Saturday, August 8th, 2015
Vancouver, British Columbia Yogendra Came
Yogendra came up with his family from Calgary as weekend pilgrims. On our early morning walk he told me of the Native Studies he'll be taking next month. I brought to his attention the lyrics of a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie, a native of the Cree Nation from Saskatchewan. I mentioned to Yogendra that I was listening to this kind of music just before enlisting myself as a monk. The name of the song is "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying." It's remarkable to listen to.
"Now that your big eyes have finally opened
Now that you're wondering how must they feel
Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens
Now that you're wondering "how can it be real?"
That the ones you've called colourful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendour?
You've asked for my 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 toddlers 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, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are 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 on a tinsel of mud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaskathis year?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying
Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is 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 have felt it's better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Grand Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles Countyto upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others 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 shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,
The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us
Oh see what our trust in America's brought 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 a novelty
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless 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."
This stuff written and sung by Ms Ste-Marie should be thought about.
May the Source be with you!
5 km
ust 13, 2015, marked fifty years since Srila Prabhupada embarked on his momentous, historic voyage from India, Calcutta, to America, Boston and then New York. Although he came by himself, he did not come “empty-handed.” As he explained in his rooms at the Radha-Damodara temple in Vrindavan in Karttika 1972:
