Buffy Sainte-Marie
I was using computers for music in the '70s, '80s and '90s, and people didn't get it. They thought you should only use computers for your taxes and making pie charts.Collection: Computers
Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.
Digital imaging allows both groups to rise above the limitations of mess and clutter and mechanics, and apply our talents to creating images limited only by our imaginations.
I work closely with the printer to get the final print the way I want it.
By looking at the questions the kids are asking, we learn the scope of what needs to be done.
I didn't get into the music business because somebody made me take piano lessons, you know. I got into music because I was a natural writer and had a lot of curiosity about sound.
Sixteen million colors in your palette are hard for any artist, especially a beginner, to turn down.
I'm so happy to be a song-writer - I'm even surprised when I get to record anything. I consider it a considerable privilege and a blessing to have a medium of expression that has a place in the world.
When I was three, I didn't play with other kids very much; I was kind of isolated. I got used to be being bullied and having to think my way out of situations in the same way that other kids would fight their way out. Then I discovered a piano, and it became my playmate.
We allow each other so little enjoyment or even tolerance for our individualities, our uniquenesses, and yet to me, that's what it's all about.
When we draw on the tablet, the drawing shows up on the computer screen. If we have chosen to tell the computer that the stylist is to behave like a piece of chalk, or a pen, or a wet brush, it will.
We also have the option of scanning in an image from outside the computer... a photo, or a sketch done with traditional tools; and we can then paint, manipulate, process, change, and further develop the image within the computer, watching our progress on the monitor.
The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.
The paintings are transferred from my computer to a disk, and I can hand it to the printer this way; or I can modem the painting to the printer over the phone lines from my house in Hawaii.
The key is in remaining just aloof enough from a painting so that you know when to stop.
The artistic process in digital art is very much the same as for making other kinds of paintings.
That is, an artist who creates lots of work probably experiences prolific days and slower days.
Once an artist explores the vast variety of tools and features available on the great programs, we're hooked.
My first Macintosh was a 128k machine which I upgraded to 512k the minute it became possible.
If I'm interrupted, it's just a minor inconvenience, but not a disaster, because it's easy to get back where I was: that is, the paint has not changed consistency; the light has not moved.
Digital art software has empowered both the painterly side of photographers, and the photographer side of painters.
But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.
As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar.
Another time factor is output: proofing and printing. That is, getting your work out of the computer and onto paper and having it satisfy you. It can be time consuming and expensive.
When somebody says, 'Oh, Buffy, you're such a warrior for peace', I stop them and say, 'No, I'm not really a warrior for peace. What I promote is alternative conflict resolution'.
I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.
The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.
For me, the hip word is 'mutate.' We're ripening all the time.
I think that most Americans feel that the Indians lost because of fair fights and superior odds and superior weaponry. That's because that's the only side of the story that's been told.
I put all my time into Indian rights, and I think this is something I know something about, and I think that my time is best spent insofar as my political views are concerned.
I'm told I was born in Canada, but I was adopted, and I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts.
I was an infant when I was living in Canada, but when I was adopted, I was a baby, so I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, and I returned to Saskatchewan as - in my late teens.
The input of Idle No More has been a lightning rod for people who were already thinking this way. We are reaching clarities on bigger issues like fracking and GMOs and climate change.
I've had a different kind of career on the periphery of show business. I've never been on any kind of corporate timetable whereby every six months I have to pop out a record like a pulping mill. I've called my own shots. When I get tired, I take time off.
It never occurred to me that I was important enough to have some politician go out of his way to silence me. I only found out about it in the '80s by accident - a broadcaster announced they received letters of commendation from the White House for having suppressed my music. My career was so highly impacted in the U.S. it will never recover.
I've always had that attitude about my career: it's something that I do, but it's not my whole life. I have a real life, a personal life: I've got a lot of chickens, I've got a horse, I've got a kitty-cat, I've got a lot of goats, I've got animals all over the place.
When I first got famous in the '60s, I got a little too famous, and in order to escape showbusiness, I moved to Hawaii.
I was very unhappy when I used to record and things wouldn't turn out the way I would want to, because I was being such a nice girl. I wouldn't complain when things were going wrong.
All my first albums, they're full of heart and emotion, and the songs are wonderful, but they wouldn't have been the takes I would have chosen.
I lead a charmed life.
I was adopted without the benefit of papers. They used to hide adoption in the forties; I don't know why. Perhaps it was shameful. I could have been kidnapped - there are all kinds of crazy things that people have done - but I got over dealing with that a long time ago.
I see myself as having three families: my birth family, the family that raised me, and my Cree family, who I was reunited with in my late teens, so I consider myself to be lucky.
I feel sorry for people of good heart who have never had a chance to learn the realities of Native American everything - not just our history but the sweetness and the beauty and the reasons why were so close to Mother Earth.Collection: Mother
You have to sniff out joy. Keep your nose to the joy trail.Collection: Being Happy
Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is vital to understanding our unique cultural perspectives. Language is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.Collection: Unique
You have to leave room in life to dream.Collection: Dream
Everybody's creative. We create our songs and our paintings, our families and our children. Every one of us is on the cutting edge of the future.Collection: Song
Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel.Collection: Funny
What can government do? They can listen to their own people. But I'll tell you what citizens can do, when we elect one of these people - whether we think it's a good guy or a bozo - you got to stay on the case. You don't vote and go home and give them the keys to the car, he'll drive you right off a cliff. You have to help people to stay honest.Collection: Home
Some people say I was very brave, but I really just didn't know any better. All I had was my originality.Collection: People