Buffy Sainte-Marie

Equal parts activist, educator, songwriter, performer and visual artist, Buffy Sainte–Marie is an untiring champion for Indigenous people and the environment. One of the most enduring and popular Native American performers, her music has touched millions of people around the world. From her start in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s alongside Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Buffy made a name for herself as a gifted songwriter, penning hits for Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. Her best-known song is the Academy Award–winning “Up Where We Belong” from the film An Officer And A Gentlemen, but her most acclaimed song is “Universal Soldier,” one of the first anti–Vietnam war anthems to inspire a generation of activists. Power In The Blood, released in 2015, was acclaimed by CBC as the most important album of all time and won the Polaris Music Prize as the best Canadian album of the year.

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s huge artworks were among the first digital works to be seen in museums and galleries across North America. Her art has been exhibited at the Glenbow Museum, the Emily Carr Gallery, the Mackenzie Gallery, the Institute for American Indian Art Museum, The Isaacs Gallery, Ramscale Gallery, the G.O.C.A.I.A. Gallery, and the Tucson Museum of Art where her self portrait Hands is part of the permanent collection.

Available works