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Welcome to the Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center lecture on
Indigenous Land, Culture and Community.
[MUSIC]
Presenting Detoxifying Aboriginals, Self-perception,
and Outward Identity with Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Sponsored by The American Indian Studies Program, The
Department of English, The American Indian Policy
Institute, The School of Art in the Herberger Institute for
Design and the Arts, The Labriola National American
Indian Data Center, The School of Historical, Philosophical,
and Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies in the
School of Social Transformation, The Indian
Legal Program in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law,
and The Heard Museum.
And [KERES]
to all of you.
Hello, how are you?
[SPEAKING KERES LANGUAGE]
Thank you for coming to our event tonight at the Simon
Ortiz an and Labriola Center lecture on indigenous land,
culture, and community.
[SPEAKING KERES LANGUAGE]
With knowledge, we will see each other in a positive way.
I said in the Keres language of [KERES].
That's where I'm from, from Acoma Pueblo.
And it's always good to see all of you, all of the people
who come to these events.
Not just because of the current speaker, but also
because it's good to gather together in a body of people.
Because that's when we come to know ourselves
as [KERES], as people.
That we are one group or one community that is really
related to one another as human beings.
Of course, we are ethnically different from one another.
You could say culturally different.
But we also share, I think, a common humanity.
[SPEAKING KERES LANGUAGE]
That's how we see each other.
Because we see each other together as this one in terms
of oneness.
And that's what I believe events like these show.
That we are that one, who is helpful to each other always.
[SPEAKING KERES LANGUAGE]
Because that is how we were raised, no matter who we are.
And even in maybe in dysfunctional families, we
know nonetheless who we are.
Even though we've may for awhile be not well in that
dysfunction.
But we are people.
And people and sister and brother to each other.
So I want to introduce our speaker tonight with a couple
words about her.
Buffy Sainte-Marie has been a friend for many years.
She's actually a friend and a sister to many people.
Even people that don't know her personally, but because
her words, the message, and the language
that she has used.
To not only to tell about herself, but with that same
language, with those same words, tell about others.
Tell about the people, the
[FOREIGN LANGUAGE], that we are.
Because when a poet or a singer or an actor or a
spokesperson talks and uses those words that help to bring
us into that center of who we are as family, then we know
each other better.
And I think that over the years, this
is the kind of work--
brave and good work--
that Buffy Sainte-Marie has done.
I remember hearing a song called "Universal Soldier"
when I was home.
I was fairly young then.
It must be 100 years ago, right?
I was coming from Puerto Rico.
I was in the US Military in the Army after I quit college
because I didn't like college all that much.
Now, college students here-- you don't have to mind that.
I hope you don't mind that.
But I felt I was learning the wrong things.
I was learning technical things about America, the cold
hard facts.
And they all seemed to be bent and twisted towards more
Americanism.
So I didn't agree with college.
And so I quit, and did the worst thing that a
young man could do--
join the Army, right?
The Military--
this was in 1963.
It wasn't quite Vietnam yet, but it was getting there.
Southeast Asia and what the United States did, which was
invade and occupy Vietnam.
Well anyway, I went into the Army and
served a couple of years.
And then, I was--
actually three years in total, but I was into my second year
when I was in Puerto Rico.
So I went home for Christmas.
And on the way, I went to stop off in some place in Georgia
to see a fellow Military member.
A young man, at that time--
young like me--
who was from home.
And Fred was stationed at an Air Force Base.
And he and I went out one evening--
the evening that I got there.
I was-- it was just overnight that I visited.
Anyway, we went downtown to have some food and drink beers
during my long time ago drinking days, which I don't
do anymore.
I stopped a way long time ago--
20 years or so.
Anyway, I heard this song.
I was-- we were both, of course,
young and in the Military.
He in the Air Force, and me in the Army.
And this was really the early years of the beginning
conflagration in Southeast Asia, which would become the
Vietnam War.
And I heard this song, "The Universal Soldier." And I was
so struck by that song.
I asked my friend, who wrote that song, who was singing?
And he said, he didn't know.
But he went to check at the jukebox.
And it was Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Those words, the music, and the meaning of those words
really struck me then.
Of course, I didn't really know Buffy at all until
several years later.
