Born Beverly Sainte-Marie on the Piapot reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Canada. When she was an infant, her mother died in a car accident, and a couple of Mi’kmaq ancestry from Wakefield, Massachusetts, adopted her. At the age of 3, she taught herself to play the piano. At 16, she taught herself to play guitar and compose her own songs.
After graduating high school, she studied Oriental philosophy and education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. At the time, she began performing in coffeehouses, and in 1962, after receiving her degree, she moved to NYC. She became part of the bohemian art scene of Greenwich Village and soon went on tours, playing mainly at folk festivals and Indigenous reservations in Canada and the US.
In 1963, a praising review in The New York Times led to a contract with Vanguard Records, and in the following year, 29-year-old Sainte-Marie released her first album, It’s My Way!. In the album, she used Indigenous vocal techniques and expressed her views on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, as can be seen in the song Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, in which she addressed Indigenous land rights and intercultural relationships. In her sixth album, Illuminations, she used electronically synthesized and manipulated instrumental sounds, becoming the first quadraphonic electronic vocal album to be recorded. In 1976, she released her 12th album, Sweet America, which included the song Starwalker – the first Indigenous-pop song, or powwow rock as Sainte-Marie dubbed it.
At 35, she took time off from recording to spend time with her son. She began to paint, score films, and participate in various radio and TV shows. She joined the cast of Sesame Street for several years to raise awareness of Native American cultures. In 1982, she composed the song Up Where We Belong for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she received an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe. During this period, Sainte-Marie also began experimenting with computer-based visual art, exhibiting her work in museums across North America.
After 16 years, Sainte-Marie resumed her recording career with the release, via the Internet, of her 14th album Coincidence and Likely Stories. Four years later, she released the collection album Up Where We Belong. It awarded her the Juno Award for Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording. In 2017, at 76, she released her 17th album, titled Medicine Songs. For which was awarded the Juno Award for Indigenous music album of the year and the Indigenous Music Awards for Best Folk Album.
Sainte-Marie used her music and voice to advocate for various political causes. She was a loud advocate against the Vietnam War and was part of the militant American Indian Movement. She claimed that her activism caused her to be blacklisted by the US administration and limited her radio airplay and performances. In 1969, she founded the Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education and built the curriculum for its Cradleboard Teaching Project – a partnership between Native and non-Native American communities that facilitates communication through computer networking. She often made public speeches to promote social issues of the Indigenous people and served as spokesperson for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
This post is also available in:
Español
This post is also available in:
Español
