(A note from Darkshine: What follows is the lyric to one of my all-time favorite songs. I have not been able to find it for purchase. But, I think the guy’s name is John Trudell. For all my brothers and sisters who still live on the res in abject poverty: You are remembered!)

At times they were kind

They were polite in their sophistication.

Smiling, but never too loudly.

Acting in civilized manner,

An illusion of gentleness

Always fighting to get their way.

While the People see; the People know

The People wait; the People say:

The closing of your doors can never shut us out

The closing of your doors can only shut you in.

We know the predator, we see them feed on us.

We are aware to starve the beast is our destiny.

At times they were kind

They were polite, but never honest.

We see your technological society

Devour you before your very eyes.

We hear your anguished cries

Exalting GREED through PROGRESS.

While you seek material advances

the sound of flowers dying

Carry messages through the wind

Trying to tell you about

BALANCE and your safety.

But your minds are chained

To your machines

And the strings dangling from

Your puppeteers hands

Turning you, twisting you into

Your mind for a job

Your mind for a T.V.

You mind for a hair-dryer

(your mind for a computer?-DS)

Your mind for consumption.

With your atom bombs

your material bombs

your drug bombs

your racial bombs

your class bombs

your sexist bombs

your age-ist bombs

devastating you natural shelters

making you homeless on Earth.

Chasing you into illusion; fooling you

making you pretend that you can run

away from the ravishing of your spirit.

While you seek material advances

the sound of flowers dying

Carry messages through the wind

Trying to tell you about

BALANCE and your safety.

Trying to isolate us in a

dimension called LONELINESS.

Leading us into the trap:

believe in their power,

but not in ourselves.

Piling us with guilt.

Always taking the blame.

GREED chasing out the BALANCE

Trying to isolate us in a

dimension called LONELINESS.

Economic Deity seizing power

through illusion created

armies are justified.

Class system our DEMOCRACY

godless is the war-monger’s prayer

TYRANNY is here.

Divide and conquer.

Trying to isolate us in a

dimension called LONELINESS.

GREED apparent

Insecurity the happiness companion

Genocide conceived in so-phis-to-cation

Technologic material civilization-

a rationalization

replacing a way to Live.

Trying to isolate us in a

dimension called LONELINESS.

TO GOD: We hope you don’t mind

but we would like to talk to you.

There are some things we need

to straighten out.

It’s about these Christians.

They claim to be from your Nation.

But, man, you should see the

things they do.

And all the time, blaming

them on you.

Manifest Destiny

Genocide

Maximized Profit

Sterilization

Raping the Earth

Lying

Taking more than they need

in all the forms of the GREED.

We ask them: why?

They say it’s God’s Will.

Damn God, they make it so hard.

Remember Jesus?

Would you send him back to them?

Tell them not to kill him

but rather they should listen

and stop abusing his name and yours.

We do not mean to be disrespectful.

But you know how it is.

Our people have their own ways.

We never even heard of you

until not-long-ago.

Your representatives spoke

magnificent things of you

which we were willing to believe.

But from the way they acted,

we know YOU and WE were being

deceived.

We don’t mean you and your christian children any bad,

but you all came to take all we had.

We have not seen you, but we have heard so much.

It is TIME FOR YOU TO DECIDE

what Life is worth.

We already remember, but maybe you forgot.

LOOK AT US

Look at us- we are of Earth and Water

Look at them- it is the same

Look at us- we are suffering all these years

Look at them- they are connected

Look at us- we are in pain

Look at them- surprised at our anger

Look at us- we are struggling to survive

Look at them- expecting sorrow be benign

Look at us- we are the ones called “pagan�?/P>

Look at them on their arrival.

Look at us- we are called subversives

Look at them- descending from name-callers

Look at us- we wept sadly in the Long Dark.

Look at them- hiding in technologic light

Look at us- we bury the Generations

Look at them- inventing the body-count

Look at us- we are older than America

Look at them- chasing a fountain of Youth

Look at us- we are embracing Earth

Look at them- clutching Today

Look at us- we are Living in the Generations

Look at them- existing in jobs and debt

Look at us- we have escaped many times

Look at them- they cannot remember

Look at us- we are healing

Look at them- their medicine is patented

Look at us- we are trying

Look at them- what are THEY doing?

Look at us- we are Children of Earth

Look at them- WHO ARE THEY?