Well, I guess I'm telling that story because I was
only a young man.
But they meant something to me.
And those words, that language--
I would say, that commitment to being human, and being
willing to look at oneself, and therefore,
also look at others--
was that phenomenon of a human voice that became--
I think--
so important to many of us in later years.
Because Buffy Sainte-Marie was indeed a
story that was happening.
But was also something that America had to experience.
And an experience like that is something like poetry that you
don't really just hear it, but you ingest it by realizing a
story that is yours and becomes yours.
By--
even if they weren't, say, uttered or written or created
by you, but became part of how you began to see yourself.
And it's been my experience to see through some of the lyrics
and some of the music and some of the meaning, perhaps a
great deal of it through a person like Buffy
Sainte-Marie.
Buffy has, I think, some very strong points to make.
And these are that she has always
advocated, nonviolent struggle.
Nonviolent--
that we don't have to be aggressive or certainly
aggravate each other.
But to be certain of who we are, and certain
of what we are doing.
And then, she has also been a person who has concerned about
education, especially those needing education.
I mean young people from kindergarten all the way up to
college or university.
Education that is meaningful.
And I think that she has always been very positive
about the challenges that we face.
Especially here, in the United States of America, where there
are many and enough challenges for everybody.
But you always have a positive and a-- more or less-- a
beneficial look forward to those challenges.
Because that is the way that we will overcome and deal.
Deal with and overcome those challenges.
And then, the sense of solidarity that she has had
with all the people.
Especially those people who are very much a part of the
substance of who we are as a people in our communities--
the responsibilities and obligations
that must be exercised.
I've always loved these kinds of ideas and kinds of--
I would say--
patterning aimed at Buffy Sainte-Marie has had.
Who can remember Sesame Street?
Hey, everybody remembers Sesame Street.
Today, when she spoke about Sesame Street was actually a
way in which she was resilient in a way that sidestepped some
of the opposition that was so politically thrown at her.
Especially by two presidents--
President Nixon and his conservatism and republicanism
and his other ways, as you may know, and President Johnson.
A democratic President, yes, but also a President that was,
in some ways, not as forward thinking and not as
progressive thinking as people might have
wished for him to be.
And who were, more or less, a cause of some of the
censorship that was exercised.
And it prevented Buffy Sainte-Marie to be fully
appreciated by the public as a whole.
And this really was a way in which I think censorship and
discrimination was exercised against Buffy.
Well, it was during this time when she was on Sesame Street
for five years.
And the little kids--
my nephews and nieces were children then.
And probably, I know my own children--
I have--
they're not exactly little kids, they're
in their 40's now.
And they loved Buffy Sainte-Marie.
And I did, with Big Bird and all, right?
Well, this is the person that Buffy Sainte-Marie is.
So I hope with my few spare words, I hope that we
appreciate Buffy for who and what she is-- as a singer, as
a songwriter, as a poet, and as a sister and
friend to all of us.
So with those words, I want to welcome--
I want all of us to welcome Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Buffy?
[APPLAUSE]
[SPEAKING KERES LANGUAGE]
Thank you, [KERES].
I thank the creator for this day.
This day when people of good minds come
together for a good purpose--
to think about the past a little bit, to acknowledge our
presence in this world today, that we share, and to think
about the future.
I want to thank the Heard Museum and ASU.
Thank you so much for bringing me.
We had a nice meeting today and I met some great students
and instructors at ASU.
Going to talk a lot of things here today.
Some will tell you what you really want isn't on the menu.
Don't believe them.
Don't believe them.
Cook it up yourself.
And then, prepare to serve them.
That's how they will learn.
Don't stand in the kitchen and *** that nobody's making
what you want.
Make it, and then show them how wonderful it is.
I was a little kid--
I didn't play with Barbies.
I didn't play sports.
I played art.
I was in an adoptive family, oof.
Well, there were pedophiles in the neighborhood and
pedophiles in the house.
It was hard.
But when I was three, I saw a piano and it changed my life.
I never took any lessons.
I'm actually self-taught.
And as a matter of fact, I found out a few years ago that
I'm actually--
get this-- dyslexic in music.
I had never heard of such a thing.
