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A solitary figure, a shadow perhaps, we can see on the lonely prairie and the cold wind fills our hearts. No hope, all is lost, we can see but cannot, reaching out for that solitary figure, so much a part of our thoughts.
The wrong that has been done, will it ever be made right? No we feel within, it has never been right. Words given, but as empty as the air, and as hurtful to our spirit as the cold wind blowing there.
Why go on? But look ahead and we see, that solitary figure, on the lonely prairie. He had not disappeared, nor given up, he is just ahead of us and we will soon catch up.
There are bars and there are walls and boulders on the way, but what the white man's government does, cannot stop the solitary figure who has reached out far beyond the walls, with the vastness of the prairie people begin to gather for the cause. To wrong an injustice. To stand up strong. To shout loud to the dark night, your gloom is not so strong.
The White Man in the Big House of this Land they do not own, has once again turned his back on a chance to right a wrong.
Suddenly the gloom lifts and brilliant light fills the sky, the stars shine bright and the moon lights the prairie as strong as the sun and all around there are thousands of people, from every corner they've come.
East - South - West - North
Many miles away, from this land our people call Turtle Island, have they come to fight and say, Mr. White Man in the Big House On The Land You Do Not Own...your broken words will not stop us, they only make us strong. More determined in the effort to right this terrible wrong - of a man unjustly imprisoned because you think he was just another stupid injun.
The solitary figure stops, no longer a shadow we do not see, but a man for his people, denied his liberty, but whose words and art have touched millions everywhere - far across the mighty oceans, they take up the call for justice there.
Free Peltier! Free Peltier they shout as one voice.
Now the whole big world knows what we are about. The bars and walls that you have set him in, has only brought people together more than any other way could begin - Ojibway, African, Cherokee, Asian, Miqmaq, and Pawnee, white men and women, those with brown skin, all have come together to see freedom and true justice and equality begin.
For the American Indian.
The People-Lakota, Navajo, Cree, the Zapatista and Aleuts and the Shawnee. The young, the old and those yet to be born, will never stop their fight to right this terrible wrong.
There is no barren wind. The wind is strong, but carried on its voice is the shout of thousands of voices together singing a war song. We will fight this to the very end, to see that we at last have true equality. That you admit your wrongs and do what is just. That for once Mr. White Man in the Big House on the Land you do not own, you will listen to the people, who helped your ancestors along.
But the wind is turning now - it is strong with our shout, strong with our war cry - we shall fight this out.
We will win this war. Not with arrow or bow or knife, nor with club or our bare hands, but with the strength that has always been within us, the strength of this land, the strength of our peoples who you can never kill. For when you turned your back again, you fed more strength to the peoples' determined will.
We WILL win.
Freedom will come! Freedom will come!
Dedicated to Leonard Peltier, to All First People now
and who have gone before. We will win!
©Svhyeyi Aga - Evening Rain
Cherokee
January 21, 2001
12:07 am est