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".
Wynken Blynken and Nod
Buffy Sainte-Marie Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Sailed off in a wooden shoe
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three
That live in this beautiful sea
Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
The old moon laughed and sang a song
As they rocked in the wooden shoe
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in that beautiful sea
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish, never feared are we"
So cried the stars to the fishermen three
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe
Bringing the fishermen home
It was all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be
And some folks thought it was a dream they'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea
But I shall name you the fishermen three
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes
And Nod is a little head
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
The lyrics of Buffy Sainte-Marie's song "Wynken Blynken and Nod" tell a whimsical story of three characters sailing off in a wooden shoe one night. They sailed on a river of crystal light and into a sea of dew. When the old moon asked them where they were going and what they wished, they replied that they had come to fish for the herring fish that live in the beautiful sea, and that they had nets of silver and gold. The little stars were the herring fish, and they told the fishermen to cast their nets wherever they wished, never to be feared.
Line by Line Meaning
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Two eyes and a head went to bed
Sailed off in a wooden shoe
The child went to sleep in a wooden trundle bed
Sailed on a river of crystal light
The child sailed on a journey of dreams in his sleep
Into a sea of dew
The child entered into a world of dreams
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The child's subconscious is asking him where he wants to go
The old moon asked the three
The moon represents the child's subconscious
"We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea Nets of silver and gold have we!"
The child's imagination is taking him on a journey to catch herring fish using silver and gold nets
The old moon laughed and sang a song As they rocked in the wooden shoe And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew
The child's imagination takes him on a dreamy boat ride guided by the wind, the waves and the moon
The little stars were the herring fish
The stars represent the herring fish in the child's dream
That lived in that beautiful sea
The child is dreaming of a beautiful sea where stars are fish
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish, never feared are we" So cried the stars to the fishermen three Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
The stars tell the child to cast his nets and not to worry because they aren't afraid
All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe Bringing the fishermen home
The child is enjoying fishing in his dream, and when it is over, he is gently guided back home
It was all so pretty a sail it seemed As if it could not be And some folks thought it was a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea
The child's dream was pretty and magical and some people may think that it was just a dream
But I shall name you the fishermen three Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
The child gives names to his eyes and his head and remembers the dream
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes And Nod is a little head And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed
The child's eyes and head are sleepy, and the wooden shoe represents his bed
So shut your eyes while mother sings Of wonderful sights that be And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock in the misty sea Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
The song is suggesting that the child can dream of wonderful things if he falls asleep to his mother's song as he rocks in his bed, which represents the wooden boat where Wynken, Blynken, and Nod fished in the starry sea
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: Buffy Sainte-Marie, Eugene Fields
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.