Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso Musician Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Path to Home

Listen On:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify

This week, we’re joined by legendary singer-songwriter, Indigenous activist, and educator Buffy Sainte-Marie. She reflects on growing up to adoptive parents in Massachusetts (4:00), the value of encouraging creativity in childhood (7:12), reuniting with her Cree family at eighteen (10:37), singing for peers in college (14:36), and the alternative conflict resolution messaging behind her early 1960s protest songs (16:46).
On the back-half, she discusses the performance that got her blacklisted by Presidents Johnson and Nixon (30:45), some of the issues facing Native American people in North America (36:50), her inventive core curriculum for students (40:50), and what it meant to be the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar in 1983, and recognized in the Academy Museum today (45:40).

The Host

Sam Fragoso

Sam Fragoso is a writer, director and podcast host based in Los Angeles. His interviews have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Atlantic and NPR. In a past…