Still standing up, at Standing Rock

From the Napituca Massacre to Wounded Knee,
A history of lies, deceit and broken treaties,
500 years of war against the Indian nation,
This was the white man’s gift of civilization.

History re-written like some John Wayne Western movie,
The savages saved from their pagan destitution,
Their children re-educated, their culture defiled,
Their traditions commercialized or merely reviled.

Forced from their homelands on a Trail of Tears,
With wounded hearts on broken knees,
Still standing up, at Standing Rock,
Across the wide Missouri.

9 million Indian graves on the wind-swept plains,
No Declaration of Independence, No land of the free,
No American dream, or manifest destiny,
For the Sioux, Navaho, Apache and Cherokee.

Ethnic cleansing, extermination, assimilation, subjugation,
Stolen lands and stolen bison,
Reservations for cultural assassination,
Buffalo Warriors in a stolen nation.

Forced from their homelands on a Trail of Tears,
With wounded hearts on broken knees,
Still standing up, at Standing Rock,
Across the wide Missouri.

Now they come for their water, for their holy grounds,
Riot police with their gnashing hounds,
National Guard, rubber bullets, tear gas,
Against protectors of mother earth and their ancestral past.

From Bagdad to Benghazi, from Caracas to Kuwait,
The pipelines come first, the environment can wait,
People mean nothing when Oil is at stake,
From Amazonas to Dakota, Lofoten to Maracaibo lake.

Forced from their homelands on a Trail of Tears,
With wounded hearts on broken knees,
Still standing up, at Standing Rock,
Across the wide Missouri.