Robbie Robertson - Sacrifice lyrics
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 k**ed and one Indian was murdered Three of us were charged with the d**hs 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 k**ed 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 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 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