‘First lady of Indigenous music’: Buffy Sainte-Marie on her storied career

Buffy Sainte-Marie believes that successful persuasion requires two ingredients: love and patience. 

When the Indigenous songwriter wrote the 1964 anti-war song “Universal Soldier,” she imagined how a college student might write an essay to sway a professor who thought differently. That anthem became a folk-rock standard. But two other songs she wrote that year, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and “My Country ’Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” weren’t wholly embraced. Many people weren’t yet receptive to messages about the