Lyrics: 500 Years
In the smoke of the sacred fires
Lifted up like holy hands
Understand there's something wrong
There's trouble on the land...
Chorus: Our relatives are watching
Our spirit helpers near
Five hundred years of genocide
Who's left to hear
Who's left to hear
1. Christoforo's hungry eyes
Conquistadors' golden lies
So many ways to steal the prize
Who cares if one more Native dies
King's decree across the waves
Encomiendo makes us slave
The holy church, the blood that saves
One hundred million unmarked graves
2. Sacred Pueblos Cibola gold
Jamestown, Raleigh, Roanoke
Manhattan, Quakers, Hudson's Bay
Beaver, otter, all killed away
Louisiana to Duluth
Vitus Bering, the white man's truth
Northwest passage, empty ploy
Franklin studies Iroquois
3. Tuberculosis and influenza
Typhoid fever, Nations ended
Corpses more than many wars
Typhus, measles, millions more
Cholera on many fronts
Smallpox blankets more than once
Plagues destroy our strength and pride
Biologic genocide
4. Walter Brassette, John Trudell,
Jean Braveheart and Leonard Peltier,
Sitting Bull, Little Crow,
Corn Planter, Crazy Horse,
There's more to know
Esther Nahgahnab, Wovoka,
Joe Stuntz and Anne Mae have spoken
Cloud-Morgan, Bea Swanson,
Iron Legs Walk
David So Happy, Ingrid Washinawatok
5. The Indian Removal Act
Stolen land, the bitter fact
The Trail of Tears, the Cherokees
Cold and hunger, grief, disease
The Creeks, Chickasaw, Choctows
Miami, Shawnees and Ottowa
The Delaware, the Wendat Nation
All were torn by relocation
6. Gross injustice that guides the state
Jails of color, white courts hate
Children stolen, forced to learn
Oppressor's ways, a desperate turn
Noble dreams and warrior's hears
Defending freedom from the start
Independence, freedom school
Fight the tyrant and the fool
7. Sticks and stones that break our bones
Careless words that mock our own
Chippewa Water, Crazy Horse Liquor
Indian givers who take back quicker
The Red Skins, Braves, The Fighting Sioux
Eskimo Pies and Red Man Tobacco
A bilion insults, do the math
When we object, we're on the warpath
8. Stuggles with racist laws and violence
From Wounded Knee to Alcatraz Island
Marching the trail of broken treaties
Fishing rights and police beatings
Destroy the land and you will pay
AIM reinvents the warrior way
Native heroes refused parole
Stop and search by state patrol
Release our dead, return their bones
Let us live, return our homes
Some things haven't changed at all
Resistance standing strong and tall
Like the red oak leaves we will remain
To snap the links that form our chain