Background and career
Buffy Sainte-Marie (born Beverley Jean Santamaria; February 20, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and social activist. Sainte-Marie's singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism, and her work has often focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. She won recognition, awards, and honors for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. In 1983, her song "Up Where We Belong", for An Officer and a Gentleman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards. The song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song that same year. From the early 1960s, Sainte-Marie stated she was of Indigenous Canadian ancestry. A 2023 CBC News investigation concluded she was born in the United States and is of Italian and English descent. Some Indigenous musicians and organizations called for awards she won while falsely claiming an Indigenous identity to be rescinded. Many of her awards and honors were subsequently revoked or surrendered due to her lack of Canadian citizenship, including her membership in the Order of Canada, her induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, her Juno Awards, and her Polaris Music Prizes.
Sainte-Marie was born at the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to Albert Santamaria and Winifred Irene Santamaria, née Kenrick. The Santamarias were from Wakefield, Massachusetts. Her father's parents were born in Italy while her mother was of English ancestry. Her family changed their surname from Santamaria to the French-sounding "Sainte-Marie" due to anti-Italian sentiment following the Second World War. Sainte-Marie taught herself to play piano and guitar before attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
During the early 1960s, while still in college, her own songs such as "Ananias", the Indian lament "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and also "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (a Hindi Bollywood song "Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere" originally sung by the Indian singer Mohammed Rafi from the 1960 movie Barsaat Ki Raat) were in her repertoire. In her early twenties she toured, developed her craft, and performed in various concert halls, folk music festivals, and First Nations communities across the United States, Canada, and abroad. She spent considerable time in the coffeehouses of Yorkville and Greenwich Village as part of the 1960s folk scene, as did other emerging artists, including Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot. In 1963, while suffering with a throat infection, Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine, an experience that became the basis for her song "Cod'ine", later recorded by Donovan, Janis Joplin, and many others. That same year, Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War when the U.S. government was denying involvement. This inspired the composition of her widely acclaimed protest song "Universal Soldier", released on her debut album It's My Way! on Vanguard Records in 1964. It was later a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell. Her 1965 album Many a Mile included "Until It's Time for You to Go", which has been covered by Neil Diamond, Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, and many others. In 1965, Billboard named Sainte-Marie "Favorite New Female Vocalist" in the folk genre in a poll of disk jockeys. Some of her songs addressing the mistreatment of Native Americans, such as "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" (1964) and "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, included on her 1966 album), were seen as controversial.
Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs include "Mister Can't You See" (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"; and the theme song of the movie Soldier Blue. In 1969 she released Illuminations, an early quadraphonic album on which she used a synthesizer. She appeared frequently on television in Canada and the US, including American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She guest-starred in "The Heritage" episode of The Virginian in 1968, as a Shoshone woman sent to be educated at school, and acted and sang in "Mating Dance for Tender Grass", a 1970 episode of Then Came Bronson.
Sainte-Marie was hired in 1975 to present Native American programming for children for the first time on Sesame Street. Sainte-Marie wanted to teach the show's young viewers that "Indians still exist". She regularly appeared on Sesame Street from 1976 to 1981. Sainte-Marie breastfed her first son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild in a 1977 episode, which according to Sainte-Marie was the first representation of breastfeeding aired on television. Sesame Street filmed several episodes at her home in Hawaii in 1978.
In 1979, Spirit of the Wind, a docudrama scored by Sainte-Marie, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The American Indian Film Festival, which exhibited the film in 1980, recognizes accurate historical and contemporary portrayals of Native Americans. Sainte-Marie started using Apple II and Macintosh computers in 1981 to record her music. "Up Where We Belong" (written by Sainte-Marie with Will Jennings and Jack Nitzsche) was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman. It received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1982. On January 29, 1983, Jennings, Nitzsche, and Sainte-Marie won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. They also won the BAFTA film award for Best Original Song in 1984. On the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001, the song was listed at number 323. In 2020, it was included on Billboard magazine's list of the "25 Greatest Love Song Duets". In the early 1980s, one of her songs was used as the theme song for the CBC's Native series Spirit Bay. She was cast for the TNT 1993 telefilm The Broken Chain. In 1989, she wrote and performed the music for Where the Spirit Lives, a film about Native children being abducted, forced into residential schools, and expected to give up their Native way of life.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
