Buffy Sainte-Marie, CC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American (Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in 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“, “Take My Hand for a While”, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone“, and her versions of Mickey Newbury‘s “Mister Can’t You See” and Joni Mitchell‘s “The Circle Game“. Her songs have been recorded by many artists including Donovan, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Janis Joplin, and Glen Campbell.

In 1983, she became the first Indigenous American person to win an Oscar, when her song “Up Where We Belong“, co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Songat the 55th Academy Awards. The song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song that same year.

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, to Cree parents. At age two or three she was taken from her parents as part of the Sixties Scoop – a government policy where Indigenous children were taken from their families, communities and cultures for placement in non-First Nations families.