Native Americans Who Helped Shape Rock Music
Buffy Saint-Marie to Blackfoot and beyond
In The Riff’s latest podcast, Noah Levy and Rob Janicke did a fine job interviewing Peter Kater, pianist, composer and two-time Grammy award winner.
Towards the end of the interview, Peter spoke about how he came to write the music for the Discovery Channel’s 1993 mini-series ‘How The West Was Lost’, documenting the experience of Native Americans during America’s westward expansion.
In the early 1960s there was a similar re-awakening of the truth about the genocide of Native Americans and their plight on Reservations in the USA and Canada. A different kind of folk singer, Buffy Sainte-Marie, burst onto the scene to tell their story, and a politicised American Indian Movement (AIM) flourished.
AIM’s efforts were centred on the prevention of resource exploitation of Indian lands by the federal government and to protest violations of treaties their ancestors had made in good faith with the US government.
