in
that I could travel where mythe other girls who had graduated
college with me, they couldn't travel. I could travel. And I had a
Native American background and really interest in knowing what had
not been told to me, because when I was growing up, my mother who
raised me, she especially told me, you know, what you see in the
movies and read in books is not necessarily true, but you can find
out someday.
So I used my show business airplane tickets toyou know, I'd have a
concert in Paris, and then I'd go up to the Arctic and spend time
with the indigenous people there, or a concert in New York, because I
was living in Greenwich Village then, I'd go up to Akwesasne, the
Mohawk reservation, you know, at the top of New York on the Canadian
border. And it kind of became the paradigm of my life. I wasn't
intentionally trying to become a bridge for anything, but I did see
that people in the cities, they wanted to know.
And you asked, you know, was I was afraid to be onstage. I wasn't,
because of the songs, see? I didn't think I was much of a singer, but
because of the songs, I had the nerve to step out onto a stage and to
give the people the songs. So I wasn't concentrating on myself as a
singer. I probably should have been concentrating more. Later on, I
learned to sing.
AMY GOODMAN: Buffy Sainte-Marie, "Now that the Buffalo's Gone," tell
us the story of this song.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, wow, that was on my first album, alongside
"Universal Soldier." "Now that the Buffalo's Gone" is about something
that was going on in Jamestown, New York. The Seneca reservation was
about to be flooded in order to build Kinzua Dam. And there were
alternative sites for Kinzua Dam that would have saved everybody,
except a sweet few, a whole lot of money. But it kind of blew the
whistle on that.
But I wrote it not to make anybody mad, but to kind of acknowledge
the fact that a lot of people who are part Indian really would like
to know and would care, so again and again it says "you, dear lady,
and you, dear man." You know, it's trying to explain something to
people who don't usually get to know anything about Native American
stuff, because you never hear about Indian people. The only time you
hear about Indian people, like, for instance, Wounded Knee, you know,
when Nixon was president, what you'd see in the media was, you know,
some Indian with a gun, you know, who was defending their land
against, you know, things that shouldn't be going on.
AMY GOODMAN: Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. We'll have more
with the award-winning folk icon in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Now that the Buffalo's Gone" by Buffy Sainte-Marie.
We return now to my conversation with the Native American activist,
singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. After hitting the top of the
charts in the early '60s, the outspoken performer suddenly
disappeared from the mainstream airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson
and Richard Nixon years.
AMY GOODMAN: The '60s and '70s, Johnson, Nixonwhat about music and
culture at that time? How was it affected?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Well, at the time, we didn't know about it, but a
lot of us were being blacklisted. Our music was being suppressed.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Letters were being sent to radio stations,
acknowledging and giving pats on the back for broadcasters who were
refusing to play music that ought to be suppressed. And
AMY GOODMAN: How do you know that now?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Well, I only found out about it maybe twenty
years after the fact, when a broadcaster in Toronto brought it to my
attention. He had a letter on White House stationery, you know,
commending him for having suppressed music that deserved to be
suppressed, and it was about me. Eartha Kitt was affected. Taj Mahal
was affected. A lot of people were affected.
But when I found out about it, I went and got my FBI files, and I was
just appalled. I mean, the Freedom of Information Act, at that time,
anyway, was just a crock. In the first place, they ask you to come in
and be with an FBI agent in the FBI offices. And my lawyer said, "No,
no, no. No, you can send somebody to our offices." So I looked at the
files, and they were all crossed out, big fat magic markers.
And then, a couple years ago, on the internet, a former CIA agent
came forward, as well, and talked about the suppression of music in
the '60s. And so, these
AMY GOODMAN: How did you feel it at the time?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: When I first found out about it, I was just
surprised, I was just flabbergasted, because I had never known that
there was anything going on like that. I didn't know that records
were not beingnot showing up at their destinations, so there'd be no
records in town when I had a big concert. So I was mystified. It had
never occurred to me.
And then later on, you know, a couple years ago, when I found out
about the Nixon administration, as well, doing things like that,
according to the CIA agent, anyway, you know, it bothers me, but it's
not the kind of thing that I've made a career of being mad about,
because where are Johnson and Nixon now, anyway? I have a new record
and a great life, and I only wish that people at the time had been
able to hear the songs that I thought were reflecting their feelings.
