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Now that your big eyes have finally opened |
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Now that you're wondering how must they feel |
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Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens |
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Now that you're wondering "how can it be real?" |
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That the ones you've called colourful, noble and proud |
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In your school propaganda |
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They starve in their splendor? |
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You've asked for my comment I simply will render |
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My country 'tis of thy people you're dying. |
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Now that the longhouses breed superstition |
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You force us to send our toddlers away |
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To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions. |
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Forbid them their languages, then further say |
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That American history really began |
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When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress |
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That the nation of leeches that conquered this land |
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Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best. |
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And yet where in your history books is the tale |
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Of the genocide basic to this country's birth, |
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Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed, |
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How a nation of patriots returned to their earth? |
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And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell |
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As it rang with a thud |
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O'er Kinzua mud |
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And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year? |
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My country 'tis of thy people you're dying |
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Hear how the bargain was made for the West: |
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With her shivering children in zero degrees, |
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Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest, |
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Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed, |
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And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected |
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From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day. |
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And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored, |
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A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way. |
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And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived, |
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Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled. |
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From the Grand Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills |
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The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale. |
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From Los Angeles County to upstate New York |
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The white nation fattens while others grow lean; |
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Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean. |
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My country 'tis of thy people you're dying. |
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The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens; |
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Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks. |
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And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands |
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And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks |
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For the blessings of civilization you've brought us, |
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The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us |
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Oh see what our trust in America's brought us. |
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My country 'tis of thy people you're dying. |
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Now that the pride of the sires receives charity, |
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Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws, |
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Now that my life's to be known as yourheritage, |
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Now that even the graves have been robbed, |
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Now that our own chosen way is a novelty |
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Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory, |
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Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy |
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Pitying the blindness that you've never seen |
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That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory |
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They were never no more than carrion crows, |
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Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story; |
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The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows. |
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"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few |
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With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye |
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Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you. |
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My country 'tis of thy people you're dying. |