The Blacklisting of Buffy Sainte Marie

A gift arrived in the mail from Buffy Sainte-Marie, sent by Buffy from her home in Hawaii. It is a biography of her life, Buffy Sainte-Marie: It's My Way, written by Dr. Blair Stonechild, Muscowpetung First Nation.

Inside, there is a note written by Buffy, "To Brenda, with thanks for years of getting so much so right. Ke chi megawetch and aloha."

In the book's bibliography, there's an article that is part of the history of Censored News. This history begins on Navajoland. The year was 1999 and Buffy was performing at Dine' College in Tsaile, Arizona.


Backstage, Buffy described how she was blacklisted out of the music business in the United States by President Lyndon Johnson. Buffy's song Universal Soldier had become an anthem for the 1960s peace movement, the anti-war movement against the Vietnam war. Shipments of her records disappeared.

I was a staff writer for Indian Country Today in 1999 and wrote an article about the blacklisting of Buffy. This article was censored for nine years by the editors of Indian Country Today. Even when it was published in 2006, the portion on uranium mining targeting Lakota land on Pine Ridge was censored and removed. Two months after it was published, I was terminated by Indian Country Today with no cause given. Censored News was born.

In the book, Buffy describes how Universal Soldier came to her, after seeing wounded soldiers at the San Francisco airport in 1963, while waiting for a morning flight to Toronto. As the song became an anthem for draft dodgers, Buffy was targeted.


https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-blacklisting-of-buffy-sainte-marie.html