Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie recognized at PAROBiz 25th Event and Awards Gala

Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie delivers her keynote speech at the PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise 2019 PAROBiz25th Event and Awards Gala on Nov. 7 at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay.

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie emphasized how creativity was her childhood focus during her Nov. 7 keynote presentation at the PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise 2019 PAROBiz25th Event and Awards Gala.

“I never played with Barbies and I didn’t play sports,” Sainte-Marie says. “Instead, creativity became my sport; creativity became my secret daydream place. And the Creator of all things hung out with me a lot.”

Sainte-Marie says she first saw a piano when she was about three-years-old.

“And that became my toy,” Sainte-Marie says. “And I taught myself how to play by ear, and it was easy, it was fun. And I would knock myself out inventing new music to accompany all my little kid dreams, my little kid troubles and my little kid fantasies.”

Sainte-Marie says she was not able to learn how to read European notation and was “shunned and shamed” in school music classes.

“And because I couldn’t seem to learn how to read music, I couldn’t be in band and I flunked music class every time,” Sainte-Marie says. “It didn’t bother me much though because after school, I would go home and play fake Tchaikovsky and fake Mozart and make up my own music. So I didn’t really put it together until I was an adult, but anything that I would hear on the radio I could play by heart and without lessons.”

Sainte-Marie says she found out a few years ago that she is dyslexic in music.

“I can write for an orchestra but I can’t read it back the next day,” Sainte-Marie says. “So it’s a musical dyslexia.”

After her presentation, Sainte-Marie responded to questions and comments from a range of audience members, including Fort William Councillor Tannis Kastern who recalled a speech Sainte-Marie made via Skype in Ottawa a couple of years ago.

“I recorded your speech off the screen because that’s how much it has impacted me,” Kastern says. “As an Indigenous woman navigating through these colonial structures and institutions and different barriers I’ve had to jump hoops to get through, I just wanted to say part of your speech I still listen to because when I want to quit and get down on myself, I remember that those structures are just an illusion and just to keep going and moving them as much as I can.”

Kastern also invited Sainte-Marie to visit Mt. McKay, noting the youth do “extraordinary work out there.”

“We have birchbark canoes being built by our youth who do the extraction of all those roots and everything,” Kastern says. “They were vessels of commerce and our women were very big in our communities and very big in our leadership and it’s nice to see more of us being elected into those positions. And it’s because of people like yourself and your career and your history that you’ve had to overcome and never let all those barriers tell you no.”

Sainte-Marie was presented with a special PARO Inaugural Women Voice Award during the awards gala, which was held at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay. She is an Oscar-winning composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist and social activist who also performed as a cast member on Sesame Street for five years.

“Buffy has had a remarkable career and is a true Canadian hero,” says Rosalind Lockyer, founder and CEO of PARO. “She is a musical change maker and a tireless advocate for human rights, women and the environment. She has inspired so many PARO women and continues to empower women all around the world.”