Lakota

What a powerful song... Joni has some great metaphors

Kennelled in metered boxes Red dogs in debt to you

-natives who were taken from their land and put into those container houses

this song really expresses the hardship of the Lakota Sioux...and since i have been to their reservations, i saw it firsthand...but really this echoes the same situation across the board for most native tribes, who were pushed into containment areas that pale to the lands they once roamed freely to hunt, fish and live...their spirituality, and balance are being renewed slowly, but the damage is already done...

"You think we're sleeping--but Quietly like rattlesnakes and stars We have seen the trampled rainbows In the smoke of cars"

tells us they are ever watchful, quietly...not aggressively striking, but on the defensive...many native tribes are closed and wary of outsiders even now...

"I am Lakota! Lakota! Standing on sacred land We never sold these Black Hills To the missile-heads, To the power plants We want the land! The bullet and the fence, broke Lakota The black coats and the booze, broke Lakota Courts that circumvent, trip Lakota Nothing left to lose Tell me grandfather You spoke the fur and feather tongues, Do you hear the whimpering waters When the tractors come?"

the land is sacred, not just property, and this is why there was always enmity between the federal govt who saw land as a commodity, and the Lakota...who did not see land as a commodity, but as something they belonged to... it was sold off to the industrial machine for weapons and gold production, instead of being nurtured...and the inefficient practices of greed have ravaged the once pristine landscape, rendering it useless in many cases...

grandfather speaking the furred and feathered tongues, is how close the elders were and still are to nature...there is a true relationship between them and their wild neighbors, a respect, not just hunting in greed, or for sport, but for need and not more than they need...but also nurturing the wildlife, and recognizing that healthy animals mean a healthy tribe...

A song that has been relevant since long before it was written down and remains so now.; She was writing about exploitation of former native American territory for one or more minerals but it was before they started destroying wide landscapes for dirty oil in tar sands. As in the past, once those are taken and the people move on, they will leave behind a destroyed natural environment (only this time it won't be a small area but many square miles, not counting the damage done to transport the oil and then wherever the oil is used) for which, if any recovery lies ahead, it will take dozens of generations to occur. A sad and angry song indeed, for a short-sighted capitalist profit-making misadventure. .

This is an amazing song and really shows Joni's intellectual contribution to music as well as her artistry. The phrase "pity me" was taken from a prayer by Chief Sitting Bull before the battle of Little Big Horn. Here is his prayer: "Wakan Tanka, pity me. In the name of the tribe I offer you this peace pipe. Wherever the sun, the moon, the earth, the four points of the wind, there you are always. Father, save the tribe I beg you. Pity me. We want to live. Guard us against all misfortunes or calamities. Pity me." Amazing how she wove this obscure prayer by Sitting Bull into the fabric of a truly powerful song.