Missing Witches - MW Buffy Sainte Marie： This Is My Path. Discover Your Own.

00:00:00.660 Season 4 of the Missing Witches podcast is lovingly sponsored by our Patreon patrons,

00:00:05.880 thank you, and Foxglovefarm. Go to foxglovefarm.com and use offer code

00:00:11.420 MISSINGWITCHES for 13% off your order. 1.00

00:00:14.940 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:21.040 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:23.580 Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian listeners. 1.00

00:00:26.500 for those of you in the USA, it's fucking Columbus Day. So, I thought today would be a 0.99

00:00:34.600 great time to tell a story of a medicine woman with medicine songs. As I'm recording this,

00:00:40.200 a Mi'kmaq community in Nova Scotia is battling for their right to trap and sell lobster. 0.99

00:00:44.940 As Trina Roach from APTN, the Aboriginal People's Television Network, said,

00:00:49.700 This is not just a story about lobster. This is a story about how Canada handles Aboriginal

00:00:56.980 treaty rights. Today's story is not just a story about a singer. This is a story about persistence,

00:01:04.040 creativity, indigeneity, and ingenuity. This is the story of Buffy St. Marie.

00:01:10.520 Most of our Missing Witches episodes are inspired by words, books, articles, poems, spells, but the

00:01:16.700 idea for today's offering came from my record collection. We say words are spells a lot around

00:01:22.620 here, but so too are notes, music, vibrations, vibrato. Buffy St. Marie is another magical being

00:01:30.200 who doesn't show her witchiness through a cult study, cauldrons, crystals, or tarot cards, but

00:01:35.540 rather through a devotion to change, a reverence for nature, a recognition of the power of ceremony,

00:01:41.960 the nerve to go her own way she's saying magic is alive and claims that the core of her belief

00:01:48.500 system is creativity so by me and for this circle this coven of stories and knowledge and healing

00:01:57.080 buffy saint marie is undoubtedly holy a medicine woman with medicine songs we'll go looking for

00:02:05.840 buffy in the places i met her old treasured episodes of sesame street and of course her

00:02:11.520 recordings, music, and lyrics where my emotions dwell. But our main source of biographical

00:02:17.600 information today will be Andrea Warner's book, Buffy St. Marie, the Authorized Biography. Buffy

00:02:24.120 worked closely with Andrea Warner, and much of the book is Buffy telling her own story in her own

00:02:29.160 words. This is one of those books where I ended up bookmarking and highlighting every page, whole

00:02:34.560 chapters where I had to pause and ask myself, like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to choose

00:02:40.080 which bits to quote and share with my coven. So I definitely encourage you to pick up a copy of

00:02:45.480 this book for yourself, discover your own path through it, and decide for yourself what's

00:02:50.680 important. I think that's what Buffy would want you to do. That's Buffy St. Marie, the authorized

00:02:56.740 biography by Andrea Warner. The Missing Witches project is, at its heart, a search for role

00:03:03.460 models, role models who believe or believed in something beyond the prescribed, acceptable,

00:03:08.860 the normal, the known. Risa and I have always copped to our lack of objectivity. Many of our

00:03:14.400 scripts are more love letter than essay. So let me just say, I don't know Buffy St. Marie personally,

00:03:20.800 but based on my research, she might be the sweetest person in the world. And sweet is great,

00:03:26.880 but the people I admire most are those whose sweetness is equal to their salt. People whose

00:03:32.500 ferocity is in perfect balance with their compassion. Who know when to calm and when to

00:03:38.480 storm. Buffy is such a person. Her activism is relentless. Her music is incendiary. Her lyrics

00:03:46.040 are provocative. Her energy for change seems limitless. But there is a kindness and a joy

00:03:52.220 that pour out of her glowing smile. Something comforting and playful about the tone of her

00:03:57.560 voice. Even when her tears are visible, when her sadness and rage are palpable, amid her cries for

00:04:04.140 justice we can sense that sympathy is her guide. She radiates goodness and magic and love. She's

00:04:13.500 also responsible, in part, for the success of another of my all-time favorite magical music

00:04:19.500 goddesses, Joni Mitchell. Buffy was impressed with Joni's originality, so she performed Joni's songs

00:04:24.880 and carried Joanie's tape around, playing it for anyone who would listen.

00:04:28.700 She eventually caught the ear of Elliot Roberts, who would become Joanie's manager.

00:04:33.040 See, here's the thing, my witches.

00:04:35.020 When a door opens for you, you can walk through it and let it slam closed behind you,

00:04:39.800 or you can pause, briefly, and hold it open for someone else.

00:04:44.940 Like Harriet Tubman in some small way. 0.84

00:04:48.940 Buffy is a great holder of doors.

00:04:51.340 There is no official record of Buffy St. Marie's birth.

00:04:54.880 We know she was born in Saskatchewan. We know she is Cree.

