walk the old way.....................

woo hoo woo hoo woo hoo

i KNOW she's an acquired taste (and i've  acquired it believe me). but man, i LOVE buffy sainte marie. holy shite, i can't believe i didn't know this. i coincidentally stumbled across this just now
Buffy Sainte-Marie Native American Folk Legend
August 29, 2009 - In a career spanning more than four decades, Cree Indian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has recorded numerous albums and written Oscar-winning songs. In the 1960s folk revival, she was a folk icon among Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. On her first album in 13 years, Running for the Drum, she expands on the inventive mix of Native American rhythms, electronica and folk music she began many years ago.

The second track of the new album, "Cho Cho Fire," is a driving rock song featuring a 30-year-old field recording.

"The Black Lodge Singers were at a powwow maybe 30 years ago," Sainte-Marie tells host Scott Simon. "My nephew went to the meeting in Saskatchewan and recorded a snippet of them when they were kids. And they have gone on to become one of the most beloved powwow groups in the world. I took a snippet of this 30-year-old cassette, and I embedded it into a new song I was writing called 'Cho Cho Fire.' ".............

pic: courtesy of the artist

When she's not making music, Buffy Sainte-Marie leads the Cradleboard Teaching Project, which provides Native American curricula for schools.

because i love her

and because this song could NOT be MORE appropriate

i can only just sit here

and shake my head.

here's what buffy said

My Country 'Tis of thy People You're Dying
w/m © Buffy Sainte-Marie
Now that your big eyes are finally opened.
Now that you're wondering, "How must they feel?"
Meaning them that you've chased cross America'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 splendour.
You asked for our comment, I simply will render:
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the long houses “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 American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress
That the nations of leeches who conquered this land
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?
How the Bill of Rights failed?
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud over Kinzua mud?
Or of brave Unlce Sam in Alaska this year?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for West,
With her shivering children in zero degrees.
" Blankets for your land" - so the treaties attest.
Oh well, blankets for land, that's a bargain indeed.
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out
And the history books censored
A hundred years of your statesmen
say, "It's better this way".
But a few of the conquered have somehow survived
And their blood runs the redder
Though genes have been paled.
From the Grand Canyon's caverns
To Craven's sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York,
The white nation fattens while other grow 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 chemical tanks,
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 civilisation you brought us
The lessons you've taught us;
The ruin you've wrought us;
Oh see what our trust in America got us.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives 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 blue white and scarlet hypocrisy.
Pitying your blindness; How you never see -
that the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory,
Were 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.
" Oh what can I do?", say a powerless few.
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye:
Can't you see how their poverty's profiting you?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.


i cannot believe this. i don't want to believe this. but it's TRUE. let's just put aside for a moment the fact these mountains and peaks are sacred to the aboriginal people of this country (THEIR country). really, even if you take them OUT of the equation, WOULD YOU WANT TO SKI AND PLAY ON SNOW MADE OUT OF SHITE? i know MY answer. and then if you toss back in the native american people of the region (or ANY people for that matter), it makes my skin crawl

Do Native Americans Have First Amendment Rights?

by: Leslie Thatcher, t r u t h o u t | Interview
Ninth Circuit rules effluent does not defile sacred space. Forest Service argued skiing on treated sewage "a compelling government interest."

The San Francisco Peaks of Northern Arizona "are sacred to at least 13 formally recognized Indian tribes ... and this religious significance is of centuries duration."(1 Resort located on Humphrey's Peak, the highest and - to the tribes - most holy of the San Francisco Peaks. That decision was appealed by the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the ) In February 2005, the US Forest Service issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision approving a proposal to make artificial snow using treated sewage effluent at the SnowbowlHavasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation and the White Mountain Apache Nation. The Circuit Court ruled for the Forest Service. In February 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court unanimously overturned the lower court's decision. On Friday, August 8, 2008, the en banc majority of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that "using treated sewage effluent to make artificial snow on the most sacred mountain of southwestern Indian tribes does not violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ('RFRA'). It also holds that a supposed pleading mistake prevents the tribes from arguing under the National Environmental Act ('NEPA') that the Forest Service failed to consider the likelihood that children and others would ingest snow made from the effluent."(2).................

and while we're at it, MY personal absolute favorite buffy song:

i love you buffy

and here she is singing universal soldier
buffy sainte marie



UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie© Caleb Music-ASCAP
I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada, he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds\
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.