Buffy St Marie is a full-blooded Native American. She pours all her anger at how her people were mistreated into this song. This epic is one of the greatest!
This is a song that sends shivers through me every time I play it.
Never have the words run more true. At this time of the fascist corruption of Trump, Musk and the whole MAGA movement it is very true to say that My Country Tis Of Your People You’re Dying. All morality is being set aside, along with compassion and empathy. The environment is to be plundered. All that matters is greed and profit! America is a heartless business in which the bosses exploit the workforce. This is now the land of inequality, run by billionaires for billionaires. People conned, duped and fleeced. Profiteers run the media. Profiteers pour fake news and propaganda onto the internet. The social media has become the main method of control.
They spread fear, hate and division through mass of lies!
People are indeed killing anything good. The land of guns, hate and callousness. The land of destruction and gross exploitation. The poor and weak are dumped. The wealthy gloat.
I think Buffy is probably my favourite female singer. She is an extraordinary songwriter. Today I’m going to be playing some of her songs regarding the genocide of the Native American Indians. It’s not a topic that gets served up in US schools but it really should be the number one issue.
When the Europeans arrived in the USA they were taken in and helped through that first harsh winter by the coastal Indians. Within a short while those same coastal Indians were wiped out through disease and murder.
The Indian Wars were deliberate government policy to kill off the Plains Indians and steal their land. Through lies, treaties and murder the Indians, considered vermin, were hunted down and systematically murdered. When not simply shot they were given smallpox-infested blankets. The buffalo, their staple food, was very nearly made extinct with the great massacres inflicted upon them in a deliberate policy, an attempt to starve the Indians.
The villainy, cruelty and morally corrupt methods were appalling.
That same attitude pervades the USA today. The sanctimonious arrogance of Trumpists. The evangelical arrogance of religious fanatics. The violence and belligerence. The perverse patriotism. The greedy nationalism. The selfish capitalism. The nasty fascism.
Fortunately, there is another side to America – one of caring, compassion, equality and selflessness. That balances out the greed and selfishness a lot.
Here’s Buffy singing one of the strongest songs ever written. Puts Dylan to shame.
My Country Tis of thy people you’re dying
Then there’s a song about the policy to wipe out the buffalo:
Then the Indian Wars:
Then war in general:
Who comes close??
Where are the new voices standing up against this philosophy?
The Universal soldier is one of the best antiwar songs!! If only the Russian soldiers would give up being pawns for Putin!!! FOR UKRAINE!!!! CARRY IT ON!!!!
Buffy a full-blooded Native American Indian who came out of the New York Folk scene. She has recorded in a variety of styles though.
She has produced some of the strongest lyrics I have ever read – lyrics concerning the genocide of the Native Americans and their present-day plight. She is so passionate and forceful
I think ‘My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying’ is one of the strongest songs ever written.
I’m still angry over Cummings, Maitliss and Johnson’s incompetence. I’ll play Buffy and seethe.
Well which is the best Buffy St Marie song? This is a Native American woman who has written some exceptional songs over the years. I narrowed it down to three contenders:
Carry It On
My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying
Universal Soldier.
There were a number of other choices. But for me these 3 stood out.
Carry it on!
Carry It On by Buffy Sainte-Marie
Hold your head up Lift the top of your mind
Put your eyes on the Earth
Lift your heart to your own home planet
What do you see?
What is your attitude
Are you here to improve or damn it
Look right now and you will see we’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with Life and
Oh carry it on –
We’re saying Oh carry it on –
Keep playing
Oh carry it on –
And praying
It ain’t money that makes the world go round
That’s only temporary confusion
It ain’t governments that make the people strong
It’s the opposite illusion
Look right now and you will see they’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life
Oh carry it on – Keep saying Oh carry it on – And playing Oh carry it on – And praying
Look right now and you will see we’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life is beautiful if you got the sense to take care of your source of perfection
Mother Nature She’s the daughter of God and the source of all protection
Look right now and you will see she’s only here by the skin of her teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life
Oh carry it on – Keep saying Oh carry it on – And playing Oh carry it on – Keep on praying
Buffy Sainte Marie
My Country Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying
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 splendor?
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
O’er Kinzua mud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this 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 County to 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 yourheritage,
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.
Universal Soldier
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 athiest, 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
Three superb songs with real bite and meaning! My choice is My Country Tis of your People You’re dying. The passion and anguish is palpable.
