My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying

Now that your big eyes have finally opened

Now that you're wondering how must they feel

Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens

Now that you're wondering "how can it be real?"

That the ones you've called colourful, noble and proud

In your school propaganda

They starve in their splendor?

You've asked for my comment I simply will render

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the longhouses breed superstition

You force us to send our toddlers away

To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.

Forbid them their languages, then further say

That American history really began

When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress

That the nation of leeches that conquered this land

Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.

And yet where in your history books is the tale

Of the genocide basic to this country's birth,

Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed,

How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?

And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell

As it rang with a thud

O'er Kinzua mud

And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying

Hear how the bargain was made for the West:

With her shivering children in zero degrees,

Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,

Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,

And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected

From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.

And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,

A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way.

And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,

Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.

From the Grand Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills

The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.

From Los Angeles County to upstate New York

The white nation fattens while others grow lean;

Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;

Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.

And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands

And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks

For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,

The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us

Oh see what our trust in America's brought us.

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,

Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws,

Now that my life's to be known as yourheritage,

Now that even the graves have been robbed,

Now that our own chosen way is a novelty

Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,

Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy

Pitying the blindness that you've never seen

That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory

They were never no more than carrion crows,

Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;

The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.

"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few

With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye

Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.