But as Einstein had a dyslexia for certain kinds of math that
he couldn't do, he used a different part of his brain to
accomplish what he wanted to accomplish and what
he wanted to see.
That's how I make music.
So I taught myself how to play when I was three.
And I'm not kidding, it was play.
And to this day, it's still play.
That's why it's good.
That's where we need to protect our children.
It doesn't take a lot of figuring out.
We need to allow our children their playtime.
That's where creativity comes from.
You don't learn creativity in schools.
You learn creativity because it's fun.
You keep your nose on the joy trail.
And you reach the world in a different kind of way.
So why didn't--
I didn't play Barbies.
And I didn't play sports.
And when I was in school--
or even in high school--
the class that I just could not fathom, that I flunked
every time, was music.
I couldn't understand.
I couldn't understand notation.
Why would anybody even bother?
You here a song, you sit down and play it.
And the emphasis on play--
the emphasis is not a work.
In the recording industry as a person who has big fancy art
shows in Saskatchewan--
by the way, I have two of my neighbors here from
Saskatchewan.
And I was so pleased to see them.
Thank you for coming tonight.
So I'm a self-taught artist.
And here we are in a beautiful museum that shows all
different kinds of art.
Some of it has taken a lot of perspiration.
And some of has developed solely because of the
inspiration and the kind of work that truly is play.
So you're looking at a person who's had a lot of success--
although, out of challenges in the money world or in the
political world because of what I chose to express.
But you are looking at a person who really enjoys art.
I love it.
And I live for it.
People are sorry for me because I've been on the road
for 50 years.
I live in Hawaii on a farm with a--
I have 21 goats and a kitty cat and an old horse and a
bunch of chickens.
I live in the mountains way in the middle of nowhere.
And I play music and I paint.
And then, I go on the road and I meet people.
And it's beautiful.
I'm just the most fortunate person you'll ever run into to
have this kind of double life.
So when I--
went to University of Massachusetts, by the way.
They're got all my college degrees at the University of
Massachusetts.
And I majored in Oriental Philosophy
because I loved the creator.
And I loved talking to people from different
parts of the world.
When I went to the University of Massachusetts, I thought I
was going to become a veterinarian.
And then, I met chemistry.
And I realized that what I really am is not a scientist,
but a pet lover.
[LAUGHTER]
Which is kind of the same thing as playing music, as
opposed to obeying a teacher who's going to hit with you if
you play the notes wrong.
See?
See the difference?
It's kind of metaphor for all of life, whether or
not you're an artist.
And I got to admit, I think everybody's an artist.
I think when you take little kids to the beach,
they all make art.
You take away from a four-year-olds to the beach
and they'll make pictures in the sand.
They'll make architecture in the sand.
They'll dance, they'll sing, they'll use their
imaginations.
They'll make drama.
Most of the grownups are not smart enough even to notice
that this is true creativity.
We're made in the image of the creator.
We are meant to be creative.
We create our families.
We create our artworks and our music.
We create our world, if we have the guts to step
forward and do it.
And stop listening to whoever it is in the back of our heads
that sounds like our sixth grade teacher saying, no, you
got to do it wrong.
You've spelled it wrong, forget it.
You'll never be a writer, you can't spell.
You can't type, so you won't be able to
tell stories, right?
There's a lot of these little nagging dumps that we have.
But if you're an artist or if you're a student, you must get
beyond that for the sake of the rest of us who will share
in what you bring forth in your life.
So when I finished college and I started
singing, it was 1964.
And I started singing the little songs
that I would write.
And sing to--
sing off campus in a coffee house, or sing to
the girls in my dorm.
All of a sudden, everybody loved these songs.
"Universal Soldier," that Simon
mentioned, was one of them.
But there were many others.
And it was real diversity kind of music.
In the record business, you're supposed to make one kind of
song 12 times so that they all sound alike.
And then they can sell it because--
I don't know.
You figure it out.
You know, all the-- every Motown song kind of sounds
like the same?
Well, I just never fit into that.
Also, I was a songwriter.
And it wasn't exactly legal with the folk
police at that time.
Song writers-- you know, we didn't
know about song writers.
Because you were supposed to be singing 400-year-old Welsh
folk songs which are very beautiful.
