The Red Man’s America / Zitkála-Šá (“Red Bird”) published first in 1917
My country! ‘Tis to thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,
My pleas I bring.
Land where OUR fathers died,
Whose offspring are denied
The Franchise given wide,
Hark, while I sing.
My native country, thee,
Thy Red man is not free,
Knows not thy love.
Political bred ills,
Peyote in temple hills,
His heart with sorrow fills,
Knows not thy love.
Let Lane’s Bill swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees,
Sweet freedom song.
Let Gandy’s Bill awake
All people, till they quake,
Let Congress, silence break,
The sound prolong.
Great Mystery, to thee,
Life of humanity
To thee, we cling.
Grant our home land be bright,
Grant us just human right,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our king.
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I have seen this poem called a ‘parody’ of the Samuel Smith hymn, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” I understand that it fits that definition pretty cleanly–matching rhythm, melody, and even rhyme sounds of the hymn. And it certainly satirizes in effective ways the original, giving the lie to the central message of that song.
But what’s most interesting to me about Zitkála-Šá’s poem is the way it actually accepts the central premises of the original song–for both Samuel Smith and Zitkála-Šá, love of land is intimately related to love of country, and for both creators love of land and country are sacred things.
Those shared convictions make the departures in “The Red Man’s America” that much more powerful.
Smith’s “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” has three verses but “The Red Man’s America” has a fourth and final verse that expands the address of the speaker to the land to include God, who Zitkála-Šá names “The Great Mystery.” The argument seems to be that so long as American citizens deny the “Franchise given wide” to offspring of native peoples, Smith’s original hymn cannot help but ring hollow: “Liberty” may be his great theme in that hymn, but what good is liberty without justice? The central plea to the land and God in “The Red Man’s America,” to “grant us just human right” resonates with countless pleas from the Hebrew scriptures. (In fact, that very plea was on the lips of Israelites under Egyptian, Babylonian, and Roman oppression.)
In the end, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” has settled into a comfortable position as political propaganda, propped up by churches across the United States even to this day. Meanwhile, Zitkála-Šá’s revision remains a prophetic text, one that challenges at the same time as it nourishes.
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Teacher’s Corner
Potential “Text-to-Text” Connections
-Considering the two great ‘original sins’ of the United States, enslavement of African Americans and genocide of Native Americans, it could be powerful to pair this poem with the 1845 poem by Frederick Douglass titled simply, “A Parody,” critiquing all of those church-going Americans who defended the institution of slavery.
-Michael Kleber-Diggs has written a tour-de-force Acrostic-Golden Shovel poem, incorporating each word of the Pledge of Allegiance in his poem, “America Is Loving Me To Death.” I’ve taught students the Golden Shovel form, and they’ve had great fun ‘talking back’ to songs / poems they love. But it could be good to encourage them to ‘talk back’ to a song / poem they disagree deeply with.
-Along those lines, poet Heid E. Erdich, whose powerful introduction of “Plains and Mountains” poets in the Native Nations Anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through introduced me to Red Bird’s poem, has written her own “talk back” to a canonical classic, “The Theft Outright,” which speaks truth to Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” which that poet read at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
-What about you? What were your thoughts or interpretations reading “The Red Man’s America”? Do you know of any ‘talk-back’ poems / songs / films? Works that revise or comment on an original text? Please do feel free to ‘talk back’ in the comments below!
Very fine teaching suggestions!