“In North America today, there are five very highly funded, major, serious colleges of war. There’s Annapolis, there’s West Point, there’s the Army College of War, the Air Force Academy, and the Royal Military Academy in Canada,” explains Buffy Sainte-Marie. “There’re five of them, and we don’t have one college of peace of that caliber, of that funding, of that seriousness. So how are we supposed to have peace in this world when our best minds don’t even have a university in which to study alternative conflict resolution, but they can study war?”

As a singer-songwriter, a multimedia artist, a computer pioneer, and an educator, Sainte-Marie has been asking the big questions for nearly half a century now. Her anti-war anthem, “Universal Soldier”, and her pro-Native American tales, like “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying” are no less potent today than they were in the early ’60s, when she first started singing them for audiences in Greenwich Village.

Sharply poetic and unsettlingly direct, Sainte-Marie delivers her words with the objectives of obliterating ignorance and healing, rarely veering from her favorite themes of peace, justice, and love. With the release of her latest album, Running for the Drum, she continues to detail, in song, the history of the Americas, the deep wounds to its resources, and especially to its native people. Her melodies bear traces of ancient roots; combined with the trademark quaver in her voice, Sainte-Marie’s songs have the ability to reach places in the heart where undeniable answers to her questions can be found. Like a couple of famous peaceniks once said, “War is over if you want it.”

I first tuned into Sainte-Marie sometime in New York City, in 1992, while listening to the radio one night. Seriously speak-singing over a twinkling synth-loop in “The Priests of the Golden Bull”, she asked, “Who puts outspoken third-worlders in jail, just to shut them down?” The DJ announced the track was from Coincidence and Likely Stories, Sainte-Marie’s first recording effort in 16 years; he must have known the listenership would approve of the song’s progressive nature and I made a note to buy it, though in an unlikely coincidence, someone gave it to me the next day. Since that day, I’ve listened and learned much from her vivid songs. For example, the word “windego,” translates roughly to “vampire” or “greed monster,” and it is the answer to her question above.

Born on a Cree reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada, Sainte-Marie was raised in Maine and Massachusetts by parents who adopted her. A dreamer—part by nature, part by circumstance—she hid out in art, drama, and music, and declared the piano “one of my toys” at the age of three. Graduating with a philosophy degree but pursuing folk singing, by the mid ’60s and early ’70s, Sainte-Marie had risen to her status as a songwriter’s songwriter. “Until It’s Time for You to Go” was cut by Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand, among others; “Universal Soldier” was a massive hit for Donovan. “Cod’ine” was covered by Gram Parsons and Janis Joplin, while writers like Willie Nelson and Neil Diamond sought out her songs. She began to write for movies (something that she’s done throughout her career and won an Oscar for when she co-wrote the theme to An Officer and a Gentleman, “Up Where We Belong”). And yet, in the early years, unbeknownst to her, Sainte-Marie was on an artist blacklist and watched as US gigs and recording dates started to dry up. Years later, she found out her increased profile as an Indian rights activist had caught the attention of President Lyndon Johnson. Her words were perceived to be a threat to the national security, though she had never done anything illegal. “I don’t think very many people, even today, understand how much blacklisting went on…” Like her fellow outspoken artists—Eartha Kitt and Nina Simone among them—she found appreciative audiences outside of the US who bestowed her with honors and sustained her as a critical artist. She also began to devote more and more time to education and enlightenment, and to empowering native populations throughout the world with information about their cultural heritage, as well as computer skills. Her Cradleboard Teaching Project began delivering computers to reservations in the ’80s. “Most people think, ‘The Indians finally got computers,’ but we were way ahead of everybody,” she says.

Her poetic/electronic jams are the natural evolution of a multimedia artist. Originally famous for playing a hunting bow as an instrument, as early as her pioneering 1969 electronic album Illuminations, Sainte-Marie traded in the mouth bow for technology. For comparison’s sake, the new work on Running for the Drum would mix nicely with righteous beat tracks by Yoko Ono or Le Tigre. Reviving her 1966 parable “Little Wheel Spin and Spin”, and placing it alongside straight-talking contemporary work like “Working for the Government” and “No No Keshagesh”, once again Sainte-Marie’s new album is a reminder that there are few who express the dilemma of the voiceless and powerless in a song as well as she.

I sought out Sainte-Marie for inclusion in a book I’m writing on music and social justice, and without hesitation, she obliged to open the book on how she got to be uniquely Buffy Sainte-Marie—painter, computer artist, musician, teacher, and activist. Writing about her life, I’ve been struck time and again that the work she began in the late ’50s is not yet done, and that she’s still committed to fighting for peace. The “Universal Soldier” she wrote about all those years ago will once again be missed at home—wherever in the world that might be—tonight. But when she asks them in her song, “Brothers, can’t you see this is not the way to put an end to war,” Sainte-Marie wishes to clarify, “because it’s important to me that it be understood.” Providing me with a notation of the song following the completion of our interview, it reads, “This last line is put, not as scolding someone else, but as a question to someone you love. Note that the music ends on an unresolved chord.”

The following are extractions from a conversation with Sainte-Marie conducted by telephone from her home in Hawaii. We pick up following her above remarks on war and peace colleges.