Buffy Sainte-Marie, born Feb 20, 1941

Self-portrait

“Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what ‘was’ and ‘were,’ we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.”

“Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is vital to understanding our unique cultural perspectives. Language is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.”

“I didn’t know what I was gonna get the first time I sat down at a piano, but I loved it and it became my playmate for life.”

“Everybody’s creative. We create our songs and our paintings, our families and our children. Every one of us is on the cutting edge of the future.”

“What can government do? They can listen to their own people. But I’ll tell you what citizens can do, when we elect one of these people – whether we think it’s a good guy or a bozo – you got to stay on the case. You don’t vote and go home and give them the keys to the car, he’ll drive you right off a cliff. You have to help people to stay honest.”

“By looking at the questions the kids are asking, we learn the scope of what needs to be done.”

“Take a bunch of little kids to the beach and they all make art. Adults are too stupid to call it art, but it is art. They’ll use their imaginations, make drama, make up characters, make pictures in the sand, they’ll make up songs that no one’s ever heard before. All kids, I think, are creative, but they get it pounded out of them in school.”

“There is so much joy in native culture but so much poverty. It’s very disturbing.”

“Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That’s all there is to art for me.”