00:04:59.020 Buffy was likely born in 1941, so she technically predated the epidemic of cultural annihilation,

00:05:05.400 known as, in what I believe to be much too cute-sounding of a term, the 60s scoop.

00:05:13.220 There's no other way to say this. The Canadian government kidnapped Indigenous children and

00:05:17.780 adopted or fostered them out to primarily white middle-class families. Between the 1950s,

00:05:24.440 that's 1950s. And the 1980s, that's 1980s. I emphasize so we understand that this could have

00:05:33.780 been us or our parents. And for some of you listening, it may have been you or your parents

00:05:38.840 or grandparents. I emphasize so that we understand that this is not Columbus Day colonial history.

00:05:45.860 People were so crazy 500 years ago. We've evolved since then. No. Between the 1950s and the 1980s,

00:05:54.440 80s, it is estimated that at least 20,000 Indigenous children were taken from their

00:06:00.020 families. We know from Buffy's story and many others, however, that this scooping began long

00:06:06.120 before the 1950s and continued long after the 80s. Starting in the 1800s, residential schools

00:06:12.920 took Indigenous children from their families and placed them in religious indoctrination

00:06:17.480 institutions. In total, an estimated 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children attended

00:06:28.120 residential schools. The stories of rampant abuse are devastating. The last residential school in

00:06:35.540 Canada closed in 1996. Buffy was probably born in 1941. As Andrea Warner writes, to be born Cree

00:06:45.520 in the 1940s in Canada was to be a person who was not always counted, at least not in a formal and

00:06:51.960 legal fashion. Buffy was taken from her home in Saskatchewan, Canada, and adopted into a family

00:06:57.140 2,000 miles away in Massachusetts, USA. As an aside, both Saskatchewan and Massachusetts are

00:07:04.880 Algonquin words. That fucking white supremacist colonial mentality keeping Indigenous words as 1.00

00:07:11.960 they please like Haida tattoos, plastic totem poles for their colonized lands, then systematically 1.00

00:07:18.440 destroying the keepers of these images, lands, and languages, keeping the words but stripping 0.78

00:07:24.360 the meaning, keeping the words but stripping the land, keeping the names, and killing the namers. 1.00

00:07:31.280 The fucking caucasity required to steal children from their homes and claim you're doing them a 1.00

00:07:37.760 favor? Calling the stolen children's parents savages? We're still doing this. The government 1.00

00:07:45.080 will give foster parents more money to care for a child than they will give that child's parents

00:07:49.880 to care for the child at home. So as a baby, Buffy was shipped off to become a Saint Marie in whose

00:07:56.480 family home she would at least discover a piano and the music within her. At three years old,

00:08:03.120 she would patiently observe the piano lessons of her older brother, afterward running to the keys

00:08:07.980 to recreate the lesson by ear and compose by instinct. Andrea Warner wrote, every note she's

00:08:14.860 ever played, arranged, composed, or produced is by ear and memory, gut and feel. Please carry this

00:08:26.820 is a chant, dear witches. Ear and memory, gut and feel. What do you sense? What wisdom lurks 0.83

00:08:35.140 within? What does your inner witch warrior advise? What emotions are arising? Ear and memory, gut and 0.98

00:08:44.220 feel. Ear and memory, gut and feel. Buffy grew up in what she now laughingly calls Javex USA.

00:08:54.540 bleach white. And in keeping with that waspy stereotype of stuffy avoidance, Buffy never

00:09:01.220 really got a solid answer on who she was or where she came from. She was variously told that she was

00:09:06.540 abandoned, adopted, or that Mrs. St. Marie was part Micmac and her biological mother, or that

00:09:12.080 maybe Mr. St. Marie wasn't Buffy's father, wink wink after all, and she never knew exactly what

00:09:17.980 to believe. Now, a warning. Hold steady your heart lest it be shattered. Buffy also grew up being

00:09:27.260 physically and then sexually abused by her older brother, and then by an adult man, a friend of

00:09:33.260 the family. She took refuge in music and nature. Y'all know I don't like to quantify trauma, but I

00:09:41.420 think it's safe to say that my childhood was a lot easier than Buffy's. Still, when I was a kid and

00:09:46.920 needed an escape, I'd climb trees and sit in the embrace of their limbs for hours. Or I would put

00:09:52.660 on a record and disappear, sinking into the tomes like warm water. As I aged, these things merged.

00:09:59.320 That tree limb became a guitar neck, and I could clutch wood, sing, and play myself into another

00:10:04.920 world. Music and nature. When I interviewed Big Sissy, Athena Holmes, they said the same thing.

00:10:11.320 how many of us have been saved by music and nature? Music and nature. We thank you.

00:10:20.640 As with a lot of us who are constantly struggling to figure out in some way or another at any given 0.91

00:10:26.500 moment what the fuck is going on here, Buffy was drawn to philosophy. Andrea Warner wrote, 0.87

00:10:32.800 She says,

00:10:33.600 I guess I fell in love with thinking in its limitless manifestations.