And lucky for me, I was around genuine folk singers like Pete
Seeger and Joan Baez and Ewan MacColl who were seeing those
folks songs.
And I did it.
I sang a few of those 400-year-old Welsh folk songs.
But most of mine, I had written the weekend before so
they didn't really count.
So anyway, here I was all of a sudden with a career.
All of a sudden, in 1964, '65, I'm in my early 20s.
I was a young singer with too much money.
I was flying all over the place.
I'd be one day in South Dakota on a reservation.
I'd go to the airport.
I'd fly to Paris.
They were not too many Native American people.
There were not too many indigenous people who had that
opportunity.
But I did, and I'm so grateful for it.
So don't ever put me up on a pedestal.
I was the luckiest of anybody.
I got to see the world without leaving the reds.
I got to bring the reservation to the fancy stages of Europe.
And I got to bring that glitz and shine to the reservations.
I got to bring rock and roll to the reservations, and to
bring the reservation to rock and roll.
And it was always such a pleasure
just to be with people.
I'd be in Stockholm or London or Rome or someplace.
And there would be audiences who wanted to know about the
people back home.
And that really touched me.
It touched me.
And I never became the kind of Indian who was protesting
because I was racist against white people.
It wasn't like that.
I always felt sorry for white people in--
especially in Europe.
Well, no--
think of it.
This is what they never tell you in school.
They never tell you in any--
I don't know one university who has the guts to say it the
way that it really was.
I mean what was it that got off that boat?
--Conquistadors, right--
these men.
What were they drinking--
orange juice, Coca Cola?
No, we were attacked by gangs of alcoholics who themselves
were oppressed by a feudal system that--
it hit them before it ever got to us.
There were serial killers on the thrones of Europe.
And nobody says it.
There were serial killers on the thrones of Europe.
That's what was going on in Europe.
Ferdinand and Isabella--
it was the Inquisition.
And nobody ever says it in Native Studies.
We were discovered during the Inquisition.
It was the worst possible time for European people to be
going all over the world and meeting the indigenous people
of the world.
It was terrible timing.
But it wasn't because they were white, it was bad
leadership.
Every now and then, you can get bad leadership in a group.
That's what was going on.
It takes the racism out of it.
It wasn't that they were European.
They were being oppressed by those same people.
Their job was to come over and oppress indigenous people
where they found them.
They didn't know.
The same time in Europe, Henry VIII was on the throne.
He didn't just kill a few wives, my friends.
Hundreds of thousands of people tortured, murdered--
because he wanted it.
In Eastern Europe, Vlad the Impaler was on the throne when
American Indians were discovered.
Charming, Vlad the Impaler--
Dracula--
that's what happened.
And nobody says it.
Say it.
Because it takes the racism out of it.
Bad leadership--
we need good leadership.
We need it in our communities.
We need it in our homes.
We have a dysfunctional world.
We can fix it.
Good leadership--
start it in the home.
Start it in the community.
Teach it in the schools, it's good.
So here I was, in the '60s, with this head and this heart,
a young singer with too much money.
I'd been all--
I was going all over the world.
I was going to Australia.
As a matter of fact, we just got back a
couple of months ago.
I'm still going back and forth to Australia, back
and forth to Europe.
There's a lot of countries over there
a lot of good people.
And what I noticed on the reservations were that there
were many, many students who didn't know how to negotiate
the path from where they were at to college.
So I started a foundation called The Nihewan Foundation
for American Indian Education.
And you know, I've got an Academy Award
and a Golden Globe.
And I've been on Sesame Street.
And I have all these albums.
And I've done many, many CBC specials in Canada.
You know, I've got awards.
I've got two medals from the Queen of England.
And you know what means the most to me in my whole life?
I found out about 10 years ago that two of my early
scholarship foundation recipients had gone on to
become the Presidents at Tribal Colleges--
Tribal Community Colleges.
And one of them, Doctor Lionel Bordeaux, he started the
American Indian Higher Education Consortium.
See, so have some hope in yourself.
I did a couple of really small, little things with the
opportunity and the advantages that I had.
And other people went out, and they maximized them.
They did things that I couldn't possibly have done
myself because I wasn't them.
Each one of these is so unique.
