Sacrifice Songtext
von 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 Anishinaabe
And I'm living in United States Penitentiary
Which is the swiftest growing Indian reservations in the country
I′ve been in prison since 1976
For an incident that took place on the Oglala Lakota Nation
There was a shootout between members of an American Indian movement
And the FBI and the local sheriffs, state troopers
Two agents were killed and, uh, one Indian was murdered


Three of us were charged with the deaths of the FBI agents
My co-defendants were found not guilty by reason 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, uh, can't understand
Why this hell, this hell and this terror
That I′ve been going through for 21 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 a 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 of a 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, I mean, the sacrifice I made is nothing compared to those
I've gone too far now to start backing down
I don′t give up, not until my people are free will I give up
And if I have to sacrifice some more, then I sacrifice some more