00:10:38.900 Studying philosophy broadened both St. Marie's intellectual horizons and her understanding of

00:10:43.880 her interior world. I came to understand myself in a bigger way, and at the same time I was

00:10:48.840 understanding the universe in a way I had guessed at as a child. The more I have experienced in my

00:10:54.420 life, the more that those experiences confirmed much of my basic feelings from childhood.

00:10:59.180 studying philosophy and world religions reinforced her churchless spirituality as well as the

00:11:04.640 connection she'd always felt between herself and something bigger the earth animals ancestors and

00:11:10.880 life itself saint marie has always been in love with human potential and she believes there's

00:11:16.380 something beyond this world even if she doesn't know what ultimately it's creativity itself that

00:11:23.300 is holy to saint marie the creator creativity the creation it's all perfectly natural she says

00:11:30.620 creativity is some kind of internal gift from the creator at least in my experience we're made in

00:11:37.780 the image of the creator that's our green light for creativity we create our songs our families

00:11:43.440 our countries we are supposed to be discovering and developing new ideas all the time i think

00:11:50.520 not dragging our feet and living in some ancient past. And to her, almost everything is a creative

00:11:56.900 act. Dropping money in a busker's hat, fundraising for somebody to go to college, spending some extra

00:12:02.540 time with a dog or a cat, or even offering someone a smile. Creative compassion doesn't

00:12:08.560 have to be something huge and political like what Gandhi did, she said. I love what the Dalai Lama

00:12:14.900 said, you always have the best, most effective tool for peace with you, and that's your smile.

00:12:23.100 But Buffy at heart is a creator, not just a thinker, philosopher, but a maker, a doer. In an

00:12:29.760 interview with the CBC, she reaffirmed this, saying, to me, there's a spirituality to everything.

00:12:36.420 If we're made in the image of the creator, what that means is that we're creative. The purpose

00:12:42.380 and sum total of our lives has to do with creativity. I think for a lot of us, whether

00:12:47.780 we are artists or bakers or candlestick makers, parents molding future adults, our creativity is

00:12:54.940 in large part our spirituality. It's our ritualized process or praxis that connects us with our

00:13:02.120 ancestors or the great divine. Buffy had a unique voice, an ear for music, a creative spirit, and a

00:13:08.760 political message. Plus, it was the 60s, so naturally, she became a folk singer. Having

00:13:14.300 gained confidence through coffeehouse gigs and little concerts while completing her philosophy

00:13:18.880 and teaching degrees, Buffy made the decision to move to the undisputed hub of mainstream American

00:13:24.420 folk music at the time, Greenwich Village. There, she would edge her way onto open mic nights,

00:13:29.780 sharing the stage with a young Bob Dylan, among others, in a basement venue called The Gaslight.

00:13:34.440 When Time Magazine called Buffy the most intriguing young folk singer to emerge in many a moon,

00:13:42.420 a record deal was inevitable.

00:13:45.220 In 1964, Buffy released her first album, It's My Way.

00:13:49.420 And we'll focus here for a while because Buffy thought this would be her only album.

00:13:53.640 So she felt compelled to get every important message she had on there.

00:13:58.220 Some listeners and music writers compared this to Frank Sinatra's I did it my way with the emphasis

00:14:06.000 on the word my. But Buffy explains that her focus is on the word way. She said, this is my path.

00:14:15.040 Discover your own. They're out there. The paths to wonderfulness, to effectiveness, to joy, to living

00:14:21.740 are generated everywhere, project your path outward from where you are inside yourself.

00:14:29.560 This has been one of the major takeaways for me personally of the Missing Witches project.

00:14:34.680 It has been a study of paths. There are so many ways to make magic. There are so many paths,

00:14:42.220 an infinite variety, none lesser or greater, and each one stands in perfect validity without

00:14:48.860 judging itself against the paths of others. The album It's My Way contains iconic emotion-stirring

00:14:56.140 songs like Universal Soldier and Codeine. The debut song on her debut album was called

00:15:03.200 Now That The Buffalo's Gone. And as I read you some of the lyrics, I want you to imagine the

00:15:08.720 strength of character required for Buffy to insist that this be her introduction to the world at large.

00:15:15.460 can you remember the times that you have held your head high and told all your friends your

00:15:21.180 indian claim proud good lady and proud good man some great great grandfather from indian blood

00:15:28.420 came and you feel in your heart for those ones oh it's written in books and in song that we've

00:15:33.460 been mistreated and wronged well over and over i hear those same words from you good lady and you

00:15:41.020 good man. Well, listen to me if you care where we stand, and you feel you're a part of these ones.