We have to learn how to treasure each other.
There's no competition.
It's not a contest.
There's a song that times that I was telling the students
this afternoon.
I'll tell it to you.
It's called "Look at the Facts."
It says, "It ain't money that makes the world go round.
That's only temporary confusion.
I ain't governments that make the people strong.
It's the opposite allusion.
Look at the facts and you see they're only here by the skin
of their teeth as it is.
So take heart and take care of you link with life.
Life is beautiful, if you've got the sense to take care of
your source of perfection.
Mother Nature, she's the daughter of God and the source
of all protection.
Look at the facts and you'll see she's only here by the
skin of her teeth as it is.
So take heart, and take care of you link with life."
You know, every now and then, you hear people saying, yeah,
we're all one.
You know, we're one--
we're all one.
We're all together.
We're like a science experiment.
We're not all separate.
We can work together.
Don't get discouraged when you turn on the breakfast news and
that is the way it is.
It's only temporary.
We're going through changes.
Don't get discouraged when you're mad at your
politicians.
You ought to be mad at them.
We put them up on a pedestal, and they do this?
The bozos.
But we can still--
in our communities, in our families, in our classrooms--
we can still encourage wonderfulness.
We can inspire and we can become--
we can be inspired.
They are only temporary confusion.
Simon mentioned the blacklisting
that happened to me.
And I'll tell you what that was about
because there's a reason.
Lyndon Johnson-- you know, he didn't like me because of
"Universal Soldier" and my stance against the Vietnam War
and my big mouth, right?
And it wasn't until maybe sometime in the '80s that I
walked into a radio station in Toronto.
And the interviewer who was interviewing me, he said, "I
want to start this interview by apologizing to you for
having gone along with censorship." And he had a
letter on White House stationery commending him for
having suppressed my music which, "deserved to be
suppressed."
Nixon too--
but he was worried because I was letting people know.
And many other people in the American Indian movement and
other Native American organizations and
communities--
we were letting people know all about the
theft of Indian land.
Most of it was resource rich, right?
Pine Ridge, you know it was uranium--
uranium.
An eighth of the reservation transferred in secret to the
government.
That's the part they never even tell you about Annie Mae
Aquash and Leonard Peltier.
Yeah, it was money and greed motivated.
So what I want to tell you about that is it shouldn't
make you afraid of the government.
It shouldn't make you hate the US.
These guys are elected for four skinny years.
And they do as much as they want to do.
It's a power trip.
It's not America.
It's not the US.
It's an administration.
And you know how they do it?
I found out how they do it.
I-- as soon as I got done with that interview-- which just
progressed and continued like a regular interview.
And then, I went home.
I didn't think much about it.
But I called my lawyer, and I said, will you find out if I
have FBI files or something?
Now, this the '80s.
And Johnson was--
he drowned my career in the '60s.
Didn't you ever wonder?
How come I didn't-- how come I was all over
television in the '60s?
How come I never toured in the southwest?
Find out who owned concert halls.
Find out who owned the newspapers.
Find out who owned the local TV stations.
Find out who owned the local radio stations.
It's the same people who were ripping off
Native people for resources.
It's the same reason that we have fracking
all over the US today.
So the way that they do it is through networking.
Lyndon Johnson, he signed the paper, OK.
But it's not as though they're hunting me down.
It's not as though they let you know that you're under
surveillance.
I got my FBI files.
They don't tell you.
Instead, a couple of guys go in the back room and they make
phone calls to their cronies at NBC, at
ABC, at radio stations.
Well, it takes a few phone calls.
The word gets out, especially in the '60s and
'70s, yes it did.
So you never heard about Buffy Sainte-Marie concerts.
You know, very seldom--
I don't know what.
I may have done five concerts in the southwest in 50 years.
Meanwhile, in Canada--
I mean, you haven't heard from me probably since the '70s.
My recording career was wiped out in the '60s.
And then in the '70s, I went to Sesame Street.
And then, you--
that kind of recording career never recovers
in the record business.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world, people would not
believe that people don't know about me big time in the US.
They didn't--
in Canada, they just don't believe it.
They said, no, you're kidding.
Because the work that I started in the '60s has
continued--
especially in Canada--
right up to the present day.
