HENNY FIELDS RESERVATION GROUND

**[Instrumental Intro]** I was born where the rivers still remembered our names Where the elders sang the old songs under open sky Mama taught me the ways the earth provides Before the wagons came and the treaties turned to lies They smiled with paper in their hands and Bibles in their eyes Said “this land is yours forever” while they measured out the lines Now the smoke rises different and the buffalo are gone And every promise they ever spoke just turned to stone **Chorus** Life is hard on this reservation ground Where the white man’s word don’t weigh a single pound He took the rivers, took the hills, took the children’s tongues Lied to my people, and the cruelty still runs I’m a woman standing in the ashes of our past Still here, still singing, even though the night is vast **[Verse 2]** They marched us west when the leaves turned red and gold Cold wind cut like knives through the coats we barely owned Babies cried and elders fell along that endless trail And the ones who made the maps just called it progress, not betrayal They locked our hair, they banned the drums, they stole the sacred fire Taught us shame for every prayer our grandmothers required Now the fences rise like scars across the land we knew And the stars look down on broken hearts that still refuse to move **Chorus** Life is hard on this reservation ground Where the white man’s word don’t weigh a single pound He took the rivers, took the hills, took the children’s tongues Lied to my people, and the cruelty still runs I’m a woman standing in the ashes of our past Still here, still singing, even though the night is vast **[Mid-Song Instrumental]** *(Full band drops into a heavier, almost tribal guitar and drum break. Feedback swells, tom patterns echo the intro, then a soaring minor lead guitar cries over the top for 16–20 bars before snapping back.)* **[Verse 3]** I raise my daughters in the shadow of those broken deals Teach them every story that the history books conceal We plant the old seeds in the dirt they said was dead And every drumbeat says the ones they tried to silence ain’t been bled They called us savages while they burned what we held dear But the blood that runs inside me still remembers every year The night is long, the winter bites, the government still lies Yet this heart keeps beating stronger than the ones who tried to make us die **Final Chorus** *(bigger, more defiant)* Life is hard on this reservation ground Where the white man’s word don’t weigh a single pound He took the rivers, took the hills, took the children’s tongues Lied to my people, and the cruelty still runs I’m a woman standing in the ashes of our past Still here, still singing… Still here, still standing… Even though the night is vast **[Outro Instrumental]**