00:15:48.740 When a war between nations is lost, the loser, we know, pays the cost. But even when Germany fell

00:15:57.020 to your hands, consider, dear lady, consider, dear man, you left them their pride, and you left them

00:16:04.120 their land. And what have you done to these ones? Has a change come about, my dear man? Or are you

00:16:12.000 still taking our lands? A treaty forever, your senators sign. They do, dear lady, they do, dear

00:16:18.000 man. And the treaties are broken again and again. And what will you do for these ones? Oh, it's all

00:16:25.060 in the past, you can say, but it's still going on here today. The governments now want Navajo land, 0.98

00:16:31.360 that of the Inuit and the Cheyenne. It's here and it's now you can help us, dear man,

00:16:38.220 now that the buffalo's gone. Buffy wrote The Universal Soldier as news of America's war

00:16:45.840 with Vietnam began to spread. He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain, a Buddhist and a Baptist

00:16:52.840 and a Jew, and he knows he shouldn't kill, and he knows he always will. Kill you for me, my friend, 1.00

00:16:59.640 and me for you. His orders come from far away no more. They come from him and you and me 1.00

00:17:07.280 and brothers you can't see. This is not the way we put an end to war.

00:17:13.560 The more famous folk singer Donovan covered Universal Soldier, and many assumed he had

00:17:18.920 written it. Universal Soldier was also covered by the Highwaymen, who, in a case of the cocktail

00:17:25.100 napkin contract fuckery that the music industry is known for ended up owning the publishing rights

00:17:31.120 to the song. According to Andrea Warner, it took Buffy 10 years and 25 grand to buy back the rights 0.90

00:17:37.960 to her song. Some websites still show Donovan as the songwriter. So here is Buffy trying to take

00:17:44.700 back something that was stolen from her by white men, and I can't help but tie this real quick to 0.63

00:17:49.680 the notion of land back. So what does land back mean? Let's ask Cree community organizer 0.52

00:17:56.160 Ronald Gamblin, who wrote, while these words seem straightforward enough, this phrase encompasses

00:18:02.660 a complicated and intergenerational web of ideas and movements. When I hear Indigenous youth and

00:18:09.060 land protectors chant land back at a rally, I know it can mean the literal restoration of land

00:18:14.980 ownership. When grandmothers and knowledge keepers say it, I tend to think it means more the

00:18:19.380 stewardship and protection of Mother Earth. When Indigenous political leaders say it,

00:18:24.400 it often means a comprehensive land claim and self-governing agreements. No matter what meaning

00:18:30.360 is attached, we as Indigenous nations have an urge to reconnect with our land in meaningful ways.

00:18:37.800 If, as a non-Indigenous person, this idea scares that deep-seated colonial part of you,

00:18:45.420 let me lovingly reassure you that no one is coming for your granddaddy's farm. Almost 90%

00:18:52.980 of Canada is crown land. Now, crown land is the term used to describe land owned by the federal

00:18:58.860 or provincial governments. Authority for control of these public lands rests with the crown,

00:19:04.720 hence their name. Less than 11% of Canada's land is in private hands. 41% is federal crown land,

00:19:13.400 And an additional 48% is provincial crown land. Almost 90%. And we have to wonder,

00:19:22.960 could handing the stewardship of this expanse back to the Indigenous people of Canada help

00:19:29.940 to save the world? I think so. Land back. It's My Way track five. Codine is a go-to cover for me

00:19:39.900 when I'm feeling desolate. I grab my guitar and I sing codine at top volume. My belly is craven.

00:19:47.440 I got an aching in my head. I feel like I'm dying and I wish I was dead. Sometimes I hang on lines

00:19:55.000 and repeat them over and over. And I'll reel and I'll fall and I'll rise. Risa told me that singing

00:20:03.540 this song at my old apartment is a physical memory for her. The song is about addiction

00:20:09.480 and withdrawal, and comes from Buffy's own experience. As she tells it, she went to a

00:20:14.600 doctor for a bronchial infection, and he gave her what he told her was a vitamin B12 shot,

00:20:20.360 some pills, and a prescription for more pills, which he said were antibiotics. For a few weeks,

00:20:25.560 she received checkups and more shots. Then, luckily, she went on a trip. She started feeling

00:20:31.480 sick, so she went to a pharmacy on the road to refill her prescription. The pharmacist told her

00:20:36.720 she wasn't sick, she was going through withdrawal. Horrified, Buffy spent the next several days

00:20:42.900 riding out the hell of being junk sick. Writing Codine helped her process, but the experience

00:20:49.000 still haunted her. Years later, she heard a story and it all made sense. That same doctor had been

00:20:55.820 sent to jail for turning young, vulnerable women into prostitutes by lying to them and intentionally

00:21:03.340 addicting them to drugs. Buffy may have escaped this doctor's plan, but encountering violence

00:21:10.600 all her life, she did not escape the statistics. She did, however, survive.

