Eyak Man

You are an Indian, you are a native son
And the government keeps trying to buy your land.
You’re not the only one to whom this has been done.
And the government keeps trying to tie your hand.
Where are your people now, Eyak man?
Where are your people now, Eyak man?
In your dreams you ride with Crazy Horse, but you wake up alone.
Where are your people now, Eyak man?
Gone drinking, gone fighting or barely surviving.

I am a man from a tribe that has survived the Great White War.
There is one speaker left of a language that has died.
She’s seventy years of age or more.
She’s chief of the Eyak Land.
A hundred years ago we hunted for the seal; we traded the copper good.
My grandfather’s mansion was that land
And he’d a willed it for me if he could
To be a hunter in the Eyak Land.
Then came the mines and Kennecott Company
And the Million Dollar Bridge and the rail,
But just last year our ancestor’s bones
Were removed from some Smithsonian jail
To be buried in Eyak Land.
We have survived the mines and the great oil spills
And the white man would devour us still,
For our ways of life are rooted in this land
And if you buy it away our spirit you will kill.
This is Eyak land. This is Eyak land. This is Eyak land.

I am an Indian. I am a native son
And the government keeps trying to whiten my hide,
But I’ll fight while I can; I’ll live for Indian land
And the preservation of my tribe.
Where are my people now? I am alone.
Where are my people now? Make us strong
Don’t erase all living memory of the Eyak home.
We won’t let it happen. No. We will survive.