Buffy Sainte Marie is a Canadian Cree, born in Saskatchewan but raised in Maine. She taught herself piano and guitar, and became a songwriter, a philanthropist, fierce advocate of Native-American rights, and an anti-Vietnam protestor. In the emerging culture of the sixties, she was a coffeehouse folk singer in Toronto's Yorkville, and New York City's Greenwich Village, often performing alongside other Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. When photographed on March 11, 1969, she had already recorded five albums.