Red Snapper season remains tight
April 27, 2016
Daniel Hebert
April 28, 2016
Native American rights activist, composer and performer Buffy Sainte-Marie brought messages of inspiration, hope and peace to an auditorium full of Ellender Memorial High School students for an electrifying hour that included encouragement to fight for right through individual achievement.
(To watch a video of the performance, click here).
The folk music icon swung down to Houma from New Orleans, where she is performing at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, as part of a joint effort by jazz fest organizers and the federally funded Title VII Indian Education program of the Terrebonne Parish School Board.
“They will tell you what you want isn’t on the menu,” Sainte-Marie told the students. “Cook it yourself and then teach them how.”
Sainte-Marie, an accomplished storyteller, related her experience as a Native American born in Canada who ended up adopted by parents in the U.S., became a hit with her protest songs in the 1960s and then was the subject of a whispered, de facto blacklist of performers in the U.S. encouraged by the late President Lyndon B. Johnson and later Richard M. Nixon. She went on to discuss her years as a performer on Sesame Street, and the continuation of her song-writing and performing career. Her international recognition was born of years in the New York City folk scene, which included other luminaries such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.
She was warmly received by the students whose number includes a sizeable contingent of Native Americans.
At one point in the presentation she recited the words of her song “Universal Soldier,” which has been covered by many artists, a controversial work that places the blame for wars on all individuals in a society, noting that a soldier – no matter which side he fights for – perpetuates the antithesis of peace because “he’s the one who gives his body as a weapon for the war and without him all this fighting can’t go on.”
Local Native American leaders present for the assembly included the Rev. Kirby Verret, who oversees the Title VII program in Terrebonne and is a former United Houma Nation chairman, and Brenda Dardar-Robichaux, a former UHN chief.
“As I left Ellender High School, I could not help but think of all the life’s lessons shared with the students,” said Verret. “I felt she was telling them ‘you can only get to see over the horizon if you keep taking one more step towards it.”
