The Creaking of the Conscience:

Red Business
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Why I Creak
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Living On The Border
Nature Laughs Back
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Falling From Grace
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Red Business was written in response to the impending creation of Nunavut, in Canada's north. It is sad that despite the success of the television program North of Sixty , and movies like Dances With Wolves , we have yet to understand the collective conscience of these noble people.

Shagbark carpet
sweetens the teepee floor
Goldplated arrows hang
above buffalo-bone mantle
Lipton's instant venison soup
cooks over open fire
 
 
Broken peacepipe in attic
collects dust the way
pale face gathers real estate
Fax machine in corner
yelps like pack of wolves
in conflict with bulldozer
 
 
Indians now dance with lawyers
to reclaim what was stolen
by unfair laws of conquerors
Wampum has grown greener,
still speaks the ancient tongue
Legal eagles answer
with precise swipe of talons
 
 
Chief Snake Eyes
arrives at courthouse in
fourty thousand dollar Cherokee
His smile - Calvin Klein white,
flashes like a deer in the woods
that has caught the scent of smoke
 

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Premiere Peterson admires Prime Minister Mulroney's pipe technique