Buffy Sainte-Marie (born Beverley Jean Santamaria; February 20, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and social activist.

Sainte-Marie's singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism, and her work has often focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. She has won recognition, awards, and honors for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. In 1983, her co-written song "Up Where We Belong", for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards. The song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song that same year.

Since the early 1960s, Sainte-Marie claimed Indigenous Canadian ancestry, but a 2023 investigation by CBC News concluded she was born in the United States and is of Italian and English descent. Some Indigenous musicians and organizations called for awards she won while falsely claiming an Indigenous identity to be rescinded. In 2025, many of her awards and honors were revoked, including her membership in the Order of Canada, her induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, her Juno Awards, and her Polaris Music Prizes.

Sainte-Marie was born at the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to parents Albert Santamaria and Winifred Irene Santamaria, née Kenrick. The Santamarias were an American couple from Wakefield, Massachusetts. Her father's parents were born in Italy while her mother was of English ancestry. Her family changed their surname from Santamaria to the more French-sounding "Sainte-Marie" due to anti-Italian sentiment following the Second World War.

Sainte-Marie taught herself to play piano and guitar in her childhood and teen years. Sainte-Marie attended Wakefield High School. Then she attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Asian philosophy,^{[better source needed]} where she says she graduated as one of the top ten students of her class.

During the early 60s as she attended the University of Massachusetts some of her songs, "Ananias", the Indian lament "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (a Hindi Bollywood song "Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere" originally sung by the Indian singer Mohammed Rafi from the 1960 movie Barsaat Ki Raat) were already in her repertoire. In her early twenties she toured alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals, and First Nations communities across the United States, Canada, and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district, and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging artists such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, the latter of whom she introduced to Elliot Roberts, who became her manager.

In 1963, while she was suffering from a throat infection, Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine. Recovering from that experience became the basis for her song "Cod'ine", which was later recorded by Donovan, Janis Joplin, the Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man, the Litter, the Leaves, Jimmy Gilmer, the Fireballs, Gram Parsons, Charles Brutus McClay, the Barracudas (spelled "Codeine"), the Golden Horde, Nicole Atkins and Courtney Love.

Also in 1963, Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement. This inspired the composition of her widely acclaimed anti-war protest song "Universal Soldier", which was released on her debut album It's My Way! on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell.