Front Burner - Front Burner Introduces: Buffy

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Buffy Sainte-Marie is one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of the past century. For 60 years her music has quietly reverberated throughout pop culture, and provided a touchstone for Indigenous resistance. In this five-part series, Mohawk and Tuscarora writer Falen Johnson explores how Buffy’s life and legacy is essential to understanding Indigenous resilience. More episodes are available at hyperurl.co/buffy

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, everybody. So we have a very special bonus for FrontBurners Podcast subscribers today. It's the first episode from the brand new CBC Podcast, Buffy. everybody. So we have a very special bonus for FrontBurner's podcast subscribers today. It's the first episode from the brand new CBC podcast, Buffy. Buffy St. Marie is one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of the past century. For 60 years, her music has quietly reverberated throughout pop culture and provided the soundtrack for Indigenous resistance. In this five-part series, Mohawk and Tuscarora writer

Phelan Johnson explores how Buffy's life and legacy is essential to understanding Indigenous resilience. Phelan Johnson is here with me now to talk a little bit about the podcast. Hey, Phelan. Hey, Jamie. So first, can you tell me why you wanted to make a podcast about Buffy St. Marie? Jamie. So first, can you tell me why you wanted to make a podcast about Buffy St. Marie? Well, you know, the idea sort of came across my desk. And we started talking about it and thinking about what the possibilities could be. And so I kind of did this, like this little test where I'd be out hanging out with friends or whoever. And I'd be like, yeah, I might be making a Buffy podcast, a Buffy St. Marie podcast. And what I realized is that there were some people who would light up, like their faces would just light up and they'd go, oh, my God, I love her so much.

And then there would be these other people who would sort of nod their head like they had heard her name, but they weren't entirely sure who she is. And so for me, I was like, that was sort of my barometer and sort of an entry point for the podcast was thinking about if people don't know who Buffy St. Marie is, they really should. And so we really wanted to take the opportunity with this podcast to bust the doors wide open on Buffy St. Marie's life, career and work and make sure that everybody knows her name because everybody should know her name. Make sure that everybody knows her name because everybody should know her name. I mean, once we started the work, you know, of doing the research and looking into the archives that CBC has, because CBC has archives of Buffy's career going back to the 60s. And so, you know, there was just so much delicious material in there to to ignore. Amazing. Today, I think it's probably worth us talking about the fact that today is Canada Day. And I know some Indigenous people have complicated feelings about this day. It's not necessarily viewed as a day to celebrate. And how do you feel about that? Well, yeah, I mean, it is a complicated day. And not just because my dog hates fireworks. But you know, it is a really weird day for a lot of Indigenous people. And I know some people celebrate it, some don't. Some people Canada Day as a day of reflection, because I do think there are a lot of there are a lot of great things about this place. But, you know, this last year has been incredibly difficult for a lot of Indigenous people across across this place now called Canada.

There are these there's been these waves of, you know, children being discovered at the sites of former residential schools. And that keeps happening. You know, we have the Pope's apology coming up or potentially an apology. You know, we had the delegation that went to Rome. So there's this moment of reckoning going on. And so sitting inside that, you know, sitting inside those waves day after day, week after week, month after month. And then all of a sudden, it feels like there's a switch turned off and a bunch of Canada flags like pop up. And, and so there's this dissonance. And it always feels like we're living for me, I can only speak for myself, but for my indigenous self, it feels like we're sitting in this moment of

dissonance, of being aware and not aware at the same time. And I think that's something that Canada needs to be really careful about if we want things like apologies to really resonate in a way that feel meaningful. And given this context that we're talking about, you know, maybe why do you, why do you feel like this podcast, this podcast about Buffy St. Marie would be helpful for people maybe to try and meet that moment, right? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you can look at Buffy's life as a, I mean, I kind of treat her life now as a roadmap of a way forward. Just knowing, you know, knowing her life so intimately, and knowing the things that she pushed back against, how vocal she was throughout her entire career, the things Buffy

