A 1978 interview featuring Buffy St Marie (born Beverly Jean Santamaria into an Italo-American family in Massachusetts), who has long portrayed herself as a native american musician and activist, seen here performing with an indigenous tribal mouthbow on a network program with the daytime TV talk show hostess & newscaster Jane Pauley
Buffy Sainte-Marie, introduced many Americans to the plight of the Native American Indians with the song, “Now that the Buffalo’s Gone”. Ever since her folk songs found an audience from her start in the Greenwich Village folk scene, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been publicizing the cause of Native People’s cultural recognition, and for autonomy and jurisdiction over their own Indian reservations. Buffy’s 60 year career as a performer became intertwined with the cause of indigenous people, as she wore Native American garb and beadwork, even becoming a regular on the TV show “Sesame Street” where she taught children about Indian customs songs and language, especially her supposedly native Cree.
While rumors long existed, with newspaper accounts dating back to 1964 calling into question her truthfulness, her passionate performances were rarely called into question. It wasn’t until decades later her ruse was definitively exposed by a detailed 2023 Canadian Broadcasting investigation of her origin story, with unearthed birth certificate, home movies, and accounts of family members’, including her niece, that exposed the media myth that Buffy St Marie was born on a reservation in Saskatchewan. Now 82, a few years after she was honored on a Canadian Postage Stamp, and through a PBS American Masters doc film called “Carry It On” that has since won an International Emmy, the Stoneham Massachusetts born singer/activist, and what some call one of “Pretendians” (pretend Indians), has retired from the public eye.