AMERICA THE BRAVE

The native people of North America have suffered greatly as a result of the colonisation of that great continent by white settlers and today they find themselves, both socially and politically, almost invisible: a ghost population in their land of origin.
Read, here, one the many accounts, of what surely amounted to genocide during the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. It will make you weep.

 

SONG OF THE SIOUX

Once there were men and buffalo
that nourished us, that fed the tribe.
The land and all it could bestow
was ours. The Elders now describe
it as a Paradise on earth,
harmonious, our place of birth,
before the white men came to kill
our buffalo then break our will.

We dwelt in tribes, our rivalry
divided us: such was our plight
when faced with well-armed cavalry
our indecision, like a blight,
unmanned us, so our young men died,
our old men raged, our women cried,
while they, that force none could withstand,
came, massacred, then stole our land.

In retrospect, I see it clear,
we lived in childlike ignorance.
The world had changed but we, I fear,
refused to see the evidence
while, all the time, approaching fast,
the railroad with its piercing blast:
the Future coming, smokey-haired,
to catch us only half prepared.