was saying in the 60s, sound eerily similar to the things that a lot of Indigenous activists and grassroots, you know, land defenders are saying. It is strikingly similar, which to me was a moment that was kind of disturbing, because it also to me says something about how far we've moved, how far we've pushed that bar. But it also to me says something really amazing about Buffy, about her ability to, you know, it's almost like she was saying things that nobody had ever said before. And so for me, it feels like we can frame this time, you know, Canada Day. And also, I also do think it's a little bit, you know, funny that Canada Day is the end of Indigenous History Month. It's a weird marker. But yeah, I think we can look at Buffy's life as she walked through history, you know, because she really did. She walked through so many historic moments in the US and in Canada, that I think feel so contemporary and so relevant. And I think Buffy's message over the years is one that, you know, remains, remains really poignant.

Well, I cannot wait to listen myself and Phelan. Thank you. Thank you, as always. Oh, thank you. All right. So we have that first episode for you now. Have a listen. Before we begin, I want to let you know that this episode contains difficult subject matter and references to abuse. Please take care. It's February, 1941. Some say it was the 20th, but no one knows for sure. A baby girl is born in the Capelle Valley, Saskatchewan,

most likely on the Creep Hypot Reserve. Again, we can't be sure. But we can guess it was cold. For reasons unknown, this baby girl was sent far, far away from the prairies, all the way to Massachusetts, just north of Boston, to live with an adoptive family. They named the little girl Beverly. Beverly St. Marie. Ladies and gentlemen, the incomparable Buffy St. Marie.

Buffy St. Marie. Buffy St. Marie is a free Indian and a folk singer, or as one critic has called her, a folk poet. No, I don't think of myself as a folk singer or an ethnic singer or any of those things. I just sing what I have to sing, and people seem to like it, and I don't think it's necessary to have a word for it. I don't think you can find one artist today in our community that wouldn't say that Buffy St. Marie inspired them in some kind of way. She's kind of everything. Buffy's voice is Buffy's voice.

It cuts right through, and it will not be denied. You know, Canada doesn't have any honour when it comes to Indian people and if we keep counting on Canadian honour, we're going to keep getting screwed. And so we're just going to take care of things ourselves now and if Canadian people want to help, we'll say thank you, and if they don't, we'll do it anyway. Buffy St. Marie! Buffy St. Marie! For me, Buffy's always just been there, like air.

But outside of Indigenous country, it's different. I'm Phelan Johnson. I'm Mohawk and Tuscarora from Six Nations. I'm an Indigenous writer, a producer, and a host. And maybe you're someone like me, who has always known who Buffy St. Marie is. Or maybe you're wondering who the heck she is. In Indigenous country, Buffy is it. She is the musician, the artist. I've even heard her called the queen, which is complicated when you think about colonization, but you get the idea. In short, we Indigenous people think of Buffy as the most celebrated Indigenous musician ever. Full stop. But even that isn't enough to be a household name. And I've been thinking about that a lot. If one of our most accomplished artists isn't visible,

what hope is there for the rest of us? My country, tis all thy people, you dying. A line from one of her songs has been running through my head lately. It's from My Country, Tis of Thy People, You Are Dying. And the line goes like this. That's it. That's the line. Now that your big eyes are finally opened. As an Indigenous person, I have felt this way a lot.

There are like these waves. Waves when more people have their eyes open to Indigenous rights, to our history, our treaties, our land, to our lives being worthy of caring about. And then the moment slips away. And then we are gone again. And we wait until your big eyes open again. Indigenous people and our stories have been in the news a lot lately, and for the most part, it's not been good news.

