Buffy St. Marie: Lifting us up where we belong

I still remember the pride I felt as a Canadian when I watched the 1983 Academy Awards and saw her and her partner accept the Oscar for outstanding song.

The thing was, I had been watching her perform since I started watching TV back in the early 1970s.

She has been a part of Canadian pop culture for more than five decades.

Today, I heard Buffy St. Marie announce she has retired from making public performances.

It truly is the end of an era.

The benefit of peasant vision
As much as I malign and ridicule peasant vision it served several useful purposes. It meant that we all shared some universal experiences, because our attention was not diverted to a hundred different places. There were three. And it was easy to flip between them.

It meant we were virtually a captive audience of sorts. Couple that with Canadian content requirements, and our generation could not help but be exposed to Canadian culture. We experienced it overtly and covertly, by viewing it and by some form of Can Con osmosis.

So, I recall seeing performers such as John Allan Cameron, The Irish Rovers, and so many more that I would have never sought out on my own.

One of the most memorable was Buffy St. Marie.

Background
Buffy St. Marie always just seemed to be on TV, whether it was on “Sesame Street”, “The Tommy Hunter Show” or some sort of variety show.

It took some research to discover she was born on a Reserve in Saskatchewan then was part of the “Sixties Scoop” where Indigenous children were taken from their birth families and adopted out. She ended up adopted by a family in Massachusetts, where she lived and ultimately earned a degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She started performing in 1963 and would be a singer, song writer, musician, performer, and advocate, often bringing light to the mistreatment of First Nations.

Buffy St. Marie holds the Oscar she won

in 1983 for co-wring "Up Where We Belong".

Source: https://es.pinterest.com

(May be subject to copyright)

An Officer and a Gentleman
In 1982, a song started playing on the radio that was soulful, whimsical and lyrical. It was called “Up Where We Belong” and was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, whose voices meshed perfectly.

It was an amazing song.

“Up Where We Belong” went all the way to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and garnered a number of awards. Only later did I discover Buffy St, Marie was one of the writers of the song.

In January of 1983, “Up Where We Belong” won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Then, in April, Buffy St. Marie was one of the song writers who won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 1984 “Up Where We Belong” won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts film award for Best Original Song.

Parting thoughts
Buffy St. Marie would be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame in 1995; be invested as an officer in the Order of Canada in 1997; receive a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 1998; be inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2009; become a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2019; and won all sorts of Junos, Gemini awards, honourary doctorates and much more for a distinguished career.

She not only entertained but informed, raised awareness, and brought attention to the history of the challenges facing Indigenous peoples.

I was watching the Oscars that night in 1983, and I saw Buffy St. Marie before her name was announced. I wondered if it was her because I had only ever seen her on Canadian TV, and back then, Canadians didn’t win a lot of Oscars.

So, when I heard her name, I was so proud a Canadian had written such a beautiful song.

That was just one of many songs, and causes, that lifted us all up where we belong.