"Idle No More"--
[CHEERS]
"Idle No More," in case you don't know--
"Idle No More" is an activism--
it's a grassroots movement, a true grassroots movement.
It's not an organization with a president a vice president,
and you know, and then the rest of everybody.
No, it's not like that.
It's a true grassroots movement started by four women
in Saskatchewan, three of them aboriginal.
And they are--
the things that they are active about, the things
they're trying to fight against are the same things
that most of us have been objecting to
for many, many years.
But now everybody is standing up together saying, uh uh.
I'm not going to sit down and take this anymore.
What spurred "Idle No More," which has become
global by the way.
What spurred it was a bill--
I think it's C43, is it?
Anyway, a bill-- it's over 500 pages long, and it's written
in fine print legalese.
The darn thing was passed.
Most of the legislators didn't even read
it they have admitted.
And how exciting it is if you're with a group of young
people, they're driving to, like a flash mob-- you know
what that is?
It's like these people are using social media to let each
other know, OK, we're all going to go down to the park
and we're just going to be present.
And we're going to attract some attention to the fact
that this bill not only attacks the environment
through doing away with The Navigation Act, and doing away
with protections to the environment, and doing away
with Indian treaties, wholesale.
It has been passed by people who didn't even read the bill
because it's deliberately confusing.
I think that ought to be illegal in every country.
I mean, these are our countries, Canada, the US, and
the others, yeah?
This is not the feudal system anymore, unless we allow it.
It's choices--
unless we allow it.
So imagine how nice it is for some teenagers
going to flash mob.
And one of them pulls out a treaty.
Opposed to a 500 page deceptive document, Treaty 1
is four pages long.
Anybody can understand it.
That's what we need.
That's what we need--
simple, direct, honest.
easy, on the level of all of us.
What else do I want to tell you about--
maybe Sesame Street?
Are we getting--
Sesame Street was wonderful.
It was my chance--
as Simon kind of alluded--
it was my chance to--
I mean, when my record career all of a sudden wasn't the
same as it used to be.
And when I'd show up, like I would do a concert in
Philadelphia.
And there would be maybe a couple thousand people in the
auditorium.
And they'd say, we can't find your records anywhere.
And I would call the record company and they'd say, well,
we shipped them.
And they never would arrive.
I just figured, ah, that's just business.
And I figured probably that when I didn't have any more
radio play, I just thought, well, that's the way the
record-- you know, singers come, singers go.
I had no idea there was any blacklisting going on.
So anyway--
I still wanted to reach people.
Because I had a message, especially in those days,
about Native people, Native situations.
I really had thought-- from my very first album when I sang
"Now that the Buffalo's Gone"--
I really thought that if the kind of white people that I
had met at the University of Massachusetts, if they
understood the situation for Native American people, they'd
want to help.
And that was right, to a very large extent.
So I still had the same feeling in my heart when
Sesame Street called me up.
And they said, how would you like to come be on Sesame
Street like Stevie Wonder and Burt Lancaster and everybody
else and count from one to 10?
And I said, nah, I'm kind of busy.
But have you ever done any Native American programming?
I was talking to the right people.
They called me back.
They said, let's discuss.
So the first show that I did with Sesame Street was that
Taos Pueblo.
And did anybody ever see that?
It was the cutest thing.
A few people saw it.
Here's Big Bird, right?
He's in--
we're all in a truck.
And there's a bunch of little Indian kids with us in the
pickup truck, right?
And Big Bird's up here, and he's saying--
they cast me as Big Bird's best friend.
And I--
because I could see Snuffleupagus, his imaginary
friend, right?
So Big Bird, he's all wiggly and antsy.
And he says, "Buffy?" I'm saying, "What is it, Big
Bird?" And he says, "I'm kind of nervous."
"What's the matter, Big Bird?
What is it?" "I heard there were Indians
around here." [LAUGHTER]
And of course, all the little kids, they jump up.
Oh, yeah--
I'm Navajo.
I'm from Taos.
I mean, that's the way they were.
They never stereotyped me.
We did things on breastfeeding.
We did things on sibling rivalry.
I mean, I was breastfeeding my baby.
And I asked them, I said, how would you like to do this?
