My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying
© Words & Music Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Indian 101 for people who’ve been denied the real history of how Indigenous people in North America got to be in the tragic states of affairs most suffer today: poor health, domestic insecurity and poverty. I wrote it in the 1960s before people used the word genocide or acknowledged the indigenous holocaust of the Americas, or the horror of residential schools.
Now that your big eyes are finally opened.
Now that you’re wondering, “How must they feel?”
meaning them that you’ve chased across Canada’s movie screens;
Now that you’re wondering, “How can it be real?”
that the ones you’ve called colorful, noble and proud
in your school propaganda,
They starve in their splendor.
You asked for our comment, I simply will render:
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
Now that the longhouses “breed superstition”
you force us to send our children away
to your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions
Forbid them their languages;
then further say that
Canadian history really began
when explorers set sail out of Europe,
and stress
that the nations of leeches who conquered these lands
were the biggest, and bravest, and boldest, and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
of the genocide basic to this country’s birth?
Of the preachers who lied? And the people who died?
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
Where does it tell of the starvation hell?
As the children were herded, and raped and converted?
And how do we rescue the missing and murdered?
My country ‘tis of thy people you’re dying
A few of the conquered have somehow survived
Their blood runs the redder though genes have been paled.
From Arctic Inuvik to Niagara Falls
the wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Vancouver Island to the Labrador Sea
the white nation fattened while others grew lean.
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean:
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
The past it just crumbled; the future just threatens
Our life blood is shut up in your papers and banks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hand
and surprise in your eyes, that we’re lacking in thanks
for the blessings of civilization you brought us
The lessons you’ve taught us. The ruin you’ve wrought us.
Oh see what our trust in O Canada got us.
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
Now that the pride of the sires needs charity
Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws
Now that my life’s to be known as your heritage
Now that even the graves have been robbed
Now that our own chosen way is your novelty
Hands on our hearts
we salute you your victory.
Choke on your true white and scarlet hypocrisy,
pitying your blindness; Oh why can’t you see –
that the eagles of war whose wings lend you glory,
are never no more than buzzards & crows
Pushed some wrens from their nest;
stole their eggs; changed their story.
The mockingbird sings it: It’s all that she knows.
“Aw what could I do?” say a powerful few
with a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.
Can’t you see that their poverty’s profiting you?
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
