Buffy Sainte-Marie, vibrant spirit

Born on a Cree reservation in Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Buffy Sainte-Marie was adopted and raised in Maine and Massachusetts. She received a Ph.D. in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts. She also holds degrees in both Oriental Philosophy and teaching, influences which form the backbone of her music, visual art and social activism.

By 1962, in her early twenties, Sainte-Marie was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk festivals and Native reservations across the United States, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district, and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene. Before too long, her reputation as a gifted songwriter spread - particularly for her protest and love songs, which were performed by Donovan, Janis Joplin, Taj Mahal and Elvis Presley, among many others.

In 1976 she took a hiatus from recording and appeared regularly on Sesame Street for the next five years with her newborn son, Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild.

In recent years, she has been involved with creating and showing her digital art pieces as well as lecturing at numerous academic and civic venues, including founding the Cradleboard Teaching Project, a program designed to enrich curriculums of Elementary, Middle and High School levels with cross-cultural connections, and still actively performs around twenty concerts a year.