I often feel cynical about moments like the one we're in. Moments when more non-Indigenous people seem to be listening, when more people seem to care about treaty rights, about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, about the remains of Indigenous children at residential school sites across North America. All this talk of reconciliation. I've been watching these moments fly by me my entire life. Oka, Ipperwash, Burnt

Church, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I can't identify this moment because how is it any different from the rest? I can't identify this moment because how is it any different from the rest? For her entire life and career, Buffy has been pushing back against erasure, against colonization, racism and sexism. I want to know how she does it, how she stands up, holds her ground and keeps going. I'm Phelan Johnson, and this is Buffy. Over the next five episodes, I'm going to take you on an intimate journey through the life of Buffy St. Marie. We'll dive into the CBC's mountain of Buffy archives

and hear Buffy's story in her own words from new conversations we've recorded with her. We'll pass through Greenwich Village and the Vietnam War, the reoccupation of Alcatraz, the Academy Awards. We'll head to Piapot, First Nation, and even Sesame Street. But this story starts on a frozen lake in Massachusetts. I loved skating. I really wanted to be a skater or a dancer, but I couldn't afford lessons. But after school in the wintertime, I mean, I would come home, I'd dump my books, I'd

grab my skates, I'd run down the hill, I'd cross the railroad tracks, I'd cross the baseball field, and there I'd be at the hill, I'd cross the railroad tracks, I'd cross the baseball field, and there I'd be at the shore of the lake. And I'd put my loafers, you know, by the side of the lake. It was called Lake Quantipowit, and it was a nice little lake. I had Tchaikovsky playing in my head. I was skating to Swan Lake.

I was skating to the Nutcracker Suite. I'd be out just sailing around, you know, practicing my waltz jumps and my three turns and and my backwards skating and just, I had a symphony in my head. Buffy grew up with her adoptive family on the east coast of the United States, just outside of Boston. I was really lucky as a child in one way, in that I had a lot of time in the woods, and I had a mother who was real hip so far as, you know, not forcing churches and things on me. I was a woods kind of person. I had woods behind my house, and I spent summers really in the forest, tents and trailers, and just with my family. Buffy's dad worked as a mechanic.

He also fished and hunted. He'd come home with ducks, pheasants, and sometimes deer. Her mom was a copy editor for newspapers and publishing companies. Buffy had an older brother and a younger sister. There were always pets in the home, a cat, a dog, and lots of rabbits. It was a full house. But Buffy was often alone. I was very shy. I was a very shy kid.

And somewhat sad. I've always had a real deep spiritual hunger. Money was sometimes tight for the St. Marys. They all lived in a small house in a small town in Wakefield, Massachusetts. So I'm wondering, in terms of how life was in Massachusetts, you know, growing up, did you feel like you fit in there? No, I didn't feel like I fit in, but we shouldn't look back on it with today's hindsight, because now we know my story. Hello?

Hey, Janice, it's Phelan. Hi, Phelan, how are you? Good, how are you? Oh, pretty good. This is Janice Palumbo, a childhood friend of Buffy's. I met Buffy in the first grade. We were just friends from the very beginning. But Buffy wasn't Buffy in those days.

No, she was Beverly. She was Beverly. Bevy St. Marie. She was Bevy, B-E-V-V-Y, and I was Janny, J-A-N-N-Y. And so when you and Buffy were growing up, what kinds of things did you get up to? Oh, all kinds of things. We used to go ice skating. We were in Girl Scouts together. We were in the Glee Club together in school. We went to dancing school together. We were in Girl Scouts together. We were in the Glee Club together in school. We went to dancing school together. We liked the same boys. In the summer, we went horseback riding. There was a place called McKenzie's in Wakefield,

and we walked everywhere. Wakefield was a pretty town. It still is a pretty town. Before yuppies were yuppies, if you know what I'm talking about, it was split. One part on one side of the tracks was central Wakefield with the stores and the churches and buildings. It was very pretty. Just beyond that was the Italian section where we lived on the other side of the tracks, and Buffy lived on a hill. And at the higher you got up that hill, the more expensive houses were. And we were sort of right at the low part.