I think it would have made a difference, because I think music can
make a difference.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying."
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, aren't you something? It's a song I very
seldom sing. It's so sad.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you want to sing it now?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: No, I don't. No.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we'll play it.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: You can see it on YouTube. "My Country 'Tis of
Thy People You're Dying" was myI wanted to give people Indian 101 in
six minutes. It's a long song. But Indian 101 has never been
presented to the North American public, let alone anywhere else.
[singing] My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.
Forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, and stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth…
Native American people, we know about it, you know, the US, Canada,
etc. But the public doesn't know what really happened. They're not
aware of the genocide that happened in the Americas. They're not
aware of how these things can happen without their knowledge. And
see, I thinkI don't know. I think that there's a core of people in
the Americas who are real good people who want to do the right thing,
only they just don't get the information that would help them to
become knowledgeable enough to truly be of support and value to
people who are trying to spotlight individual issues from here to here, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in the 1970s, moving from Nixon on to Johnson and
beyond from there, the Vietnam War ends, Leonard Peltier is someone
that you have done many benefit concerts for. Talk about the American
Indian Movement. Talk about Leonard Peltier.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Leonard Peltier is serving two life sentences.
The only thing that's ever been proved in a court of law is that the
bullets didn't match the gun. And it's been on the Amnesty
International list forever. Everybody wants to get Leonard Peltier
out of jail, but it'syou know, Peter Matthiessen wrote an
interesting book called In the Spirit of Crazy Horse that kind of
sums it up. And there's a lot online, as well, about Leonard. We're
always hoping that he's going to behave another trial or, you know,
just be let out. It's just stupid that he's in jail.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did his story touch your heart? How did his
story illustrate what's going on with Native Americans here?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Well, I had known Leonard, and, you know,
somebody described Leonard asit's like somebody's cousin who comes
over to work on your car on the weekend. You know, Leonard was not
like a flag-burning, you knowLeonard was just a regular guy. And he
represents the kind of person who can just wind up taking the rap
because something bad was done by an administration.
It's too complicated an issue really not to dedicate really a lot of
time to, but the FBI shouldn't have been there. The people should not
have beenopened fire on Indians camping on their own ground. But
there was so much going on, locally and then nationally. Leonard got
caught in the middle of it.
And I mentioned Leonard and also my friend Annie Mae Aquash, who
died. You know, the FBI, they told us she'd died of exposure, you
know, but her head was filled with bullets, and her hands were cut
off. You know, they put her hands in a shoebox and pushed them at her
family. And, you know, real bad stuff sometimes goes on.
And as an artist, sometimes you can artfully say something in a
three-minute song that it would take somebody else a 400-page book to
write. And as a songwriter, I just really admire the art of the
three-minute song. It's almost like good journalism, if you think it
out. It's very hard sometimes to just talk right off the cuff and say
something in one sentence, but if you work on it, which is opposed to
writing a love song, which is all emotion and inspiration, if the
emotion and inspirationif you put your head to editing it and
working on it, sometimes you can come up with something that really
there's no argument against it, you know, like "Universal Soldier" or
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." And I wrote those songs kind of like
I was writing for a professor who didn't want me to get an A, and I
was determined, yeah, so I worked on them real hard. But then,
another kind of song, like "Until It's Time for You to Go" or some of
the songs on the new album are just right from the heart and real
spontaneous and love songs. So there's many different ways that a
songwriter writes.
AMY GOODMAN: "Until It's Time for You to Go," let's just play some of
you performing it here at Democracy Now!
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: [singing] You're not a dream
You're not an angel
You're a man
And I'm not a queen
I'm a woman
Take my hand
We'll make a space
In the lives
That we'd planned
And here we'll stay
Until it's time
For you to go
Yes, we're different
Worlds apart
We're not the same
We laughed and played
At the start
Like in a game
You could've stayed
outside my heart
but in you came
And here you'll stay
Until it's time
For you to go
Don't ask why
Don't ask how
Don't ask forever
Love me now
This love of mine
had no beginning
It has no end
I was an oak
Now I'm a willow
Now I can bend
And though I'll never
In my life
See you again
Still I'll stay
Until it's time
For you to go
Don't ask why of me
Don't ask how of me
Don't ask forever of me
Love me, love me now
You're not a dream
You're not an angel
You're a man
And I'm not a queen
I'm a woman
Take my hand
We'll make a space
In the lives
That we'd planned
And here we'll stay
Until it's time
For you to go
And here we'll stay
Until it's time
For you to go.