On television--
I mean, you can see it today.
It's on YouTube.
But then, somebody takes it down.
And then, somebody else puts it up.
And somebody takes it down.
So I think a lot of those Sesame Street shows
you can still see.
But the reach-- all of a sudden-- that I had with
Sesame Street was into the hearts and minds and homes of
little kids and their caregivers.
How important is that?
Now, you might think, oh, it's your living room.
Five or six people are there.
But Sesame Street was shown three times a day in 72
countries of the world.
Now, that's impact.
That's real impact.
Yes, we did a lot of Native American programming.
But the people at Sesame Street-- just like the people
that I had met in my early career in Europe--
these kinds of Europeans were not the kind of Europeans that
got off that boat.
So again, I learned that it's not about race.
It's about leadership--
leadership--
no matter who you are and where you come from.
There are a lot of people who--
in this day and age-- of Indians and everybody else--
we have, as aboriginal people in the world--
I mean, I say aboriginal.
And that's one of the words that we use in Canada.
I think most of my Native American, aboriginal, First
Nations friends, we throw around these words.
So for me, there's no political correctness.
We kind of just throw them around wherever they're most
appropriate.
So it's real hard to offend me.
And I think that most aboriginal
people that I know--
whether they're from the Americas, or even from Arctic
Scandinavia where I play a lot, or Maori people in New
Zealand, Aboriginal people in Australia.
I've worked with a lot of teachers.
And I don't think I know any of us who don't have a big
hole where our self-esteem ought to be.
And it's because unfortunately, the education
system affects us all.
And it's quite narrow.
I don't want to say it's full of baloney all the time.
But it's just not wide enough.
And it's up to us to widen that.
It's up to us to cook it up ourselves.
And then, prepare to serve them.
That's how you change it if you want to change something.
You don't give them the information in an enema, no.
You cook it like a beautiful gift.
You use the arts.
You use good authors.
Oh, you can still raise cane.
You can still carry a sign and be very serious.
But you have to understand your audience,
Native American friends.
You have to understand your audience when you're trying to
educate people who have never had freaking chance to learn
about us, anymore then we have.
We haven't had a chance.
In my Cradleboard Teaching Project--
which was an initiative of the original Nihewan Foundation--
we started out with scholarships.
But when I started the Cradleboard Teaching Project,
and I'd go from reservation to reservation talking to
teachers and school boards.
For instance, I went to Akwesasne.
Teachers would be ashamed.
They'd say, I don't know enough about Indian people.
Nobody knows enough about Indian people.
That's why we're here, right?
All of us--
I mean, Simon's a scholar.
I'm a scholar.
We have attended convocations of American Indian scholars
and of indigenous scholars all over the world.
The work is not done yet.
It may never be complete.
Every day is new.
We are growing.
We're evolving.
We're changing.
And we need to.
And it's a pleasure.
It's play, growth, living tomorrow, examining your head,
being curious about what's in somebody else's mind.
This is fun.
This is play.
This is not something to get all tired beat
yourself up for, no.
I know college is hard.
I've got a lot of college--
as a student, and as a teacher.
And it can be hard, and it can be stressful.
But learning itself can be so, so beautiful.
It really can.
Just because college is hard, don't
ever give up on learning.
Because there are two versions of your direction, there are
two versions.
One of them is full of stress like traffic, right?
And the other one is like being in the forest and
learning from the creator.
We are made in the image of the creator.
We are creative.
That's our green light to creativity.
Like it or not, folks, we are creating the future--
even tonight.
We are.
This is our choice.
I have to give your reading list.
I'm a teacher.
Are you ready?
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--
yes--
by the late librarian, Dee Brown--
what a wonderful writer.
It'll break your heart.
It's about what happened in the 17 and 1800s, and how
Native people got to be in the position that
so many are in today.
Indian Givers, by Jack Weatherford--
that won't break your heart.
You'll just go, I never knew that, unreal.
Little skinny yellow paperback, buy one for
yourself, buy one to give to your friends.
Trust me on this one--
The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine.
Don't get confused.
There's a guy who came out with a book a couple months
ago called, The Power of the Female Brain.
Uh uh, that ain't it--
Dr. Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain.
The End of War, by John Horgan--
oh, it's good.
