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My Country 'Tis Of Thy People You're Dying
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Buffy Sainte-Marie
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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.
Buffy Sainte Maire - "My country 'Tis Of...
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