People from the top part of town looked down on their nose on the people from the bottom. We were not good enough for them. I have mixed feelings about Wakefield. It was a strange, snooty kind of a town. It was totally white except for one family. So white that Buffy calls it Javics USA. I was made aware of the fact that I was an Indian and that I was different from other children and that that could be good or that might not be so good depending upon the way I handle it. And I didn't handle it very well for a long time. When I was in high school, for

instance, I tried to be just like all the other girls. I cut my hair short and when they bleached their hair, I tried to bleach my hair. And I wore their lipstick and I tried to dress like them and I was just a person who never fit into that and I was miserable. I was born in Saskatchewan to parents that I never knew. I was orphaned or something. Canada has a long history of removing Indigenous kids from their families. First through Indian residential schools, then through the child welfare system. And we're still living in this.

The circumstances surrounding Buffy's adoption, and adoptions like hers, were often murky. Records were lost, missing, or withheld. But we do know that as a baby, Buffy was sent over 2,000 miles away, from Saskatchewan to Massachusetts. Her adoptive parents had lost a baby, and Buffy was there to help fill that void. From the outside, the couple looked white, but Buffy's mom talked about being Indigenous, about being from the Mi'kmaq Nation. She and her family were very proud that they were part what they called Mi'kmaq. Mi'kmaq is an anglicized pronunciation of her mother's nation. Now we say Mi'kmaq, but back in the day, Mi'kmaq was used pretty regularly. And I should also let you know, in this podcast, we're

going to use the word Indian. Buffy uses it, and many First Nations folks do when we talk to each other. Not all, but some. Anyways, you shouldn't use it unless you are. You get it. She would tell me, yeah, we're part Mi'kmaq. Mi'kmaq, she said, Mi'kmaq. But she told me that they didn't know anything about it. So when I grew up, if I wanted to know, I could go find out for myself, which was the best thing that they could have said about me.

It's hard to grow up as a First Nations person. I mean, it's great in a lot of ways. I'm not going to lie. We're pretty awesome. But representations of us, even today, accurate representations of us are too few. Sure, it's getting better, and that's great, but I cringe when I think about what Buffy would have been exposed to as a kid. If you're an Indian growing up in the time and the place where I grew up, you didn't hear about Indians. Indians were just passed over in history books. Indians were ridiculed in cartoons. Indians were caricatures, were a thing of the past. Indians were dead, stuffed in museums and leave it be unless you're going to make it a novelty of entertainment value. My mother let me know that that's not the way it was. She just let me know that the history books

were not necessarily true. The 50s, when Buffy was growing up, were part of what's known as the Golden Age of the Western. Think John Wayne, cowboys and Indians, frontiersmen, the Wild West. If you went to a movie theater, you'd be hard-pressed not to see an Indigenous person getting shot off a horse. Or you could turn on the TV and see these stereotypes aimed right at kids, like in this episode of Howdy Doody. You white man name Bob Smith? That's right, Indian. Yes, come on. I want you to meet my friend here. This is Flub-a-dub. Flub-a-dub, this is Mr. Indian. How? How what? How flub-dub.

For me, there's something oddly validating about this stuff. These terrible westerns and racist shows, it's like having the racism receipts. A thing I can point to and say, see, this is what we've had to overcome, what we are still trying to overcome. We are still trying to reclaim our humanity from damaging stuff like this. And that's why I think it's so lucky that Buffy had her mom to tell her to question things. Even if her mom didn't have the answers about Buffy's indigeneity, she told Buffy to go looking, and she pointed her in the direction of someone she thought could help. her in the direction of someone she thought could help. There was one person in town who was indigenous. I don't mean he was an Indian in his last life or, you know, 116th Cherokee, you know,

there's a lot of that going around. No, he was Narragansett. His name was Leonard Baird. Leonard Baird was from the Narragansett Nation, and he was Wakefield's postman. But when he wasn't delivering the mail, he was carving or beading or making moccasins at a trading post he owned on the lakeshore. I used to skate across the lake to see him, or I'd ride my bike 4 miles around the lake to see him.

And the shop had beautiful regalia on the walls. And beads that they were selling, that's where I used to buy my first beads. He was the first person who taught me how to bead. And, you know, he didn't chase me away. They were so nice to me. So, you know, I did have that reinforcement in my life, and it was such a precious thing to me. I can relate to this.

