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So, I am well aware of the controversy surrounding #BuffySainteMarie and her heritage. But whether she is a pretendian (she claims to be adopted, something that's been disputed) or not, a lot of Native Americans accepted her as one of their own, and she had her pulse on what was going on with #AIM...
Buffy's Censored Words Led to Revelations in New #LeonardPeltier Film Premiered at Sundance
"My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she'd died of Exposure…"
- Buffy Saint Marie, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, 1992.
By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, Feb. 4, 2025
TSAILE, #NavajoNation -- "The words of Buffy Sainte Marie, censored by Indian Country Today, led to revelations about Oglala President Dick Wilson's secret land deal on Pine Ridge in the new film Free
Leonard Peltier, which premiered at Sundance, producer #JesseShortBull told Censored News.
"Buffy's interview at Dine' College in 1999 was censored for seven years. Before I was fired as a staff reporter, a portion of the interview was published by the newspaper -- but one paragraph was still censored. In the still censored portion, Buffy referred to a secret land deal on the day of the shoot out at the #JumpingBull property on #PineRidge. Buffy said, 'Who recalls that on that day one-eighth of the reservation was transferred in secret -- on that day. It was the part containing uranium. That is what never seems to be remembered.'
"Dickie Wilson planned to turn over the #MineralRights in the Badlands to the U.S. government. The U.S. government wanted the land for uranium mining. Dick Wilson's secret plan was discovered in the documents in the BIA file cabinets by the #AmericanIndianMovement, during the takeover of the #BIA building in Washington in 1972.
"Following the premiere of #FreeLeonardPeltier at the Sundance Film Festival, Jesse Short Bull, Oglala Lakota, and director of the film, reveals how Buffy's words led to the search for the facts about #DickWilson's #UraniumMining scheme with the U.S. government. 'Buffy's song about Anna Mae really shocked me, she outlined it so well,' Short Bull said. 'The plans for mineral development for Pine Ridge were discovered at the 1972 BIA takeover, and by the 1980's the big wig energy companies came to Pine Ridge with big ideas for development."
Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/02/buffys-censored-words-led-to.html
#PineRidgeReservation #CorporateColonialism #Relocation #AnnaMaeAquash
ProtestSong of the Week: ‘The Uranium War’
by Kevin Gosztola, 28 Sep 2015
"Native American singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie won a prestigious Canadian music award for her most recent album, Power in the Blood, last week.
"The album from the 74-year-old singer-songwriter, whose work spans the past five decades, earned the Polaris Prize for best record of the year, beating albums by Drake and The New Pornographers.
"One of the songs on the album is 'The Uranium War,' a song which is a prequel to 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,' a song Sainte-Marie wrote for her 1992 album, Coincidence and Other Likely Stories.
"The song features indigenous characters, who face the rise of corporate lust for resources underneath the remaining lands where Native Americans live.
As one verse recalls:
And me I watched it grow: corporate greed and a lust for gold and
coal and oil and, hey, now uranium
Keep the Indians under your thumb; pray like hell when your bad times come
Hey rip em up, strip em up, get ’em with a gun
"Up to this verse, the song consists of Sainte-Marie’s vocal and piano. But, signaling a turning point against Native Americans, drums and guitar give the song a darker intensity.
"The forces of corporate greed hunt Native Americans for uranium. Particularly, those who work for corporations want to know where the uranium is 'buried' in the land so they can mine it. The war is over keeping the resource in the land.
"Sainte-Marie mentions 'Annie Mae,' paying tribute to Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, an American Indian Movement activist who was part of the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.
"Hundreds of Oglala Lakota activists took control of Wounded Knee, which was the site of a massacre in 1890 by a U.S. Cavalry. A 71-day siege involving the US Marshal’s Service, FBI, and National Guard unfolded against the occupation. When it was over, Aquash was found dead in a ravine on the Pine Ridge Reservation, with a number of activists suspecting the FBI had some role in her death.
"Aquash is mentioned in 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee':
My girlfriend Annie Mae
Talked about uranium
Her head was full of bullets
And her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands
And told us she died of exposure
U.S military forces act on behalf of corporations to violently push aside Native Americans and plunder resources. Energy companies control churches 'by the dozens' and try to
guide our hands.' FBI spies do the bidding of these companies. And the companies seek to 'turn our Mother Earth/over to pollution, war, and greed.'
While 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' is more of a rock anthem reflecting on the injustice of the siege, 'The Uranium War' is a slow-building precursor, which signals forebodingly all-out war is to come, and it ends as the violence escalates.
"This is fine songwriting, an example of why Sainte-Marie is such a revered Native American musician. And it is Shadowproof’s “Protest Song of the Week.”
Source:
https://shadowproof.com/2015/09/28/protest-song-of-the-week-the-uranium-war/