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NWT - Hip hop recording artist Kiera Kolson encourages youth around the country with her message of hope, pride and empowerment.

Buffy Sainte-Marie spoke with Yellowknifer following her tour for the release of her latest album, Running for the Drum. - photo courtesy of Buffy Sainte-Marie

Last weekend she travelled to Winnipeg to record footage for a suicide prevention video for youth, which is being developed through the Assembly of First Nations, the Native Women's Association of Canada and the National Association of Friendship Centres. This week she is in Northern Quebec to meet with Cree youth in Grades 5 and up.

"I'm there to inspire them and let them know about my journey and the things I've gone through," she said.

Folk legend, digital artist and educator Buffy Sainte-Marie is one of the women Kolson cites as her inspiration.

"She's so multitalented," Kolson said. "I see her and what she's accomplished for herself and for her people and the preservation of her identity, especially with regards to the teaching program she initiated in Hawaii. Youth from Hawaii can learn about other indigenous youth and their culture. I think that's so cool because I'd love to initiate something like that back home. She was an orphan and ended up finding herself and being the change that she knew she had to be. She continues to be that icon and that symbol for young, emerging, native female (artists)."

Sainte-Marie released her first album since 1992 late last month. The album, Running for the Drum, features a dozen songs accompanied by a DVD biography of the artist.

Born at the Piapot (Cree) Reserve in Saskatchewan and raised in Maine and Massachusetts, Sainte-Marie has travelled the world sharing her pride and her voice.

She inspired Northerners during two appearances at the Folk on the Rocks festival in last two decades. Entertainment Pages interviewed the artist online during her recent album release tour.

Dene hip hop recording artist and youth advocate Kiera Kolson is inspired by the powerful voice and versatile artistic career of Buffy Sainte-Marie. - photo courtesy of Kiera Kolson

Daron Letts: You played Yellowknife's Folk on the Rocks festival in 1987 and 1996. What memories do you have of those experiences?

Buffy Sainte-Marie: I remember Yellowknife very well, especially visually, and I’d love to come back. The location, truly on the rocks, was spectacular and unique and the way you guys had the stage set up was great. Very welcoming and down home.

I also remember the incredible, long, long sunset. While I was in town I visited a Dene elders’ centre and people were so nice to me. I remember proposing an idea: giving video cameras to elders so that they could film one another whenever they felt like recording memories and observations and providing non-intrusive support to make the job easy. I wonder if it ever happened?

I also remember a beautiful boat ride with forest on all sides and watching eagles being pestered by smaller birds; and borrowing a coat from a kind friend and feeling totally comfy.

Occasionally in my travels I have spent a little time with Ethel Blondin Andrews and it always brings back wonderful memories of Yellowknife. Your town has the coolest name.

Daron Letts: You have worked in digital art and experimented with electronic music for years now. You have also long emphasized the exciting and vital nature of indigenous culture through your youth education projects. What opportunities exist for indigenous youth to explore new media and new forms of creative expression as a means of embracing their contemporary identity, history and oral tradition?

Buffy Sainte-Marie: I got into digital everything through experimenting with electronic music in the 1960s. I’d made my album Illuminations, where all the effects were derived from either my voice or guitar. It was the first totally electronic quadraphonic vocal album and became a favorite of art and electronic music students. The obvious place to go to use and develop those skills was scoring movies and throughout the 1970s that’s what I did. I used a Synclavier and a Fairlight, early computers dedicated to recording and processing sound and music. But they were huge, expensive and out of reach for most musicians.

Buffy previews the songs of Running for the Drum Working for the Government: "I wrote this just after the Iran-Contra affair, but there was no sense putting it out then. The G.I. Joe and James Bond spook types are still around now and more people can dig it now. The house-remix style fits more with today than way back then." To the Ends of the World: "I wrote To the Ends of the World about 18 years ago too, as a quartet for brass. It’s my favorite of all the melodies I’ve written but I put it aside, sort of saving it for some movie some day. I wrote the words about 10 years ago and I had Aaron Neville in mind to sing it, but I haven’t given it to him yet. We sang together in a movie called Heartbeat, John Byrum’s film based on Jack Kerouac. I sang backup on the Neville Brothers’ album Yellow Man." I Bet My Heart on You: "Taj Mahal, a true family friend for many years, recorded his piano part while he was in New Zealand in his son Ahmen Mahal’s studio environment. We duetted on I Bet My Heart on You… long distance… as Chris and I were in Hawaii at my studio." Still This Love Goes On: "This is my song for myself when I’m all lonesome for indigenous ways. You know the feeling. The smells, the smiles, the experiences. I’ve been in love with our cultures all my adult life and I still am."

I’d been playing art and music since I was three. In the ‘60s I’d create something and then play with it in copy machines, messing with the contrast, size, overlays etc. And I used to print on weird papers.