I think a lot of Indigenous people can, finding culture wherever we can. And it can take a long time to realize what we've been missing. Here's Buffy again. It was only in adult years when I realized that some Indian people are growing up surrounded by a wonderful, rich culture that is very much alive in a situation of family love that I realized that I did miss something but as a kid I didn't know the other side of it so I didn't miss it my happiness came from my big toy the piano and my friendship came through Leonard Baird this Indian man I'm

talking about so I didn't have it all bad. When I was about three, my parents got a piano, an old broken down thing, you know, and that became my toy. I made up songs. I didn't read music. I just played. I played it. I learned very fast. I did practically nothing but play with the piano, you know, for, you know, every day. Every day. It's all I did. I loved it. And she had never had a lesson. And she played like a professional. I don't know how to describe it, but it was amazing. She sat down and she could play instantly. I don't understand how that happens, but it does,

I guess. And Buffy could play any music that you want. You just could hear it and play it. Just a natural, just a real natural. Meanwhile, I'd go to school, and I would flunk music class because I couldn't read in European notation, no matter how I tried. And so I failed music classes, and year after year, you know, I was told, no, you can't be a musician, you can't be an orchestra, you can't be in band. Then I would go home, and I would play fake Tchaikovsky or anything I heard on the radio and I'd be all smiles. There was no way that you could tell me I was not a musician.

Music was play. It was a friend, a place to get lost in. When she was left alone at home, Buffy would take apart the vacuum cleaner and hold the tubes up to a record player and to her ears. And there's something in that for me, about a kid who wants to listen like that so intently. And I love hearing about what she was listening to. You know, Fats Domino. Elvis Presley turned me around when he was 19. That was something to see. Miles Davis. Jazz and ethnic music from different places. But behind the play, music was an escape for Buffy. She didn't have the words to talk about it yet, about what was happening to her.

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I had a hard childhood in not fitting in because I just didn't fit in. And I think that wherever I was, I might not have fit in. So I think that it would be a mistake to just grab at the first thought, oh it was an Indian girl in a white community, of course she didn't fit in. There just was no consciousness of indigeneity. But I don't think that's why I felt so isolated. I think I felt isolated just because of domestic abuse. Her brother was a creep. And I don't know if you want to put that in there, but he was a creep. We really didn't know what was going on.

She came to my house, and you could see she was upset. She said he was bothering her. She was being abused. And I was so naive back then. I mean, we were just kids, and we didn't know anything. But I remember her. She was being abused. And I was so naive back then. I mean, we were just kids and we didn't know anything. But I remember her. I'll never, ever forget the look on her face. She was terrified that he was bothering her. And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what

anything to do. I had a brother and an older male relative as well who were just, they were predators. Did you ever talk with anyone when you were a child about it? No. No, because I didn't recognize it as abuse. Because in my family, my mom mom would say has he been teasing you again and I'd say yes and you know I thought that's what teasing was I thought oh he's been that's what teasing was when boys do that to you when they bully you when they beat you up when

they push you around when they you know rub you in the dirt when they hurt you, when they sexualize you, when they touch you, when they do things. You know, nobody ever, I never described what was going on. In some cases, wouldn't know how. It's just somebody being a bastard to you. It's just somebody picking on you. It's bullying. It's continually being exploited, intimidated, and humiliated by someone else who has the right to do that because they're bigger, they're older, you're scared, you're littler, they're a boy, you're a girl. You know, it's not new. They taught me how to hide and how to entertain myself while I was hiding. and how to entertain myself while I was hiding. So I'm very lucky to be a musician and an artist and to have not had anybody take that away from me

because it really, really, that playing music and playing art and playing, you know, dress up and imagination. And I was a typical creative kid, and that creativity was not taken away from me. And I think that that's really why I lucked out. And I think because of being abused at home, I didn't really relate to people that much. I was much more of a loner, but I was a happy loner, so don't feel sorry for me. I did manage to hide from those boys most of the time. Most of the time I did.

