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Monday, January 11, 2016

Power in the Blood: Buffy Sainte-Marie on Creative Decolonization in a Global Village

"Neon Hula" - Digital art by Buffy Sainte-Marie

Today we are speaking with the legendary artist, educator and political activist Buffy Sainte-Marie. Buffy was born to Cree parents on the Piapot Cree Reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada. She was orphaned as an infant (adopted out) and moved to Massachusetts, where she would later get her degree in Eastern Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. In the early Sixties, Buffy played the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, where her music was so well received that her career skyrocketed to international fame soon thereafter. Almost 50 years after the release of her first album, It’s My Way, Buffy’s new album, Power in the Blood, is filled with the same fierce messages, eclecticism and passion unique to this unstoppable woman. We explore creativity in an age of commodification, being indigenous in a global village, demythologizing the power elites, and more!

LISTEN
Visit http://buffysainte-marie.com/
New Album: Power in the Blood
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Check out Conversation that Matters featuring Buffy Sainte-Marie who says her career lived at the intersection of social activist and artist. She points out that artists tell the stories of our times in ways that resonate. Over the past five decades Ms. Sainte-Marie has been a voice for First Nations in Canada and the United States.
The Cradleboard project was a concept she developed in the early days of personal computing that allowed First Nations communities to connect and celebrate their individual and collective heritage. "...This put aboriginal people in the driver's seat of delivering who they are to remote partners of the same age and they'd discuss everything from clan mothers to medicine. It's a journey of discovery about each other's cultures and their own. It's putting kids in touch with kids and it promotes self-esteem..."
stuartmcnish.podbean.com/e/conversations-that-matter-ep-65-b...

In the anthology Two Worlds, we offer Buffy's biography and background as a First Nations adoptee... Trace

No comments:

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Good words

Priscilla Sharp

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

Link: http://adoptionvoicesmagazine.com/adoptee-view/dear-christian-who-is-praying-for-an-infant-to-adopt/