AMY GOODMAN: "Until It's Time for You to Go." Tell us about this
song, and then talk about the music industry. I mean, Elvis Presley
sang this song and wanted you to give up the rights, is that right?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Well, not him personally, his lawyers. Yeah, that
was fun. You know, when I was thirteen and Elvis was nineteen, I
mean, once he appeared in the world, I was one of the girls who said,
"Oh, man, I never seen a boy like that in my town." And he and all of
the whole generation of musicLittle Richard and Chuck Berry and all
the rockabilly and rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll artists who
came up at that timewere just really having fun, and it was a
different kind of music. That was the kind of music that I had. I had
music that really expressed me, but I really had a good time with it,
and it was natural music. It was not like school music. So he was a
big influence on me.
And then I was recording in the '70s at Quadrafonic Studios in
Nashville with Norbert Putnam, a great producer, and we had just
finished recording. I covered one of Elvis's songs that he had done,
like a B-side, and it was on his first album. It was called [singing]
"My baby left me, never said a word," yeah? Scotty Moore playing
guitar. And so, we finished the take, and the phone rang, and it was
this guy who worked with Elvis's team.
And they said, "Buffy, Elvis just recorded your song." Apparently it
was Priscilla and Elvis's love song, I've been told. And he said,
"We're going to have to have some of that publishing money, honey."
And I said no, because with "Universal Soldier" in the '60s, I was a
girl in, you knowwith a guitar in a coffeehouse, and the Highwaymen
had just come off a hit called "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" and
they said, "We want to record 'Universal Soldier.'" And I said,
"Sure." And they said, "Well, who's the publisher?" And I said,
"What's that?" And a guy at the table said, "Well, I can help you
out." And I gave away the rights to "Universal Soldier" for one
dollar. And the good news is that ten years later I had $25,000 to
buy it back, which I did, but I never ever gave away the rights to a
song again. And I really have always believed that a songwriteryou
know, it's basically the living that we have. That's it for us. So,
unless somebody is actually writing the song with me, then I don't
give up the publishing.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about "No No Keshagesh."
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, "No No Keshagesh" is kind of written in the
same spirit of "Universal Soldier," "Priest of the Golden Bull." But
it's very playfully done. It's a real serious song, but it's very
playful. "Keshagesh" is a Cree word, and it meansit's what you'd
call a little puppy who eats all his own and then everybody else's.
You know the kind? Yeah? So it's a metaphor for environmental greed.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have it on your new album.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: It is.
AMY GOODMAN: So it's been awhile since you have published an album,
since you've put out a record. And what made you decide to do it now?
It's been, what, more than a decade.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: More than thirteen years.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: And now Running for the Drum.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I put out an album when I feel like going on the
road. I've never put out an album according to a record company's
schedule, because there's no sense in making a record if you're not
going to tour with it. So, for a while, I didn't record. I was raising my son.
I made an album called Coincidence and Likely Stories, which is a
pretty hard-hitting albumI love itwith my co-producer Chris
Birkett. And it was the first-ever album to be delivered via the
internet. This was in the late '80s. And I had gotten into computers
because of music, so computers were easy for me, because it was
music. So we sent MIDI files overyou know, over the internet from my
studio in Hawaii to go on tape in London.
The next album that I made was called Up Where We Belong, and it has
my Academy Award song, but it's a collection of all the songs that
people always ask for in concerts.
And then another ten yearsten, fifteen years go by, and I feel like
going on the road again, because in between I'm doing things. In
betweenI think the public probably thinks that when an artist is
touring, that's when they're creative. But you don't have time to be
creative. You're too busy. So, I took all this time off, and I
developed my teaching project, which is called the Cradleboard
Teaching Project, and basically, we write interactive multimedia
curriculum in Native studies, and you can see more about that at
Cradleboard.org.
