Paper signs for shields.  Cellphone camera weaponry.  Synthetic war paint smeared and sad.  Assimilated by force.  Assimilated by necessity.  Dressed like the enemy.  Culture smothered like an ember under a boot.  No more fire.  Softness in numbers and in mindset.  The old way is gone.  Tonight, they shiver under the oppressors water cannon.

    Chants don’t echo the same over the land.  Buffalo limp.  The raven looks away.  Prayer is lost to the wind.  The pipeline is coming.  What would once have resulted in war, now becomes futile protest.  Handicapped by the law.  Their land pinched narrow by greed.  Quartered off with chainlink.  Vastness barricaded.  This land is no longer your land, they say.  This land is our land.

    Seething with closed eyes and chattering teeth.  Not a matter of courage.  A matter of overpowering oppression.  So many years learning not to fight.  Not to wage war with an overwhelming force.  Play by their rules or be strangled into extinction.

    Those same rules now played against them, like the flute of their ancestors.  An instrument broken and out of key.  Dull blades and blunt arrowheads.  Not enough horses or skilled riders to make the earth quake.  Vocal cords no longer powerful enough to produce valid war cries.  So they protest.  They have to protest.  It’s the last resort.

    Unevenly matched teams.  A culture out of shape.  Poisoned with assimilation by gunpoint.  Resisting efforts failed. 

    The spirit remains in some.  In the resilient bronze skin.  In the long braids and in the pits of the eyes.  It’s on their breath, but it’s faint.  It continues to fade.  Constantly scrubbed.  Maybe too late for a comeback. The will softened.  The way blockaded.

    Do the wolves still howl at night?  Can their howls be heard echoing off the moon?  The old way of war is gone but not forgotten.  Heavy hearts carry war songs like boulders.  The elders have been culled.  Wisdom forced to seep down the stems of family trees.  Dribbling, cooling.  The fire only smoldering.  Life-giving fire.  Life-taking fire.  Barely bright enough to warm trembling hands.

    Conserving what remains has become a losing battle.  When does the conservative mindset snap.  A scream loud enough to be heard, not only by the tribe, but by the world.  A call to the people of all beaten cultures.  A battle cry for the masses.  Let the land thunder as they converge.  All of the oppressed, marching to the beat of one drum.  Forming the biggest tribe the world has ever known.  The capacity to flatten armies with their voice alone.  Willing to use more force than that. Piecing together broken memories and old wisdom.  Even the underdog evolved from a wolf.

    The enemy will not listen.  They will take until there is nothing left to take.  Blind with greed.  They will not see the arrows coming.  Aim true.  Smear their blood.  Finally, authentic war paint.  Take their scalps, not as a talisman, but as a piece of history.  Change takes violence, when the oppressor refuses to believe in justice.  When greed overpowers clean water, there are only two results; death and destruction.  Destroy greed by any means necessary.  There will be blood. Bodies will fall back to the earth.  Let the dirt purify.  Allow oppression to be dissolved.  Learn from the pain — of one more war.