Buffy Sainte-Marie:

The Authorized Biography

“Keep Calm and Decolonize” may as well be the motto for this intimate and conversational history written by Exclaim! contributor and CBC Music writer Andrea Warner. In her afterword, Warner calls the book — the product of 40-plus hours of interviews over the phone and in the back of Buffy’s tour van — a collaboration with the iconic Canadian songwriter, educator and activist. Reading Sainte-Marie’s story — she was born to Cree parents in Saskatchewan and adopted and raised by American parents in Massachusetts; she is a survivor of childhood and domestic abuse; she’s been blacklisted by two U.S. governments, blackmailed by her former label and financially exploited as an artist — it’s easy to imagine that you’d be angry if you were in her shoes.

Yet contrary to early media depictions of her, Sainte-Marie practices what she calls “if only you knew” activism; over the course of her career, she has educated young people and the general public through her journalistically researched songs and initiatives like Cradleboard, a very Buffy fusion of technology and pivoting the way people see the world.

At the core of Warner’s portrait of Sainte-Marie lies a courageous, creative, funny woman who was decades ahead of her time in embracing electronic music, and yet one of the best anecdotes in the book concerns Elvis. Every time Elvis covered her song “Until It’s Time for You to Go” (at least nine times), his people would phone Buffy demanding a cut of the publishing money.

Each time she would say, “no.” As she says, “My song was already a standard.” (Greystone Books, greystonebooks.com)