00:21:17.860 The missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic has been described as a Canadian

00:21:23.560 national crisis, as a Canadian genocide. In 2016, the Government of Canada established

00:21:29.620 the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. According to the

00:21:34.980 April 22, 2016 background of the inquiry, between the years of 1980 and 2012, Indigenous women and

00:21:42.080 girls represented 16% of all female homicides in Canada, while constituting only 4% of the

00:21:50.120 female population in Canada. A 2011 Statistics Canada report estimated that between 1997 and

00:21:57.340 2000, the rate of homicides for Aboriginal women and girls was almost seven times higher than that

00:22:04.380 for other Canadian females. Compared to non-Indigenous women and girls, they were also

00:22:10.480 disproportionately affected by all forms of violence. They are also far more likely than

00:22:18.020 other women to go missing. In the United States, Native American women are more than twice as

00:22:24.480 likely to experience violence than any other demographic. One in three Native women is

00:22:29.460 sexually assaulted during her lifetime, and 67% of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Natives.

00:22:36.480 In a 2014 report, Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, a National Operational Overview,

00:22:42.600 found that more than a thousand Indigenous women were murdered over a span of 30 years.

00:22:47.520 While homicides for non-Indigenous women declined between 1980 and 2015, the number of Indigenous

00:22:53.280 women who are victims of homicide increased. From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for Indigenous

00:23:00.000 women in Canada was almost six times as high as the homicide rate for non-Indigenous women.

00:23:06.220 In Nunavut, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta,

00:23:12.160 and Saskatchewan, this over-representation of Indigenous women among homicide victims was even

00:23:18.180 higher. But homicide isn't limited to sex crimes or the streets, right? Just a few days before this

00:23:27.240 recording, Joyce Eshequan died in a prison hospital while nursing staff demeaned and

00:23:34.340 degraded her with racist, misogynist remarks. And we say justice for Joyce.

00:23:40.960 buffy lived through the violence of displacement was sexually abused as a child and as an adult

00:23:49.720 found herself in another violent abusive relationship her marriage this is the power

00:23:55.500 of systemic and personal abuse if it can convince a person of miraculous will like buffy even 0.54

00:24:02.420 momentarily she did leave him that violence is what she deserves imagine what it does to us 0.50

00:24:08.080 mere mortals. Predators are drawn to the vulnerable. So when we as a society make an 0.88

00:24:14.800 entire people vulnerable, when indigenous women are marginalized and disenfranchised

00:24:20.540 both socially and economically, we create this epidemic. Emotional vulnerability is powerful.

00:24:29.440 Systemic vulnerability is powerlessness. In 1966, Buffy sang,

00:24:35.980 my country, tis of thy people, you are dying. Now that the long houses breed superstition,

00:24:41.960 you force us to send our children away to your schools where they're taught to despise their 0.63

00:24:46.560 traditions, forbid them their languages, then further say that American history really began.

00:24:51.940 When Columbus set sail out of Europe and stressed that the nations of leeches who conquered his land

00:24:58.320 were the biggest and bravest and boldest and best, and yet where in your history books is the tale

00:25:05.260 of the genocide basic to this country's birth of the preachers who lied how the bill of rights 0.60

00:25:10.860 failed my country tis of thy people you're dying buffy has put out 21 records so i won't dig into

00:25:19.140 all of them here but i do want to stop in 1969 to drop the needle on illuminations this record 0.95

00:25:25.920 blew my fucking mind when i first heard it and indeed as andrea warner points out illuminations 0.71

00:25:31.900 is referenced as a precursor to gothic rock, and it also sparked St. Marie's friend, punk rock 0.98

00:25:37.320 fashion icon Jimmy Webb, to later refer to her as one of the pre-punk punks. Genesis's Steve Hackett

00:25:44.880 frequently cites Illuminations as a source of inspiration for the band's sound. That's Genesis!

00:25:53.400 I've always contended that Leonard Cohen was a much better poet than a singer, and his lyrics

00:25:58.540 are almost always better off in the hands of other vocalists, but nowhere is this more clear

00:26:03.820 than the first track of this record. When Buffy sings, God is alive, magic is afoot,

00:26:10.320 God is afoot, magic is alive, alive is afoot, magic never dies. Lyrics taken from Leonard

00:26:17.760 Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers, amid her strange synths that sound like condensation dripping in a

00:26:24.700 cave? Buffy's voice seems supernatural. For those of you who follow us on Instagram and saw my

00:26:31.380 series of bread baking stories, you know that this song is soundtrack for some of my most magical

00:26:37.100 tasks. In a world where only a few years earlier, Bob Dylan had shocked the world by playing

00:26:43.200 Gasp! An electric guitar! Buffy St. Marie was making ahead of its time experimental goth punk

00:26:50.940 with computers. In fact, her 1992 album, Coincidence and Likely Stories, holds the

00:26:56.720 distinction of being the first major label record to be made over the internet. Buffy and her

00:27:02.260 producer used the then-new technology of MIDI files and the internet to send bits of music back

