Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree/Canada. 1941)



Artist included here in our section "The World - People & Culture - American Indian People" * Listen to Buffy Sainte-Marie talking about her dear lost friend, Anni Mae

Learn about this amazing Indian artist and activist

The album I recommend: Coincidence and Likely Stories (1993), includes this song (below is a YouTube video with the music):

BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
Buffy Sainte-Marie © Gypsy Boy Music-SOCAN

When people ask, "What happened to the North American Indians in the 1880s?", you can pretty much point to the robber barons of the time who needed to make a fortune in oil, gold and other precious metals. Simple greed in the hands of a powerful few who manipulated the media and politicians. When people ask, "What happened to the Indian movement of the sixties and seventies?", you can pretty much point to the same motives a hundred years later, with uranium added to the list in very big print.
The shocking information in this song is not new, but strung together; the events tell a story that most non-Indian people don't know. Dedicated to Leonard Peltier, the memory of Anna Mae Aquash and Joseph Stuntz.

INTRO:
Indian legislation on the desk of a do-right Congressman
Now, he don't know much about the issue
so he picks up the phone and he asks advice
of the Senator out in Indian Country
A darling of the energy companies
who are ripping off what’s left of the reservations. Huh.

1.
I learned a safety rule
I don’t know who to thank
Don't stand between the reservation and the corporate bank
They'll send in federal tanks
It isn’t nice but it’s reality

Chorus:
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh

2.
They've got these energy companies that want the land
and they've got churches by the dozens who want to guide our hands
and sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and greed
Get rich... get rich quick!

Chorus...

3. We get the federal marshals
We get the covert spies
We get the liars by the fire
We get the FBIs
They lie in court and get nailed
and still Peltier goes off to jail

chorus...

4.
My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo

Chorus...

We had the Goldrush Wars
Why didn’t we learn to crawl
and still our history gets written in a liar's scrawl
They tell ‘ya “Hey, honey, you can still be an Indian!
D-d-down at the ‘Y’
on Saturday nights”

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh!