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".
Mary
Buffy Sainte-Marie Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Oh see how bright it's burning
Joseph my time is come
The Son of God is yearning
To come, to come
Ask the man for some room to spare
And a candle dimly burning
The Son of God is yearning
To come, to come
Pain of birth is surely great
And yet my fate's been told me
Do I see an Angel bright
Descending to behold me
He comes, he comes, he comes
In this song, Buffy Sainte-Marie tells the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, as she prepares for the birth of her son. The first verse starts with Mary seeing a bright star and recognizing that her time has come. She tells her partner, Joseph, that the Son of God is yearning to come, implying that she sees herself as merely a vessel for the divine mission that her child will undertake. In the second verse, Mary asks for some space and a dimly burning candle as she prepares to give birth. She acknowledges the pain of childbirth but accepts that it is part of her fate. The third verse ends with Mary seeing an angel descending upon her, signaling the arrival of her child.
Line by Line Meaning
Yonder I see a star
Looking at the sky, I see a bright star in the distance that stands out among the others
Oh see how bright it's burning
The star is shining very bright and it is easily noticeable
Joseph my time is come
Joseph, my husband, it is time for me to give birth
The Son of God is yearning
The baby I am carrying is the son of God and he is ready to join the world
To come, to come
He wants to come into the world and fulfill his destiny
Ask the man for some room to spare
We need to ask someone if they could give us a place to stay for the night
And a candle dimly burning
We just need a small light to guide us through the night
Pain of birth is surely great
Even though giving birth is a painful experience, it is something that every woman must go through
And yet my fate's been told me
I know that my destiny is to give birth to the son of God
Do I see an Angel bright
Am I seeing a bright and beautiful Angel coming towards me?
Descending to behold me
The Angel is coming towards me to witness the miracle of birth
He comes, he comes, he comes
The Angel is almost here to witness the momentous occasion
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.