00:27:08.600 and forth to create the album. Starwalker from her 1976 album, Sweet America, is considered the

00:27:14.660 first powwow style rock song buffy pulls equally from the latest technology to the most ancient

00:27:21.720 traditions to create her art carving and discovering her own path along the way and now

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00:28:33.560 sweet listener offer code missing witches for 13% off your order the theme of chosen paths is also

00:28:39.940 evident in buffy's delightful performance of different people different ways on sesame street

00:28:45.320 buffy was a reoccurring character on sesame street for five years starting in 1975 and i can't think

00:28:51.660 of a better symbol for buffy's combination of radical ideas and kind-heartedness than the

00:28:57.940 Sesame Street of the 70s and 80s. I am begging you to take some time to fall down the YouTube 0.95

00:29:04.060 rabbit hole of searching Buffy St. Marie Sesame Street. Share it with your children, pets, or

00:29:10.160 friends. From the Sesame Street Workshop website, in 1969, Sesame Street Workshop started with a

00:29:17.160 single bold question. Could television be used to educate kids? Against the backdrop of the

00:29:23.500 civil rights movement, and the war on poverty, Sesame Street founders Joan Gons Cooney and Lloyd

00:29:28.700 Morissette had a simple but revolutionary idea. Television could help prepare disadvantaged

00:29:34.840 children for school. They tapped educational advisors, researchers, television producers,

00:29:40.140 artists, and other visionaries to create what would become the longest running children's show

00:29:45.880 in American television history. So Buffy was the first indigenous person to make regular

00:29:52.880 appearances on Sesame Street. But first she had to ask, as was her way, it's my way,

00:29:58.640 have you done any Native American programming? Andrea Warner writes, they hadn't, but they

00:30:04.700 called her back with a new offer to include her as a writer and a contributor and appear as a

00:30:09.840 semi-regular cast member. She knew it would be a good opportunity to reach millions of young

00:30:14.740 children and their parents with the same message she had been bringing to her concert audiences

00:30:19.180 for years. Indians exist. I also think it's quite lovely that, other than Big Bird, Buffy was the

00:30:28.060 only one who could see Snuffleupagus. And so it was that this team, and Buffy too, Buffy would

00:30:33.780 make appearances on Sesame Street from 75 to 81, would attempt to balance the scales of justice

00:30:39.520 in education by providing early childhood education for parents who couldn't afford it.

00:30:44.400 And not just ABC 123, but real abstract concepts and the promotion of an emotional maturity that some adults still struggle to grasp.

00:30:54.960 In one episode, Big Bird has made a drawing, but everyone is too busy paying attention to Buffy's new baby, played by her real son, Dakota.

00:31:03.000 So, in an angry, jealous huff, Big Bird locks his nest door, posting a sign for his former friends to keep out.

00:31:11.020 Eventually, Buffy is allowed to come in, and Big Bird describes his contention that Buffy only loves the baby now.

00:31:18.080 Buffy patiently replies,

00:31:19.740 You can love lots of people. You just love each person in his own way.

00:31:24.180 She explains in song,

00:31:25.540 I love him cause he's tiny and small. I love you cause you're yellow and tall.

00:31:33.040 Tiny and small love, yellow and tall love. Everyone loves through all their days.

00:31:40.640 Different people, different ways

00:31:45.260 In another episode, Buffy is nursing her infant son

00:31:48.960 She tells Big Bird, I'm feeding the baby

00:31:51.300 See? He's drinking milk from my breast

00:31:54.080 Lots of mothers feed their babies this way 0.99

00:31:56.620 Not all mothers, but lots of mothers do 0.61

00:31:59.580 Buffy knows that decolonizing and unsettling minds must begin in childhood

00:32:04.460 Not just for a better world, but for the children's own protection

00:32:08.740 Andrea Warner wrote

00:32:10.340 St. Marie sees a connection between the sexual abuse in residential schools and her own sexual

00:32:16.020 abuse as a child, in that both are a function of the good old boy colonial blueprint that hasn't

00:32:21.460 changed much since biblical times. The priests, the ministers, the nuns, and the Indian agents

00:32:27.120 were all sexually repressed people, and like soldiers, they were raised, trained, and expected 0.90

00:32:32.440 to be servants of a feudal hierarchy, familiar with torture, humiliation, misogyny, and coercion.

00:32:38.580 Saint-Marie says,

00:32:40.040 Today, a lot of the descendants of this system are okay with it.

00:32:43.220 They're trying to normalize the abnormal,

00:32:45.800 and they believe that rape is universal human nature, but it's not.

00:32:50.300 Like war, it's just greedy men's dreams.

00:32:53.840 Rape is a choice, a cultural aberration of certain societies, including historical Europe, 0.95

00:32:59.120 where rape was a reward for the king's sexually repressed soldiers, 0.56

00:33:03.360 and misogyny and child abuse were no big deal and nobody's business. 0.93

00:33:07.340 In St. Marie's view, it leads all the way back through Europe's sick history of bad leadership,

00:33:13.720 mandated by the Doctrine of Discovery.

