Buffy Sainte-Marie: 'I didn't know I was ahead of the pack at the time'

Buffy Sainte-Marie vividly remembers the reaction she would get in the folk clubs of the 60s whenever she would perform her song Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, which lists a litany of persistent sins committed against Native peoples. “I would see the faces of all these very smart white people turn ashen,” she said. “They didn’t know anything about Indians, and they were flabbergasted to hear that all these things were still happening on their watch – even in New York! They’d say, ‘Oh, that little Indian girl must be mistaken.’ I was gaslighted by them all the time on that. And it was terribly, terribly painful.”

Even so, when Sainte-Marie talks about vexing subjects like this today she exudes an abiding sense of calm, punctuating even her most withering observations with a giggle that brings the listener in, as if to say, “can you believe we had to put up with all this crap?”

“I don’t have a scolding attitude about these things for a reason,” Sainte-Marie said in a phone interview from her home in Hawaii. “A lot of people come at politics with their fists raised. But you really have to see through that in order to become effective. And to me, it’s all about being effective.”

Now, thanks to a comprehensive new documentary titled Carry It On, viewers can see just how effective Sainte-Marie has been in her eight decades of life. The documentary delineates most, but not all, of the “firsts” in her career, making clear how far ahead of the pack she was in the fields of music, film, television, technology and politics. At the same time, the film covers disturbing issues in her personal life, from sexual abuse by multiple family members to manipulation and confinement by a later romantic partner, to memos and calls made by people associated with various US administrations meant to discourage radio stations from playing her music in the 60s and 70s.

Sainte-Marie only found out about the government’s interference in her career years after it occurred. “They don’t tell you, ‘hey, you’re under surveillance,’” the singer said with a laugh. “I found out about it on a radio show in the 80s.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/21/buffy-sainte-marie-documentary-interview

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