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I burn this silver sage. I burn this red cedar. In a sacred way The smoke is made of life." Sadly, America has long been the land of imprisonment and concentration camps. Today it's the cruelty of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and hundreds of other concentration camps, prisons and detention facilities. The country which pretends to be the "land of the free," is really the home of the greatest imprisonment in the world. There's nothing new to the American policy of imprisonment. Among the first victims were the American Natives, the peoples from whom we stole the land. An ancient Spanish fortress at Saint Augustine, Florida came into American possession in 1809. The Americans immediately turned it into their favorite thing, a prison. They called it Fort Marion. Prisons are such an American staple that the place is now a national great landmark called Castillo de Marcos National Monument. America used the fortress to imprison Indians it didn't like just as today we're imprisoning Moslems we don't like. By the 1870s the prison was crammed with men, women and children. Some of the Indians became justly famous as folk artists. Their images are primitive, stark and poignant. Others composed songs.
A little of the poetry is reproduced
in English by Lance Henson on
Twelve songs written in the enemy's language.
Mr. Henson's collection begins with a Sun Dance song by an
anonymous Cheyenne prisoner, perhaps Star, at Fort Marion.
Aren't you proud to be part of the nation of imprisoners?
"I'11 take the snap out of your garters"
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