This event is cancelled. Please contact point of purchase regarding your tickets.
Tickets on sale Friday, July 7 at 10:00am.
Mary Winspear Centre Presents
Buffy Sainte-Marie
with Ryland Moranz
Thursday, August 10 - 7:30PM
Buffy Sainte-Marie is recognized and celebrated as one of the most important and impactful Indigenous artist of all time. Over the course of her six-decade career, Buffy has inspired multiple generations of musicians, artists and activists. The powerful, raw singer/songwriter with unmatched scope has steadfastly refused to be trapped in the patterns of the past or be entangled in the workings of the contemporary music industry. Since her groundbreaking debut album It's My Way!(1964), the Cree singer-songwriter has been an informative advocate for Indigenous cultural awareness.
As a child, Buffy’s adoptive mother self-identified as part Mi’kmaq but knew little about Indigenous culture. She encouraged Buffy to find things out for herself when she grew up. By the age of four, Buffy had taught herself to play the piano by ear and was making up songs for sheer enjoyment. The gift of a guitar for her sixteenth birthday made her music portable. She invented new tunings which would influence both her own unique sound and that of other future musicians.
At university, Buffy earned undergraduate degrees in both Oriental Philosophy and Education. Upon graduation, she began singing in coffee houses in New York's Greenwich Village, leading to her first recording contract and the extensive touring that launched Buffy to international stardom. From the late 1960’s through the 1970’s, she expanded both her music and visual art into experimental technologies that evolved into what is now called digital art and electronic music. Since 1983, Buffy has been the recipient of fifteen Honorary degrees from universities across Turtle Island including an honorary Ph.D. in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts. Since her groundbreaking debut album, 1964's It's My Way!, the Cree singer-songwriter has been an informative trailblazer and advocate for Indigenous rights, a continually evolving artist, and a contributor of positive thinking and resiliency amid difficult issues. With songs like “Universal Soldier” and "Until It's Time for You to Go", Buffy established herself among the ranks of songwriter greats.
Throughout her career, Buffy has devoted much of her time and resources to supporting Indigenous peoples through a variety of educational programs. Her Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education provided scholarships for Indigenous studies and students, two of whom became presidents of tribal colleges; and her Cradleboard Teaching Project provided accurate core curriculum including science, government and geography based in Native American cultural perspectives for all grade levels. In 1998, Buffy Sainte-Marie received the Native Americans in Philanthropy’s Louis T. Delgado Award for Native American Philanthropist of the Year and, for the next twelve years, combined her work in education with her writing, visual art, recording and touring.
Her appearances on "Sesame Street” enriched public-access television with important subjects such as breast feeding, sibling rivalry, and Native American language and culture. When she agreed to take an acting role in the TV series, The Virginian, it was conditional that Indigenous roles be filled by Indigenous actors.
In tandem with her critically acclaimed albums, Power in the Blood (2015) and Medicine Songs (2017) collectively won multiple awards including the highly coveted Polaris Music Prize. In 2017, Buffy received the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award. She opened the JUNO Awards’ national telecast with a riveting introduction that went off-script when she acknowledged that Ottawa is on the “un-surrendered” territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe Nations who have been here "for thousands and thousands and thousands of years". In 2019, Buffy was named a Companion of the Order of Canada – the nation’s highest civilian honour.
In addition to winning countless Canadian JUNO Awards and being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, she helped to found the Juno Awards category Music of Aboriginal Canada. Buffy was the first Indigenous person to take home an Academy Award as co-writer of “Up Where We Belong” in 1983 for Best Original Song from the film An Officer and a Gentleman, which also won Golden Globe and BAFTA honours. She has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame and received Hollywood's Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.
A natural-born storyteller, Buffy has recently authored her first children’s chapter book, Tâpwê and the Magic Hat, releasing editions in English and Plains Cree. Her debut children’s book Hey Little Rockabye is followed by the recent release, Still this Love Goes On.
Elite artists and performers gathered at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada on September 16, 2022 to celebrate Buffy’s multi-faceted contributions to the arts. To mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with an unprecedented representation of Indigenous talent, Insight Productions in partnership with Paquin Entertainment, CBC and CBC Gem and APTN produced a special presentation of the concert honouring Buffy Sainte-Marie in a 90-minute National broadcast.
With its world premiere at 2022 TIFF, the feature documentary film, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, by award-winning director, Madison Thomas, has brought new awareness of her vast contribution to arts and culture spanning almost 6 decades. The film blends the multifaceted eras of Buffy’s life experiences and immerses the audience in the depths of her equanimity, devotion to innovation, passion for philosophy, and love for the world.