Sacred Ground

Tells the story of Standing Rock 2016 through the Sioux perspective — the months-long standoff against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the prayer camps, the water cannons in freezing weather, and the rallying cry 'Water Is Life' (Mní Wičhóni). The lyrics honor the indigenous resistance without romanticizing the suffering. Each verse marks a phase: the gathering, the confrontation, the national guard, and the aftermath. Written as rock because the genre carries the weight of American protest music from Woody Guthrie forward.

[verse 1] Winter on the prairie, twenty-sixteen, the camp was growing strong, Standing Rock Sioux standing up to say this pipe don't belong, Water is life, Mni Wiconi, voices in the cold, Ancient land and treaty rights, stories centuries old, Dakota Access cutting underneath the river bed, Crude oil flowing where the ancestors had led, Rubber bullets, water cannons, helicopters in the night, Cameras caught the whole world watching who was wrong and right, Army Corps of Engineers, their negligence was proved, Federal judge said twenty-eight million for the damage they approved, But the pipe kept pumping underneath the sacred line, And the people kept on fighting every single time, Not a protest, a protection, get the language straight, Defending what was promised by the treaties of this state [chorus] Not through here, not through here, This is sacred ground, can you hear the prayer?, Not through here, not through here, Seven generations watching, are you aware?, Not through here, not through here, Every pipeline crosses somebody's somewhere [verse 2] Twenty twenty-five, the courts are still deciding fate, Standing Rock Sioux appealed the ruling, justice made to wait, Environmental impact statement, December, finally done, Nine years of litigation and the battle isn't won, Six-sixty-six point eight million, Greenpeace had to pay, Energy Transfer brought the lawsuit, made the jury sway, Defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy charged, Message to the movement: speak and the penalty is large, Anti-protest legislation spreading state to state, Criminalizing resistance, raising up the stakes, But you can't evict a river from the land it's always known, Can't serve papers to the aquifer or bulldoze sacred stone, Indigenous defenders on the frontline once again, Same fight, different decade, same result, same pain [bridge] The oil will run out but the water never should, The treaties were a promise and a promise should be good, Not through here, not through here, From Standing Rock to every nation coast to coast, The ones who need the least are always paying the most, Not through here, not through here [outro] Not through here, This land remembers what the maps forgot, Not through here, You can build around but not through this spot, Not through here, not through here, Sacred ground, sacred ground