Early Work - Betraying Tecumseh - 1997

“The natives be damned!”
I quote Andrew Jackson.
Can you call this a republic
and eradicate freedom?
 
Push them out west
and kill a history.
A nineteenth century holocaust
of manifest destiny.
 
In your hellish time –
on my word take heed:
it’s no evil crime
to teach black men to read.
 
So split family ties
and sow misery.
Or make up some lie
called the American dream.
 
Or take Oklahoma
and reign with despair,
or send them with tickets
on a trail of tears.
 
“No tribe has the right to sell,
even to each other,
much less to strangers…
Sell a country?!

Why not sell the air,
the sea,
as well as the Earth?
Didn’t the Great Spirit make them
all for the use of His children?”
 
Your freedom’s a joke,
for only a few.
Is the death of a nation
so pleasing to you?
 
So make up your lies
on their evil deeds,
like raping your wives
or learning to read.
 
Or cast them to Utah
and IF they survive,
you’ll throw in some desert,
if they’re still alive.
 
Or cut down their children,
who should spit scrub your floors.
Now their men are sad drunks,
and their women are whores.
 
You cut family ties
and killed dignity.
No we live this lie
called the American Dream.