Buffy St. Marie stops in at Joseph Bighead

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For more than 30 years, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been moving audiences the world over with her distinctive singing and tell-it-like-it-is writing styles.

While she was first known as a folk singer and writer of protest songs in the 60s, Sainte-Marie has been inspired to write love songs as well as songs for children.

"The songs I wrote back then are still valid," she said after a performance at Joseph Bighead First Nations near Pierceland, Sask. on Aug. 7.

Songs like Universal Soldier, Fallen Angels and The Big Ones Get Away are part of her live performance.

"I sill sing them. But I like a lot of different kinds of music, country, pop, rock'n'roll and powwow.

Currently she is on tour promoting her new album, a retrospective of her most popular songs. Up Where We Belong includes such classics as Until It's Time For You To Go, He's an Indian Cowboy In the Rodeo and her academy award winning song Up Where We Belong, performed by Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker for the motion picture An Officer and a Gentleman.

Windigo, Re-location Blues, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Starwalker are songs concerning Native legend, residential schools, spirituality and the struggle for existence.

Sainte-Marie sings of the hardships Indigenous people have faced as a result of colonization but she also encourages Native people to look for the best in people, especially their own people.

"Native people have a lot more than corn and squash or art and beadwork to offer the world," she said. "We have philosophical truths that apply to today."

Two new songs have also been added to the album. Darling Don't Cry is a love song Sainte-Marie recorded with Edmond Bull from the Red Bull First Nation.

The second new offering is about uranium mining on Indian reserves and is entitled Priests of the Golden Bull.

The album is to be released in September.

Although she began making music on the family's piano at the age of three and since she has had no formal musical training, she plays her music by ear.

"I hear the songs in my head and then I play them," she said.

Born in Piapot, Sask., Sante-Marie was orphaned as a small child and was raised by a Micmac family in the United States. She regularly visits family and friends and performs occasionally in Saskatchewan.

Over the past 11 years she has composed music on her computer, at home in her recording studio in Hawaii.

"Having the recording studio in my home has allowed me a lot of freedom creatively. Using my computer is probably the biggest change I have made in my music. Otherwise, it hasn't changed that much."

And even though Sainte-Marie has not studied music, she does hold a teaching degree and PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts.

"I like school, there's no doubt about that. I am also adjunct professor of Fine Art at Evergreen State and will be teaching a two-week class this year."

In addition to her music, Sante-Marie is a highly acclaimed artist, with two paintings hanging in the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and several exhibitions at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina and shows in Toronto.

Again, her artistic style is her own as she uses her computer, with a touch-sensitive tablet that gives her access to 16 million colors, to create her paintings.

"The paintings are like the songs, some have Native themes, some don't but they all appeal to the emotions."