There is no hope on the earth;

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. *

and the Chief known as Red Cloud

thought:

Can there be peace between you and me?

We will wear our Ghost Shirts

and dance the Ghost Dance

Wovoka will protect us from bullets

He will give us a chance.

Big Foot and his people

surrounded by soldier chiefs;

a tired, sick leader, placed in a tent

by those uncaring of his beliefs ~

the soldiers took away their weapons

each and every knife and gun.

But when Black Coyote,

the young deaf one,

raised his rifle above his head

to signal it had cost him much,

they misunderstood, shots were fired

and like a flame-to-dry-grass touch

the panic began

as the children ran

shot in the back

in a brutal attack

grandmothers, grandfathers

women, children, warriors brave

without their weapons

there was no one to save ~

there was no fighting back

they had to run.........

run away

When the wagons

of wounded

finally reached Pine Ridge,

they were left overnight

in the snow and the cold

the warrior

the child

the woman

the old

finally, taken into a church,

to see a banner proclaiming:

Peace on Earth

Good Will to Men.

There's no end to the blaming.

"The Nations' hoop is broken

and scattered.

There is no center any longer,

and the sacred tree is dead."  **

Remember the ones who mattered

Remember the wounded,

the women and children,

in snow drifts of red.

Now let us forever chant

from the Now to the Then:

Never Again

Never Again

Never Again

Christina  6-22-07

Awarded 6/24/2007

Awarded 6/24/2007

Wounded Knee Museum: http://www.woundedkneemuseum.org/main_menu.html

*Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" is a line in the poem "American Names" By Stephen Vincent Benet.  Dee Brown made this the title of his book.

TECUMSEH:

"The whites are already nearly a match for us all united, and too strong for any one tribe alone to resist; so that unless we support one another with our collective and united forces; unless every tribe unanimously combines to give check to the ambition and avarice of the whites, they will soon conquer us apart and disunited, and we will be driven away from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind....

"Where today is the Pequod? Where the Narragensetts, the Mohawks, Poncanokets, and many other once powerful tribes of our race? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white men, as snow before a summer sun. In the vain hope of alone defending their ancient possessions, they have fallen in the wars with the white men....

"Are we not being stripped day by day of the little that remains of our ancient liberty? Do they not even kick and strike us as they do their black-faces? How long will it be before they will tie us to a post and whip us, and make us work for them in their corn fields as they do them?....

"Shall we give up our homes, our country, bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead, and everything that is dear and sacred to us, without a struggle? I know you will cry with me: Never! Never! Then let us by unity of action destroy them all, which we now can do, or drive them back whence they came. War or extermination is now our only choice. Which do you choose? I know your answer. Therefore, I now call on you, brave Choctaws and Chickasaws, to assist in the just cause of liberating our race from the grasp of our faithless invaders and heartless oppressors. The white usurpation in our common country must be stopped, or we, its rightful owners, be forever destroyed and wiped out as a race of people....

"And if there be one among you mad enough to undervalue the growing power of the white race among us, let him tremble in considering the fearful woes he will bring down upon our entire race, if by his criminal indifference he assists the designs of our common enemy against our common country. Then listen to the voice of duty, of honor, of nature and of your endangered country. Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers."

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