Buffy Sainte-Marie, is an Indigenous Canadian-American singer-songwriter, musician, Oscar-winning composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She has won recognition, awards and honours for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. Among her most popular songs are "Universal Soldier", "Cod'ine", "Until It's Time for You to Go", "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and her versions of Mickey Newbury's "Mister Can't You See" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game". Her songs have been recorded by many artists including Donovan, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Janis Joplin, and Glen Campbell.
Wesley Studi is a Native American actor and film producer. He has garnered critical acclaim and awards throughout his career, particularly for his portrayal of Native Americans in film. He has appeared in Academy Award-winning films, such as Dances with Wolves (1990) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992), and in the Academy Award-nominated films Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) and The New World (2005). He is also known for portraying Sagat in Street Fighter (1994). Other films he has appeared in are Hostiles, Heat, Mystery Men, Avatar, A Million Ways to Die in the West, and the television series Penny Dreadful. In 2019, he received an Academy Honorary Award, becoming the first Native American and the second Indigenous person from North America to be honored by the Academy.
"Universal Soldier" is a song written and recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The song was originally released on Sainte-Marie's debut album It's My Way! in 1964. "Universal Soldier" was not an immediate popular hit at the time of its release, but it did garner attention within the contemporary folk music community. It became a hit a year later when Donovan covered it, as did Glen Campbell. Sainte-Marie said of the song: "I wrote 'Universal Soldier' in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all."
"You'll Need Somebody on Your Bond" is a gospel song that is attributed to both tradition and to gospel blues musician Blind Willie Johnson. Johnson first recorded the song in December 1930, although Delta blues musician Charley Patton recorded a similar "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die" in October 1929. Over the years, several other musicians have recorded renditions of the song.
Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan is the second CD boxed set from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was released on 13 September 2005.
It's My Way! is the first album by folk musician and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. It was released in April 1964 by Vanguard Records. It was later released in Britain in the spring of 1965 by Fontana Records. Though the album did not chart, it proved influential in the folk community. It is most famous for two widely covered folk standards, "Universal Soldier" and "Cod'ine", as well as "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", a lament about the continued confiscation of Indian lands, as evidenced by the building of the Kinzua Dam in about 1964. The cover features a mouthbow, which was to be a trademark of her sound on her first three albums.
Little Wheel Spin and Spin is the third album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1966. It was her only album to reach the Top 100 of the Billboard 200. Its most famous song is "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying," which displayed a native perspective on the colonisation of North America.
Fire & Fleet & Candlelight is the fourth album by Cree singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.
I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again is the fifth album by Cree singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. As its title suggested, it saw her embrace Nashville country music with the help of session veterans such as the Jordanaires, Grady Martin, Roy M. Huskey, Jr. and Floyd Cramer. The album included re-recordings of "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "The Piney Wood Hills" from her first and second albums respectively. "Tall Trees in Georgia", in contrast to most of the material, showed Sainte-Marie performing in a style reminiscent of her earliest work.
She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina is the seventh album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1971.
Moonshot is a studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1972 by Vanguard Records.
Changing Woman is an album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1975 via MCA Records. It was her second, and last, album for the label.
Sweet America was the twelfth studio album by Buffy Sainte-Marie and her last before retiring from music to work on Sesame Street and in education. The album was dedicated to the American Indian Movement and featured some songs with tribal rhythms and vocals that she was later to develop on her 1992 comeback Coincidence and Likely Stories.
The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie is a compilation album taken from her first six albums with Vanguard Records, released in 1970.
The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie Vol. 2 is a compilation double album released by Vanguard Records in 1971 covering a large proportion of the material she had released on her first six albums for the label that was not found on the previous year's The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Running for the Drum is the fourteenth studio album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 2008. One of Sainte-Marie's more successful albums, it spawned one single with "No No Keshagesh". Sainte-Marie also rewrote two verses of "America The Beautiful".
"Cod'ine" is a contemporary folk song by singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. Considered one of the earliest anti-drug songs, Sainte-Marie wrote the piece after becoming addicted to codeine which she had been given for a bronchial infection. She recorded it for her debut album, It's My Way! (1964).
"Now That the Buffalo's Gone" is the first song from the 1964 album It's My Way! by Canadian First Nations singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The song's title refers to the near-extinction of the American bison and serves as a metaphor for the cultural genocide inflicted by Europeans. A classic folk protest song, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" has a simple arrangement with guitar and vocals by Sainte-Marie and bass played by Art Davis. The song is a lament that addresses the continuous confiscation of Indian lands. In the song, Sainte-Marie contrasts the treatment of post-war Germany, whose people were allowed to keep their land and their dignity, to that of North American Indians.
The 2015 edition of the Canadian Polaris Music Prize was presented on September 21, 2015 at The Carlu event theatre in Toronto, Ontario. The event was hosted by children's entertainer Fred Penner.
Power in the Blood is the fifteenth studio album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released May 12, 2015 on True North Records.
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