Sun Dance

Priests of the bow, brother of the bear,    
Skin of vermilion mountains.                    
They had been warriors, natives                    
Who had danced the sun dance                    
Now, all of their horses had been driven off  
Their warriors swept away like leaves
Dying without complaint                    
As thunder rolled down from sacred mountains                    
The wind carried the eagle's scream, the wolf's howl,                    
And the death wail of the bull elk echoed among the hills.                    
All announcing the dying past,                    
War paint faded away on crimson faces.    
The looking glass had been broken.          
Hopes had become so small they slipped  
Wearily through the web of the dream catchers.                    
No longer would there be teepees scattered along                    
Crooked streams, nor red children playing in the sweet grass.                    
Painted ponies wouldn't gallop wildly with whooping riders,                    
Nor native people hear the echoes of the forest                      
Of what was once their land and home.    
Though the sun would still bake their granite cliffs,                    
Warm the lodge pole pine, the crystal lakes' turquoise water.                    
It would still heat the air that caused the prairie grass to wave,                    
And shine on the woolen backs of the last buffalo.                    
All words have been spoken, all alliances dissolved,                    
All treaties broken.                    
Now, the chiefs were dead, the warriors wounded, the elders saddened,                    
And the red children all live in the past, not the future.                    
Their thoughts drift away like the torrid wind which moves                    
The tumbleweed across the dry land.      
Hot, dusty, and vacant, so were their days.  
And as the cactus yearns for rare rain      
To cause it to bloom and blossom,          
So, the red children yearned and dreamed to live in their past nation.            
Once strong, now frail children,            
a broken bow,            
and their scant dreams blew away            
with the summer dust            
towards the setting sun            
of a western sky.