So when the Macintosh came out in 1984 I was thrilled because all of a sudden I could create my visual images, my music and my writings on the same little machine; then when I’d go on the road, I’d slip this little disk into my purse and rent a Mac in Toronto or wherever I was playing and continue working.

So you see it was all about having fun and experimenting without any authorities telling me how or what to do. In that way I was like a kindergarten kid, and also like any new artist today, except now the machines are cheaper, smaller, more available and have tremendous variety to offer a bold artist in the way of fun.

In aboriginal education, same thing. I applied the same sense of fun to trying to empower aboriginal people. I saw that we could connect nation to nation and people to people; that we could record our songs and histories, design our quilts, revitalize our languages, create our photo albums, books and collaborations. With the Cradleboard Teaching Project  www.cradleboard.org  we created partnerships between school classes wherein we helped the aboriginal class and teacher and community to be in the driver’s seat of delivering their own self-defined identity and curriculum to the non-Aboriginal (or other tribal) class. We connected kids on the Internet in the 1980s!

We created online core curriculum like science, geography and government  "through aboriginal eyes." My dream has come true: we now offer it all online for free to everyone. Help yourself!

Today people have additional options to use as tools – easily accessible software, shareware, an ever-expanding internet for enhancing research, development and fun with music, visual art and education and just about everything else. However, it has never been about the technology. Nothing takes the place of the fire, or face to face communication and it all centers around the content: an original idea. We all have those and the trick is to recognize when you’ve got one!

Daron Letts: Young First Nations artists working from remote communities, such as in the NWT, face special challenges. As an educator and an artist, what advice would you offer to an artist embarking on a music or arts career that would allow them to remain connected to their roots while pursuing education, experience and audiences that may pull them far from home?

Buffy Sainte-Marie: I can only answer this in terms of how I have done it and still do it. Really common sense and simple.

Work online in your own environment: your head! That’s our power as artists. It has never been about the technology, your career, the money, your critics, the record company, your current address, or the school you went to. It’s about the content that originates naturally in your head and your presentation and how intelligently you’ve worked on it to make it engaging to everybody else. How good is the song? How engaging is the idea behind picture, the song? Is it original or just one more of what everybody else is doing? How good are you presenting it? If you’re a singer, musician or songwriter, you need to be your own best friend, booking agent, critic and manager.

Make lots of appearances. And don’t wait to get paid. Build your own huge audience and people will come, including those who smell money. Play festivals, powwows, churches, kids’ shows, elders’ events, clubs, concerts.

We are all made in the image of the Creator: creative! Enjoy it and have fun with it and share it. Ain’t no biggie – it’s natural. Just don’t let anybody talk you out of it.

Daron Letts: Your political voice obviously resonated for a generation and continues to resonate today. What new opportunities do artists have to speak out about peace, human rights and cultural survival?

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Same as always. We all have the most important tool for peace: our smile. We can wear it whether we’re doing our every day stuff, experiencing and interacting with the world and as we’re offering our songs and other mind-snapshots, comments, photos, paintings, dances etc. It’s the Good Red Road and we have always had it, or we would not have survived. Even our most ancient ancestors had to be able to create community… forgive ourselves and others in order to create safe worlds for our little generations coming up.

But now we have pens and pencils and crayons and guitars and the Internet etc. with which to share our dreams and observations. Don’t wait for a grant; just do it! Don’t expect permission or encouragement from the status quo. You are the new upgrade and until they experience your reality, you can’t expect to mind-read you. Keep a little notebook with you and when it’s done, transfer the best of it into a bigger spiral notebook. That’s how your body of contributions grows into something cohesive that’s always current.

Daron Letts: What influenced you in your current album, Running for the Drum?

Buffy Sainte-Marie: The songs are all personal. They were not written for somebody else’s deadline or a business motive. I lived through the stories they tell and experienced every one of them. I wrote some very recently and I started others years ago, recording them onto some stupid cassette machine. The original tapes for Cho Cho Fire and Working for the Government, as well as lots of others that we didn’t have room for on this album, actually went through a hurricane 15 years ago and were pretty mouldy when I played them for my co-producer and friend Chris Birkett. We tried to copy my originals. Chris has generous and magnificent ears for the work of other artists and I’m happy with our recapture of the original feels. We just cleaned them up, used some of the old cassettes as samples and re-recorded my vocals. Chris and I played almost all the instruments.

I had not put these songs on my Up Where We Belong or Coincidence and Likely Stories albums because I thought they were too radical for the marketplaces of the times. People wouldn’t have "gotten it." It was too early, electronic sampling from indigenous sources was unheard of then, too weird, etc. I’ve often been too early with songs and styles so I have learned to "sit this one out" until the time is right. I hate it when good songs get shelved upon the advice of business people who are always chasing yesterday’s dollars.