Throughout an extensive professional journey, Buffy Sainte-Marie first achieved prominence as a folk performer before venturing into country, rock, film scores, acting, advocacy, and children's television. Vanguard issued several mid-1960s recordings beginning with 1964's It's My Way!, many of whose tracks examined the challenges confronting Indigenous communities in both the United States and Canada, notably "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying." She also tackled wider subjects such as conflict and fairness in "Universal Soldier" as well as matters of the heart in "Until It's Time for You to Go" and the Oscar-winning collaboration "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman, themes she revisited on subsequent releases including 2015's Power in the Blood. A 2023 CBC News probe established that Sainte-Marie entered the world in the U.S. to parents of Italian and English ancestry, thereby contradicting her prior assertions of Indigenous Canadian roots.
Stoneham, Massachusetts, was the birthplace of Sainte-Marie, whose English and Italian forebears had altered the original family name Santamaria amid anti-Italian-American sentiment after World War II. Largely self-taught on piano and guitar, she joined the folk circles flourishing in Toronto's Yorkville neighborhood and New York City's Greenwich Village during the early 1960s. In that period she encountered Emile Piapot, son of the Cree chief of the Piapot First Nation, who together with his wife Clara adopted her.
Vanguard signed Sainte-Marie, resulting in the 1964 appearance of her debut, It's My Way!. Although she ranked among the folk circuit's notable emerging singer-songwriters, numerous standout compositions from those years reached wider audiences primarily through interpretations by others. Donovan scored one of his earliest successes with "Universal Soldier," taken from It's My Way!. Another track from the same album, "Cod'ine," ranked among the first 1960s pieces to confront the hazards of narcotics directly and was later recorded by California rock outfits Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Charlatans. Multiple pop vocalists rendered "Until It's Time for You to Go" from 1965's Many a Mile, which also became a major British success for Elvis Presley in the early 1970s. Sainte-Marie nevertheless expanded beyond folk, cutting material in Nashville during the late 1960s in pursuit of country acceptance. The 1970s brought several rock-oriented projects, among them 1971's She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina, which featured input from Ry Cooder and Crazy Horse.
After issuing 1976's Sweet America, Sainte-Marie stepped away from recording yet made regular Sesame Street appearances, mounted benefit concerts and organized on behalf of Indigenous Americans, and wrote music for motion pictures. She received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1983 for "Up Where We Belong," the theme to An Officer and a Gentleman, a piece co-written with lyricist Will Jennings and her then-husband, producer Jack Nitzsche. The composition additionally secured the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA for Best Original Song. Sixteen years elapsed before Sainte-Marie returned with Coincidence and Likely Stories in 1992; another seventeen years passed until the arrival of Running for the Drum in 2009. Limited touring supported that release while she sustained her roles as activist and educator. True North reissued Running for the Drum in 2014 and brought out the fresh Power in the Blood the following year. Recorded in Toronto with producers Michael Phillip Wojewoda, Jon Levine, and Chris Birkett, the set included two covers—the title track by Alabama 3 and UB40's "Sing Our Own Song"—alongside reinterpreted selections from her catalog and original material. 2017's Medicine Songs, a set centered on unity and resistance, followed a comparable approach, presenting two new compositions together with eleven reworked and refreshed selections drawn from across Sainte-Marie's career. The documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On debuted in 2022. The ensuing August, Sainte-Marie withdrew from performing owing to health concerns. In October 2023, CBC News released her birth certificate, verifying that she lacked Indigenous ancestry.