But this economic time that happened during the Bush years, I knew we
weren't going to get the funding that we needed. So, slowly, we drew
the project down a little bit, and I justmy desire was to make it
free on the internet. So, two years ago, that dream came true, and I
was ready to record again. I'd been writing all this time. So, my
co-producer, Chris Birkett, came over to Hawaii five times from
France, and we recorded.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did you move to Hawaii?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, gosh, I moved to Hawaii about forty-two years
ago, just because I was kind of tired of being so famous, and I
wanted to be anonymous. And so, I lived on an island in the Hawaiian
chain under an assumed name for many, many years, until Sesame Street.
AMY GOODMAN: Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. We'll have more
with the award-winning folk icon in a minute. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Buffy Sainte-Marie.
We return to the final part of my discussion with the Cree Indian
singer-songwriter and activist. She joined the cast of Sesame Street
in 1975 for over five years. I asked her to talk about her experience
with the wildly popular American children's television series.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: All of a sudden, my record sales and record
airplay, you know, took a nosedive, just wasn't there anymore. I had
no idea that there was something fishy going on. But I was called by
Sesame Street. They said, "Would you come on and say the alphabet,
you know, count from one to ten like Stevie Wonder and everybody
does?" And I said, "No, I don't want to do that. But have you ever
done any Native American programming?" And they said, "No." So I
said, "Would you like to?" And they said, "We'll call you back." And
sure enough, they did. They called me right back, and they said,
"Yeah, we would." So, the first show that we did, we went to Taos
Pueblo. And it was just great. You know, the
AMY GOODMAN: In New Mexico.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: In New Mexico, yeah, yeah. And we did real Native
American programming, but Sesame Street style. And I stayed with
Sesame Street for five-and-a-half years. It was just a brilliant
experience, the writing just so perfect for little children and their
caregivers. They never stereotyped me. Although we did Native
American programming, we also did breastfeeding.
AMY GOODMAN: You breastfed your son on the show?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Yeah, but not like some big deal, you know? Just,
it was beautiful, you know, the way they wrote it. I was sitting next
to Big Bird's nest, and he looks over, and he says, "What are you
doing, Buffy?" And I said, "I'm feeding the baby." And he said,
"That's a funny way to feed the baby." And I said, "Well, he gets
everything that he needs for now, and I get to cuddle him." And Big
Bird said, "Oh, that's nice," and went back to playing, which is what
a little kid really would do.
And we also did sibling rivalry episodes. And I brought Sesame Street
to my backyard in Hawaii, when they wanted to do some multicultural
programming in the islands.
AMY GOODMAN: Buffy, you're going to have to go soon, and I wanted to
talk about one of the songs on Running for the Drum, and it's
"America the Beautiful."
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Mm-hmm. Well, "America the Beautiful" has been
recorded by so many different people, and it's also had verses added
by many, many people. You go on the internet, and you'll see there's
all kinds of verses from all kinds of perspectives. I mean, some of
them are really kind of racist, and others are just kind of natural
and beautiful.
But my friend John Herrington, Commander John Herrington, was the
first Native American astronaut. And when he was going to get his
ride, NASA invited me to sing and invited a whole lot people to come
from his reservation, Chickasaw reservation in Oklahoma. And I had
been thinking about "America the Beautiful," so I wrote new verses
for it, and I also wrote an introduction for it. It says, [singing]
"There were Choctaws in Alabama, Chippewas in Saint Paul. Mississippi
mud runs like a river in me. America, ooh, she's like a mother to
me." So it'sand the verses continue from there, with small changes,
and then there's a middle section, too.
But it really reflects kind of a different approach to America than
you usually see in the headlines. It's about America the country, not
America the nation state. It's about the real America that so many
people, regardless of their political associations, really feel in
their heartsyou know, this beautiful, beautiful place. So, it's yet
another take on "America the Beautiful." People seem to enjoy it.
AMY GOODMAN: Buffy Sainte-Marie, you mentioned the Cradlboard
Teaching Project, but talk more about what you are dedicating your life to.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Oh, I'm dedicating my life to having a good time.
I believe the Dalai Lama when he says, "Be happy." My happiness is
found in connecting people. I really love the idea of connecting
non-Native American people to Native American people, through schools
and through children and through teachers, by putting Native American
classes into the driver's seat of delivering our self-identity,
whoever our nations are, to anybody who wants to know about it. And I
like doing it for free.
