Molayem ART Magazine International Art Magazine
Buff Sainte-Marie: ‘The good news about the bad news is that more people know about it now.’ Photograph: Matt Barnes
The groundbreaking singer-songwriter discusses government surveillance, her Indigenous identity and a revealing new documentary
Buffy Sainte-Marie vividly remembers the reaction she would get in the folk clubs of the 60s whenever she would perform her song Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, which lists a litany of persistent sins committed against Native peoples. “I would see the faces of all these very smart white people turn ashen,” she said. “They didn’t know anything about Indians, and they were flabbergasted to hear that all these things were still happening on their watch – even in New York! They’d say, ‘Oh, that little Indian girl must be mistaken.’ I was gaslighted by them all the time on that. And it was terribly, terribly painful.”
