The Wild Reed: “The Real Deal”: Maurice Switzer on the Legacy of Buffy Sainte-Marie

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

“The Real Deal”: Maurice Switzer on the Legacy of Buffy Sainte-Marie

In an op-ed published yesterday in Anishinabek News, “the voice of the Anishinabek nation,” Maurice Switzer offers a wise and compassionate perspective on the recent calling into question of singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie’s long-standing claims of Indigenous heritage. Switzer is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation.

Following, with added images and links, is an excerpt from Switzer’s December 18 op-ed, “Buffy’s Legacy Is the Real Deal.”

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I’ll never forget the haunting sound of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s tremolo vocals billowing upwards into the night sky like smoke from a blazing campfire.

After hearing [in 1964] a mesmerizing performance of songs that included “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and “Universal Soldier”, her meagre audience coaxed Buffy back for four encores. Then just 23, she was laying the groundwork for a career that would bring her an endless stream of recognition – Junos, a Golden Globe, and the first Native American Oscar for “Up Where We Belong”, fourteen honourary degrees, several lifetime achievement awards, appointment to the Order of Canada, and her image on a Canadian postage stamp.

Her sung and spoken activism for Native American and anti-war campaigns was vocal and visible enough to get her on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” and resulted in efforts to have her blacklisted by American television networks.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was more than a singer. She created and donated educational resources like the Cradleboard Teaching Project, which increased awareness of Indigenous peoples and issues for thousands of schoolchildren across North America.

Perhaps her most important gift has been one for which she never received formal public acclaim. Few things are as important to racialized groups like Native Americans than seeing their cultures placed in the spotlight. Her current status as a role model may be in doubt, but it has been real for decades.

Hearing Sac and Fox Olympian Jim Thorpe described as perhaps the greatest athlete in history, or knowing that Wailacki tribe member Nicole Mann commanded the International Space Station are immensely important to Indigenous peoples. Historic government attempts to “kill the Indian in the child” make it even more important for Indigenous youth to have role models, people who demonstrate that success is possible for people like them.

We may never know if Buffy Sainte-Marie was born Cree, Mi’kmaq, or Italian. She may never know the truth about her true heritage, or could have fabricated a false identity for reasons only known to herself, but her life’s work and accomplishments are far too important to be swept under the politically-correct rug of blood quantum. Whether or not Buffy Sainte-Marie is a status-card Indian does not detract from her decades of achievements and contributions that helped put Indigenous peoples and issues in the public eye.

Bad people do bad things, and it should come as no surprise that good people also sometimes do bad things. Ask any parent. In this binary world of black and white, right and wrong, for and against, it sometimes helps to step back and ask: “Would I rather this had or had not happened?”

Archie “Grey Owl” Belaney – the prototypical Pretendian – deliberately used a phony Indigenous persona to become arguably Canada’s most famous environmentalist. There was no question about his authenticity. But there are dozens of others whose claim to Indigeneity are clouded in the doubt created by a vague trail of historic birth and adoption records. Some of these people have made unquestionable contributions to Indigenous advocacy in their roles as authors, academics, artists, and activists.

Whatever their personal flaws or misguided motivations, they have undoubtedly contributed to Indigenous causes. They cannot be accused of taking up the space of “real” Indians if nobody else was doing what they were doing.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of “full-blooded” Indians whose main interest in their heritage seems to be how much PST they can save when they shop at Wal-Mart.

In our cultures, even tricksters can serve a purpose.

To read Maurice Switzer’s op-ed, “Buffy’s Legacy Is the Real Deal,” in its entirety, click here.

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Following is Buffy performing her song “Soldier Blue” at the Roskilde Festival in 1992.

. . . Yes, this is my country
Young and growing
Free and flowing, sea to sea
Yes, this is my country
Ripe and bearing miracles
in ever pond and tree

Her spirit walks the high country
Giving free wild samples
And setting an example how to give

Yes, this is my country
Retching and turning
She’s like a baby learning how to live

I can stand upon a hill at dawn
Look all around me
Feel her surround me
Soldier Blue, can’t you see her life has just begun
Beating inside us, telling us she’s here to guide us

Soldier Blue, Soldier Blue
Can’t you see that there’s another way to love her

. . . When the news stories get me down
I take a drink of freedom to think of
North America from toe to crown
And it’s never long before
I know just why I belong here

Soldier Blue, Soldier Blue
Can’t you see that there’s another way to love her