00:33:16.680 The big racket as it pertains to children is much bigger than racism, St. Marie says.

00:33:21.880 Ever read Charles Dickens? 0.76

00:33:23.940 Europeans exploited their own children and oppressed their own neighbors before they even got to us. 0.96

00:33:30.420 The slave trade and the king's military were both implicated in the template

00:33:34.780 for how Indigenous children all over the world were treated by Europeans.

00:33:39.480 Little children who were kidnapped from a natural life

00:33:42.520 and sent to live in residential schools without family or community

00:33:45.800 were certainly not a match for such a system. 0.79

00:33:49.040 Beyond the established European market for Indigenous child slaves,

00:33:54.160 European literature is full of evidence that suggests

00:33:57.020 bullying and abuse of little kids in their own homes were common,

00:34:01.760 obvious, and no big deal.

00:34:03.980 And of course, I was one more of the little kids that that kind of men did it to,

00:34:10.020 even without a residential school.

00:34:12.520 And nobody even noticed.

00:34:15.240 She remembers the trauma only too well.

00:34:18.260 It's incredibly disempowering to be the slave of an adult,

00:34:22.780 and to have to do things that are described as being shameful, St. Marie says.

00:34:27.160 You're threatened throughout your whole childhood by people who outweigh you,

00:34:30.660 so you're always under stress, always being bullied, having to do even more.

00:34:35.340 The threat of being exposed, I'll tell all your friends, is just awful, she says.

00:34:41.360 Awful.

00:34:42.940 Talking about the abuse she experienced as a child is still a work in progress for St. Marie.

00:34:48.180 In the 1980s, she participated in a support group for adult survivors of child abuse.

00:34:54.020 This kind of thing never leaves you.

00:34:56.100 It's always in the back of your mind.

00:34:57.580 I mean your lack of identity, not knowing who you are, what the rules are, whether it's fair for

00:35:02.900 people to mistreat you in this big bad world where men rule everything, and older rules younger,

00:35:08.680 and more powerful rules less powerful, and white rules indigenous, when you're just trying to find

00:35:14.100 a safe place to fit in unnoticed. The support group consisted of five women who met once a week 0.98

00:35:21.900 to talk about their lives and what happened to them. After a few weeks, the person running the 0.87

00:35:26.120 group asked the women to take part in a healing exercise. Buffy said she wanted each of us to 0.80

00:35:32.020 envision ourselves as that poor abused kid from way back when, which was very easy for me to do,

00:35:39.120 and she wanted us to go over to that poor kid and tell her, I'm going to take care of you now.

00:35:48.620 I encourage you all to tell your inner child, I'm going to take care of you now.

00:35:54.020 now here's the dear inevitable part of almost every episode of the missing witches podcast

00:35:59.700 where we invoke the beloved witch ipsida roy chakraverti with her quote every strong woman

00:36:05.040 is a witch and is hunted so if you're wondering why you've maybe never heard of buffy before or

00:36:11.520 why she wasn't invited to perform at woodstock or why she's not as famous as those whose careers 0.89

00:36:16.340 she'd helped to inspire like bob dylan or joanie the answer is threefold at least one buffy's just 0.95

00:36:23.780 not a fame monster. She tells a great story of going on tour with a then-near-unknown Paul Simon.

00:36:30.280 Buffy had already had some success, and so she was set to headline the shows. Well, Paul Simon

00:36:35.300 made a big stink and insisted that Buffy should open for him. But Buffy only learned about this

00:36:40.880 when she read Paul Simon's autobiography many, many, many years later. She said, laughing,

00:36:46.040 I didn't even know that was going on at the time. That's how unimportant it was to me.

00:36:52.080 two Buffy was invited to be on the tonight show with Johnny Carson a major pit stop on the road 0.93

00:36:59.240 to celebrity but producers told her she wasn't allowed to talk about indigenous rights or

00:37:03.560 pacifism so Buffy refused to appear on the show but it didn't end there three Andrea Warner wrote

00:37:11.860 Saint Marie knew that her activism may have cost her her career in some ways but she believed it 0.55

00:37:17.680 was a consequence of seeking justice. Many other Indigenous activists and friends, after all,

00:37:23.540 had paid a price far worse. But in the late 80s, a bombshell of a story dropped into St. Marie's

00:37:30.120 lap. She was being interviewed on the radio when the interviewer apologized for having participated

00:37:35.180 in a campaign to suppress her music in the 60s and 70s. St. Marie said in a 2008 interview at

00:37:43.180 the National Museum of the American Indian that she had been blacklisted by American radio stations

00:37:48.580 and that she, along with Native Americans and other indigenous people in the Red Power movements,

00:37:54.000 were put out of business in the 70s. In a 1999 interview, St. Marie said,

00:37:59.560 I found out 10 years later in the 80s that President Lyndon Johnson had been writing

00:38:04.560 letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music.

