songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.
In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was later adopted, growing up in Massachusetts, with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating in the top ten of her class. She went on to earn a Ph.D in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts.
In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, who added to Sainte-Marie's cultural value of, and place in, native culture.
In 1968, she married surfing teacher Dewain Bugbee of Hawaii; they divorced in 1971. She married Sheldon Wolfchild from Minnesota in 1975; they have a son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild. That union also ended in divorce. She married her co-writer for "Up Where We Belong," Jack Nitzsche, on March 19, 1982. He died from a heart attack on August 25, 2000. As of 2007, she lives in Hawaii.
Although not a Bahá'í herself, she became an active friend of the Bahá'í Faith by the mid-1970s when she is said to have appeared in the 1973 Third National Bahá'í Youth Conference at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and has continued to appear at concerts, conferences and conventions of that religion since then. In 1992, she appeared in the musical event prelude to the Bahá'í World Congress, a double concert "Live Unity: The Sound of the World" in 1992 with video broadcast and documentary. In the video documentary of the event Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show explaining the Bahá'í teaching of progressive revelation. She also appears in the 1985 video "Mona With The Children" by Douglas John Cameron. However, while she supports a universal sense of religion, she does not subscribe to any particular religion.
Sainte-Marie claimed in a 2008 interview at the National Museum of the American Indian that she had been blacklisted by American radio stations and that she, along with Native Americans and other native people in the Red Power movements, were put out of business in the 1970s.
In a 1999 interview at Diné College with a staff writer with the Indian Country Today, Sainte-Marie said "I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music" and "In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked."
As a result of this blacklisting led by (among others) Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Nashville disc jockey Ralph Emery (following the release of I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again), Sainte-Marie said "I was put out of business in the United States".
Guess Who I Saw in Paris
Buffy Sainte-Marie Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
La da, da da, da da
Guess who I saw in Paris?
Guess who I saw in Paris
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt?
Standing with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Looking all of seventeen
Guess who invited him up to her room?
Guess who made him some tea?
Guess who got spaced with him, played his guitar?
Guess who fell asleep on his arm?
Guess who got lost in his eyes?
Guess who kissed him goodnight?
Guess who phoned me up this morning while I was still asleep?
Not like waking up at all
La da, da da, da da
Been dreaming of
La da, da da, da da
La da, da da, da da
Buffy Sainte-Marie's song "Guess Who I Saw in Paris" follows a woman's recollection of a night spent with a young man in Paris. The catchy tune begins with her repeating the title and the lyrics "Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt, Looking all of seventeen." The line "Looking all of seventeen" hints at the fact that the woman is older and has taken a younger lover.
The song goes on to describe how she invited him to her room, made him some tea, and got high with him. She fell asleep on his arm and got lost in his eyes, and the two shared a tender moment when she kissed him goodnight. In the morning, she woke up to a phone call from him, and the dreamy, almost surreal atmosphere of the song is captured in the line "Not like waking up at all."
The song's lyrics are full of ambiguity and suggestiveness, leaving it open to interpretation. Some listeners might see it as a simple love story between two people who happen to have a significant age difference. Others might read deeper into the lyrics and see a critique of society's double standards around age and sexuality, or perhaps a metaphor for the way that older generations try to hold on to their youth by associating with younger people.
Line by Line Meaning
La da, da da, da da
Repetitive musical interlude
Guess who I saw in Paris?
Introduction to the story about encountering someone in Paris
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt?
Describing the posture of the person encountered
Looking all of seventeen
Age estimation of the person encountered
Guess who invited him up to her room?
Narration of the person inviting the young man to her room
Guess who made him some tea?
Narration of the person offering hospitality to the young man
Guess who got spaced with him, played his guitar?
Narration of the person getting high and enjoying music with the young man
Guess who fell asleep on his arm?
Narration of the person falling asleep while cuddling the young man
Guess who got lost in his eyes?
Narration of the person getting mesmerized by the young man's gaze
Guess who kissed him goodnight?
Narration of the person kissing the young man before sleeping
Guess who phoned me up this morning while I was still asleep?
Narration of the person receiving a phone call from someone related to the young man
Not like waking up at all
Narration of feeling groggy after being woken up
Been dreaming of
Introduction to a concluding musical interlude
La da, da da, da da
Repetitive musical interlude
La da, da da, da da
Repetitive musical interlude
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Chuck
on Moonshot
I don’t know if this interpretation is by AI or an idiot, but it isn’t close to the mark. “Off into outerspace” isn’t an awestruck nod to space travel, but sneering at those whose minds are basically in outer space. “We wish you bon voyage” is sardonic. Welcoming back is sincere, hoping they come back to earth and realize what is here in these simple places, these cultures rooted in balance with nature and those around us. Cultures buried by the might and white-washing of American society. The anthropologist disappeared from that American society and into native culture, for which his wife is distraught viewing him as lost. But he spoke the truth and spoke it boldly and wisely as if from the heavens themselves.