John Horgan--
he's a Professor of Alternative Conflict
Resolution in a college--
I think-- in New Jersey.
You can find it online.
And he's on YouTube.
Look him up--
John Horgan, like Morgan with an H.
He points out things like about choices.
Because people will tell you that we have war because of
greedy bankers.
But no, you can have greedy bankers and
still not have war.
It takes a buy in of a lot of people to make the perfect
storm called war.
And it takes a lot of people sitting
there and doing nothing.
That's us, sometimes, yeah.
Oh, we have war because there's not enough resources
to go around.
The most horrifying wars in the world have been fought by
the richest countries in the world.
It's up to us to keep an eye on the people that we elect so
they don't destroy themselves and us with them in their
greed and madness.
Oh, we have war because of male aggression.
No, you can have male aggression all over the place
and still not have war.
There are many, many factors that go into to having war.
The End of War, this book by John Horgan-- it's about four
inches by five inches.
And it'll take you two hours to read it.
It's practically just a list of that kind of thing.
And boy, is it ever good.
OK, now--
I'm going to tell you the words to a song-- oh, by the
way, you can find a whole lot of videos and songs at my
website, BuffySainte-Marie.com But you
have to spell it right.
It's S-A-I-N-T-E hyphen M-A-R-I-E. And if you
abbreviate it, you go to a *** site in
China or some place.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know, figure it out.
Anyway, this is song that has a Canadian word in it, eh?
That wasn't it.
[LAUGHTER]
It's a Cree word.
And the word is keshagesh.
And keshagesh literally means "greedy guts." And it's a name
that we used to have for a little puppy who used to eat
all his own, and then want everybody else's.
You know the type.
So it says, "I never saw so many business suits.
Never knew a dollar sign could look so cute.
Never knew a junkie with a money jones.
He's singing, 'Who's selling Park Place?' Who's buying
Boardwalk?' These old men, they make their dirty deals.
Go in the back room and see what they can steal.
Talk about your 'Beautiful for spacious
skies.' It's about uranium.
It's about the water rights.
Got Mother Nature on a luncheon plate.
They carve her up and call it real estate.
On all the resources and all of the land, they
make a war over it.
Blow things up for it.
The resignation out at poverty row, there's something cooking
in the lights a low.
Somebody's trying to save Mother Earth.
I'm going to help them to save it and sing it and pray it.
Saying, 'No, no, Keshagesh-- you can't do that no more.
No, no, Keshagesh--
you can't do that no more.
No, no, Keshagesh--
you can't do that no more.'
Old Columbus, he was looking good when he got lost in our
neighborhood.
Garden of Eden right before his eyes.
Now, it's all spyware.
Now, it's all income tax.
Old Brother Midas looking hungry today.
What he can't buy, he gets some other way.
Send in the troupers and the Natives resisters.
It's an old, old story, boys.
That's how you do it, boys.
Look at these people.
Lord, they're on a roll.
They want it all.
They want complete control.
Want all of the resources, and all of the land.
They make a war over it, blow things up for it.
And while all our champions are off in the war, their
final rip off here at home is on.
Mister Greed, I think your time has come.
We're going to sing it and pray it and
live it and say it.
Saying 'No, no, Keshagesh.
No, no, Keshagesh--
you can't do that no more.'"
I'm going to show you another little piece of
music if you like.
[MUSIC]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, [KERES].
I'm just about done here.
Just to remind you--
some will tell you.
Some will tell you what you really want isn't on the menu.
Uh huh-- we write the menu.
We write the menu, if we want to.
It's up to us.
The choices are there.
I thank you all.
I think we're going to have a question and answer, yeah?
I'm sorry that the books and CDs did not arrive.
Somebody--
I don't know.
Somebody did not count for them getting held up in
customs or something.
[LAUGHTER]
If-- no, no these things happen.
These things happen.
No, they do.
They happen.
But obviously, somebody just should have
sent them long before.
And I already scolded somebody, so
you don't need to.
But if you are interested in books and records and things,
you can find them at my website, which is
BuffySainte-Marie.com.
I thank you very much.
Thanks again, to ASU.
Thanks again, to the beautiful,
beautiful Heard Museum.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]