Sacrifice - Robbie Robertson

You know we have a million stories to tell

I’m just one of a million or more stories that could be told

Sacrifice your freedom

Sacrifice your prayer

Take away your language

Cut off all your hair

Sacrifice the loved ones

Who always stood by me Stranded in the wasteland

Set my spirit free

My name is Leonard Peltier

I am a Lakota and Anishnabe

And I am living in the United States penitentiary

Which is the swiftest growing

Indian reservations in the country

I have been in prison since 1976

For an incident that took place on the Oglala-Lakota Nation

There was a shoot-out between members of the American Indian Movement

And The FBI and the local Sheriffs State Troopers

Two agents were killed and one Indian was murdered

Three of us were charged with the deaths of the FBI agents

My co-defendants were found not-guilty by reasons of self-defense

My case was separated and I was found guilty before a jury of non-Indian

people

The prosecutor stated that they did not know who killed their agents

Nor did he know what participation Leonard Peltier may have played in it But someone has to pay for the crime

There’s a lot of nights that I lay in my cell

And I can’t understand why this hell this hell and this terror

That I have been going through for twenty-one years hasn’t ended

But yet I know in my heart that someone has to pay sacrifice

To make things better for our people

The sacrifice I have made when I really sit down to think about it Is nothing compared to what our people a couple hundred years ago

Or fifty years ago or twenty-five years ago have made

Some gave their lives

Some had to stand there and watch their children die in their arms

So the sacrifice I have made is nothing compared to those

I’ve gone too far now to start backing down

I don’t give up Not 'til my people are free will I give up And if I have to sacrifice some more

Then I sacrifice some more