Buffy Sainte-Marie, CC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, c. February 20, 1941) 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 covers of Mickey Newbury‘s “Mister Can’t You See” and Joni Mitchell‘s “The Circle Game“. Her music has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, Roberta Flack, Janis Joplin, and Glen Campbell.

In 1983, Sainte-Marie became the first indigenous person to win an Oscar. Her song “Up Where We Belong“, co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won both the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans.

Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was abandoned as an infant and then adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi’kmaq descent. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating in the top ten of her class.

In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow, she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot, who added to Sainte-Marie’s cultural value and place in native culture.