Doing concerts and live shows is a lot of fun. It's very different
from just staying home and writing. But, for me, writing curriculum
is the same as writing songs or the same as making paintings. They're
all are the same for me, and, you know, it's all part of that
kindergarten kid that I still feel that I am. I do it because I love
it. If I perform, you know I'm glad to be there. And if I'm not on
the road, I probably don't want to be.
So, I was very fortunate to make a fortune when I wasoh, I wasI
knew by the time I was twenty-four that I was probably going to have
three meals a day forever. And I've been able to use my show business
dollars to start a foundation. I mean, I was a young singer with just
too much money in the '60s. So, in about 1968 I started the Nihewan
Foundation, which I really was trying toit was just a scholarship
foundation. And because of all these show business airplane tickets,
I got to go to places like South Dakota and, you know, reservations
all over the place, indigenous communities all over the world. And I
knew that Native American people and indigenous people, they didn't
know how to get from where they were to college. So I started this
scholarship foundation.
And the happiest day or my favorite day was when I found out that two
of our scholarship recipients from those days had gone on to become
college presidents, tribal college presidents. So, you never know.
You know, you do some little thing that's just kind of important to
you and makes you feel good, and somebody else takes it and blazes it onward.
I know we're having hard times in ourin the world right now,
economically, you know, and yet I still so believe in the soul of
people, you know, of individual people and our capacity to work
together and to elect a great president. I supported President Obama,
not because he grew up in Hawaii, where I live, and not because he
was half-black, half-white, but just the idea of a professor of
constitutional law in the White House, you know, the idea of someone
with that kind of background and understanding who had also been a
community organizer really, really touched me.
And when his sister came to my little island in the Pacificby the
way, I have to mention KKCR, which is my local NPR station, you know,
our community radio station, and we love Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: It's how we're connected.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Yes. Yes, we are. We are. I came a very long way
to see you today, and it's because I listen to you on KKCR all the time.
So, Maya, she had come to our island to speak, when Barack Obama was
running. And there was an opportunity to write a check and volunteer
for something. And I wrote my check, and then I volunteered. But I
said, "I don't want to volunteer for this shoe-in state. We're all
going to vote for him anyway, because we know how cool he is." I
said, "I want to go someplace, some rural area, on the issue of voter
protection." And that's what we did, you know, my localmy local
Democratic people and the National Committee.
AMY GOODMAN: You went back to New Mexico?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: They invited me to go to New Mexico, to rural New
Mexico, where, I tell youI mean, my job was just to sing in people's
houses and restaurants and squares and wherever. And what we were
trying to do was to recruit lawyers and volunteers to take training
in voter protection.
And I don't think people really understand that issue. They don't
know what it's like to be in a small place like that. You know, car
full of brown people, you know, they come up to vote, and somebody in
a big puffy jacket and sunglasses, you know, walks over to them and
says, "Show your ID." And so, you know, the people think that this is
legitimate. They show their ID. The guy walks back over to his truck
and comes back, and he says, "Somebody by your name has outstanding
parking tickets. And if you go in there and vote, it's a felony. And
you'll never get this, and you'll never get that, and your kids won't
be able to go to school." Right? It's total bull. But that kind of
intimidation, and worse, was going on at the polls in the two
previous elections.
And we just wanted to make sure that it didn't happen this time. And
I met incredible people, incredible people who were working along the
same lines, tirelessly, but with this positivity and this drive. And
I still feel it coming from the White House. And I still see it out
there when I'm on umpte-nine airplanes and talking to people. And I
have a lot of faith in what's going on today, in spite ofyou know,
you get dogs, you get fleas.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I know you're flying off, so I wondered what song
you'd like us to end with.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Let's see. Did we do "No No Keshagesh"?
AMY GOODMAN: We talked about it.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: We talked about it. Can we play it?
AMY GOODMAN: Sure.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I made a video of that one.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to play it?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: I got my snazzy white jacket. Do it. "No No
Keshagesh." "No No Keshagesh, you can't do that no more." Greedy guts.
AMY GOODMAN: So thanks so much.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Thank you, Amy. My pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: It's really great to see you.
[Buffy Sainte-Marie, "No No Keshagesh"]
AMY GOODMAN: And that does it for today's program.
.
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