The times that I didn't are in the past. the time I did. The times that I didn't are in the past. Buffy wouldn't start speaking out about her abuse until years later. In Wakefield, she stayed quiet, and she found refuge where she could. When I was maybe 16, I got an old guitar, and I took it into the woods, and I could take my music very privately, and I didn't know how you were supposed to tune a guitar. I tuned a guitar with my own tunings. And I thought I was just doing it wrong, you know?

I didn't have anybody to teach me, so I thought you were supposed to just, you know, tune it like you wanted it to sound great and figure out where to put your fingers so that it would, you know, do what you wanted it to do. So I wound up making up all these tunings. I thought you were supposed to have a different tuning for every song. I remember when she got her first guitar.

That's Peter Dustin. He went to high school with Buffy. She called me Dusty. I was Dusty. He still remembers the day he first saw her. For a while, it was Buffy's job at school to go from class to class, collecting attendance slips. I'm sitting in my class, and Buffy walked through sort of tall and proud and very beautiful. And I was a shy guy, and I noticed her, right,

because she walked in front of the whole class to pick up the attendance slips. So that was my first introduction to Buffy. I mean, I've always called her my first girlfriend. In the stories Peter tells about their relationship, they sound like a regular teenage couple. We went all week to a Elvis Presley double feature at the drive-in. The same two movies, every night for like a week. And Peter was there when Buffy learned to play that old guitar. I remember her building up the callous in the ends of her fingers from the strings. That guitar, I think, I always thought was kind of a liberating key in her life.

It got her out of her sort of insecure self and gave her some power and authority. That guitar was a game changer. It was an instrument that Buffy could take with her whenever or wherever she wanted to go. And that's the next thing she did. She got out. She got accepted to the University of Massachusetts. And she got the next thing she did. She got out. She got accepted to the University of Massachusetts. And she got the hell out of Javits USA. Oh, it was wonderful. It made all the difference in the world to me to get out of town. It

was like I was free for the first time. I was free from bullies and predators. When Buffy moved away to university, her and Peter kept dating. And Peter straddles this really special time in Buffy's life. It's like he had a front row seat. He was at her first gigs in those college years, when she was playing covers. These were, you know were traditional folk songs. Black is the color of my true love's hair. I remember that very well. Black is the color of my true love's hair, her lips are rosy fair.

I remember her singing a Civil War song called Two Girls Waiting on the Railroad Tracks, Waiting for Their Loves to Come Back. One wore blue and one wore black, Waiting for Their Loves to Come Back, One War Blue and One War Black, Waiting for Their Loves to Come Back. Take a minute to think about Buffy on campus. She started her freshman year in 1958. The student movement was starting to pick up, nonviolent protests, sit-ins, marches,

students rallying behind things like civil rights, speaking out against nuclear testing, the draft, the Vietnam War. And the folk music scene was big on campuses. There was a cultural and musical revolution building. And Buffy was right in the middle of it all. Do you remember performing for people the first time? A little bit. I was performing a little bit, but it wasn't a big deal. There was like a folk music club.

You could get together with other people and play the guitar. And Taj Mahal and I used to go into the stairwells and play music together. Taj Mahal went on to become a famous musician. He's won Grammys, and he's still playing shows. And he's still good friends with Buffy. Taj Mahal. Oh, God. Yeah, we were classmates.

And there was a coffee house off campus. And by the time I was a junior, I had started dropping in and singing my songs at the coffee house off campus. I didn't think of myself as a songwriter or entertainer or anything. I wasn't Profi St. Marie. I was just a college kid. I was just trying to survive math. But she was a songwriter. She'd been writing her own music for years. She just hadn't played her songs for anyone. Once she started playing enough so that she could play in public, then there was always conversation about where it was going to take her. Peter sees the change happen right in front of his eyes.

It went really from Bev to Buffy. He got to see her become Buffy. And pretty soon she's playing some original material, her own songs. Now that the buffalo's gone shows up in her sets. Can you remember the times That you have held your head high And told all your friends of your Indian claim Proud good lady and proud good man. And this song is so strategic, so smart.