00:38:09.820 She said, in the 70s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked.

00:38:18.380 As a result of this blacklisting, led by, among others, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon,

00:38:24.400 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Nashville Disc Jockey Ralph Emery.

00:38:29.480 St. Marie said, I was put out of business in the United States.

00:38:35.160 Despite being blacklisted, Buffy continued her music and activism.

00:38:38.960 She once said, I don't like to despair. It's uncomfortable. It kind of hurts to despair.

00:38:44.820 So instead of despairing, I try to do things about it. Andrea Warner quotes Buffy saying

00:38:49.940 something that my Aunt Bea used to say all the time, and I, in turn, say all the time.

00:38:55.640 It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

00:38:59.880 Buffy believes that we are always evolving, mutating, ripening, becoming, and that idea

00:39:05.360 is the foundation of her creative and persistent approach to her life and its rippling effect.

00:39:11.340 She said, as each of us learns and ripens, we affect everything around ourselves. And this is

00:39:17.200 especially true for Buffy. She's been remarkably prolific, not just in music, but in the daily

00:39:22.600 business of changing the world. Among her hundreds of achievements, in the 90s, she spearheaded the

00:39:29.060 Cradleboard Teaching Project, which was her attempt to indigenize history, schools, and learning

00:39:34.840 environments. Warner writes, if she could indigenize the standard curriculum, both through

00:39:40.640 providing factually correct information about contemporary Indigenous people, as well as

00:39:46.080 exploring science, technology, and other core subjects through Indigenous lenses, she could

00:39:52.840 reach new kids all the time and open their eyes to other options. Buffy currently lives on a farm

00:39:59.240 in Hawaii, but even approaching her 80th year continues to raise money and awareness, even

00:40:05.760 during quarantines by doing frequent live streams. Most recently, Buffy wrote a song slash book

00:40:11.560 called Hey Little Rockabye, a lullaby for pet adoption, with part of the proceeds going to

00:40:17.100 Humane Canada, Canada's federation of SPCAs and humane societies. Hey, hey, little rockabye.

00:40:25.060 Hey, hey, little darling 0.93

00:40:28.680 Hey, hey, little rockabye

00:40:32.940 You got somebody loves you

00:40:37.000 2020 has been a struggle at best.

00:40:42.900 Many of us are stuck in our homes or trapped in a world we didn't design.

00:40:46.300 But Buffy encourages you to be fruitful.

00:40:49.320 She said, when there's nothing to do, that bothers some people.

00:40:52.240 But I just start doing artsy things.

00:40:54.460 I'll play with words or I'll play with music or I'll start rearranging things in my mind,

00:40:59.560 recolorizing things, turning things upside down or inside out. Instead of getting bored, I have fun.

00:41:06.940 And we at Missing Witches encourage you to do the same. When it seems like there's nothing to do,

00:41:11.600 look harder. Start rearranging things or just have fun and play. Discover a path.

00:41:18.160 Discover your path by ear and memory, gut and feel.

00:41:26.780 Ear and memory, gut and feel.

00:41:33.040 We are the Universal Soldiers, and the war continues to be fought.

00:41:38.100 Be you a warrior on the front lines or a spreader of medicine songs,

00:41:42.500 the Resistance and Reformation needs your help.

00:41:44.800 decolonizing or unsettling is hard work but don't worry you got somebody loves you

00:41:52.760 and it's you and me and Buffy St. Marie magic is afoot magic is alive the paths to wonderfulness

00:42:03.060 to effectiveness to joy to living are generated everywhere Buffy said I have two main prayers

00:42:12.080 one is thanks

00:42:14.200 and the other

00:42:15.820 is wow

00:42:17.960 wow 1.00

00:42:20.380 you must be a witch 0.96

00:42:25.760 this episode of the Missing Witches podcast

00:42:28.780 was written and performed by Amy Torek

00:42:30.920 music and editing by Amy Torek

00:42:33.080 thanks again to our sponsor Foxglove Farm

00:42:35.440 don't forget to use our listener

00:42:36.960 offer code missingwitches for 13%

00:42:39.400 off your order

00:42:40.180 or make a contribution to their wildlife rescue out of the woods. Find your witchy wellness at

00:42:46.320 foxglovefarm.com. You can also support Missing Witches on Patreon at patreon.com

00:42:54.140 slash missingwitches and coming soon, Missing Witches merch on TeePublic. And please,

00:43:02.360 if you haven't already, consider pre-ordering our upcoming book, Missing Witches by Risa Dickens

00:43:07.720 and Amy Torek, published by North Atlantic Books.

Missing Witches - October 11, 2020

MW Buffy Sainte Marie： This Is My Path. Discover Your Own.

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