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The Guardian: Buffy Sainte-Marie still fabulous
Friday, July 31, 2009
Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment


"All gushing jet black hair, radiant smiles and shining eyes, Buffy Sainte-Marie looks fabulous. "Do I? Why thank you …" She seems shocked. She's 67 and has dived into London between gigs in Norway and Ontario and isn't entirely sure what day it is. She certainly has no clue what time it is. But, aided by caffeine, she's swiftly into her stride, vigorously debating the colourful contours of her extraordinary life – from Native American rights campaigner and protest music icon to hit songwriter, amateur astrologer, teaching co-ordinator and electronic music pioneer. Glorious anecdotes tumble in rapid succession: writing Universal Soldier to impress her college professor; hanging out with Muhammad Ali, Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda; shocking middle America by breastfeeding her baby son Cody on the TV show Sesame Street; hitting the campaign trail with Barack Obama; fighting off Elvis Presley's "people" when they tried to pressurise her into relinquishing the publishing rights to Until It's Time for You to Go; the joys of living on a farm in Hawaii; reading her own FBI file; helping to launch Joni Mitchell's career; and being blacklisted by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

"Do you know," she says, "my album Coincidence & Likely Stories in 1991 was the first ever delivered via the internet and the Guardian did a big story on it with a picture? People didn't want to know about electronic music or digital or any of that then, but you were the first paper in Europe to write about the early use of the internet in that way. You guys were hip way back then." Aw, thanks Buffy – and you still look fabulous.

But we haven't seen or heard much of Buffy Sainte-Marie since then. In the UK, in fact, we haven't seen anything of her. She's been busy, she says. Doing other stuff. Like setting up the Cradleboard Teaching Project, her cultural study programme for Native Americans, which was awarded a major grant by the Kellogg Foundation in 1996 and which has consumed her ever since. "It really started in the 60s when I was just a young singer with too much money and I had all these aeroplane tickets. They're the link to my whole existence because they've enabled me to travel. And if I have a concert in Stockholm, it means I can visit the aboriginal people in the Arctic. Or if I'm playing in Melbourne or Sydney, I'll go out and visit the aboriginal people in the Bush. The Cradleboard Project is a result of my experiences living in two worlds – the fancy showbusiness world of hotels and aeroplanes – and spending time with interesting people who have a lot to say. I'm a bridge – Cradleboard helps connect people in indigenous communities with the rest of the world.""

Get the Story:
Buffy Sainte-Marie on a rollercoaster career that even the FBI kept an eye on (The Guardian 7/31)

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