Buffy uses her words carefully. Lyrics like proud good lady and proud good man. She's learning how to channel her politics into her songs. And she's not pointing at you. She's inviting how to channel her politics into her songs. And she's not pointing at you. She's inviting you in. And once you're in, she starts feeding you the facts. Hasn't change come about, Uncle Sam? Or are you still taking our lands?

A treaty forever, George Washington signed Buffy's song was inspired by the proposed building of the Kinsua Dam, a dam that would flood 10,000 acres, about one-third of Seneca territory. The Seneca Nation went to court to fight it, but they lost, and the dam went forward, flooding gravesites and homes. I probably don't have to point out how this sounds like it could be happening today. Removal of Indigenous people off of their territories for access to resources is an old story, one that is still going on. The Wet'suwet'en fight against coastal gas-linked pipeline comes to mind,

or Land Back Lane in my community, Six Nations, or the sightsee hydroelectric dam in Treaty 8 territory. I could go on. Now That the Buffalo's Gone is one of the first popular Native protest songs. And the song is still so relevant. Now That the Buffalo's gone was, you know, really trying to make some sense to non-Indian people who could help and to Indian people who needed to get up and yell loud if we were to retain our rights and if we were to reinforce our hearts in order to carry on and to make this generation more viable and

more powerful than the last one. I was trying to make sense to people. I was trying to bridge the gap between the problem and the solution, between the reserve and the city, between native culture and the rest of the world's culture. Peter and Buffy split up, as having a small-town, you know, boyfriend. Peter and Buffy split up, but they stayed in touch, writing letters. She had very good handwriting, much better than mine. Aside from being cute, these letters offer this really unique window into Buffy's career starting to take off. Well, this one's typewritten. I can read it a little better here. Dear Dusty, I guess I really owe you an apology for my laxity in writing.

Last weekend, out of the 6,000 recognized folk singers on the East Coast, 90 were invited to sing at the Indian Neck Folk Festival in Brantford, Connecticut. Adeta, the Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Richard Dyer Bennett, Joan Baez, Bob Gibson, and a whole lot of others. Buffy's still in university, and she's on the same bill as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, right in the middle of the folk scene. Musicians right on the cusp of making it big,

like really big. No better time to begin than now, I guess. Besides, I'm running out of paper. Hoping to hear from you soon. Buffy. No better time to begin than now, I guess. Besides, I'm running out of paper. Hoping to hear from you soon. Buffy. Buffy graduates in 1962 with a degree in philosophy and teaching, which is what she thought she'd end up doing.

Teaching. But before she settles into that, into the life she thinks is waiting for her, the road calls. I went directly from college to Greenwich Village just to try my luck at singing. When I arrived, you could go to open mic evenings where you could wait your turn and get up and sing a few songs. Greenwich Village is major for Buffy. She's on the coffeehouse circuit, sharing stages with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Carly Simon, Phil Oakes, Neil Young,

and a singer named Joni Anderson. She wasn't Joni Mitchell yet. Buffy's star is rising, and she's on the move. But there's a change coming. The coffeehouse scene is shifting to something darker, boozier. But Buffy doesn't drink. She doesn't party. She stays away from all that.

But whether she likes it or not, the party's going to come to her. That's on the next episode of Buffy. is Simone Bowen. Yvette Nolan is our story consultant. Editing and sound design by Mira Burtwin-Tonick and Nigel Irwin. Additional story editing by Mira Burtwin-Tonick. Our theme music is by Nigel Irwin. Roshni Nair

is our digital producer. Tanya Springer is our senior producer. And Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Special thanks to Jeff Turner,

Cecil Fernandez, Jason Parrish, Austin Pomeroy, Kate Zeman, Keith Hart, Thank you. from the Howdy Doody Show, and Buffy's songs, Now That the Buffalo's Gone, and My Country, Tis of Thy People, You Are Dying. If you liked what you heard, please consider leaving us a review or a rating on your favourite podcast app. These go a long way in helping new listeners discover our show. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at CBC Podcasts. That was the first episode of the brand new series, Buffy. You can listen to the second episode right now on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts.