15 Canadian things America should trade for to form a pop culture super team

13. Joan Baez for Buffy Sainte-Marie

While we’re talking singers and folk festivals, it would be difficult to miss both Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Both women are well-established folk singers with some serious activist credentials.

Joan Baez has been performing for nearly 60 years, with more than 30 albums to her name. She first rose to prominence during the turbulent 1960s, when she became a recognized if somewhat unusual counterculture figure. Baez was also recognized as one of the main personalities within the rising folk music movement, though her subsequent work has branched out into many other genres. She’s also credited with popularizing many of Bob Dylan’s early songs. Think about that the next time you listen to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Baez also became heavily involved in various activist causes, particularly with regard to civil rights and the Vietnam War. She participated in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches in 1965 and performed “We Shall Overcome” at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

But it’s not as if Americans were the only ones questioning the social order during the 1960s. The counterculture certainly didn’t stop at the border, after all. Around the same time as Baez was gaining fame, singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie was gaining renown.

Sainte-Marie, who was born on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation reservation in Saskatchewan, has largely focused on Native rights over her career. Though she was adopted and grew up in Massachusetts and earned a doctorate in fine art from the University of Massachusetts, Sainte-Marie is still decidedly Canadian. For her artistic contributions and important work with Native peoples throughout the Americas, Sainte-Marie was awarded the Order of Canada.