Music: Nils and Free Salamander Exhibit
Words: Leonard Peltier

Woven from several poems and passages in Prison Writings- My life is my Sundance by Leonard Peltier. The traditional sundance of the Lakota Sioux involves hanging from fleshhooks, a pain/transcendence ritual to which Peltier attributes an element of his psychic survival of 40 years of false imprisonment by the US government. Free Leonard you bastards! And thank you, Leonard, for going to hell on behalf of aboriginal peoples and coming back with beautiful poetry for all.

Slur the buds Slur the buds
Here, locked in my own shadow
for almost forty years
I have reached my hand through
stone and steel and razor wire
And touched the heart
of the world
Here in the shadowed night
Walls, bars, gratings
dissolve into light
And I unloose my soul
And fly through the inner
darkness of my being
I become transparent,
a bright shadow
A bird of dreams
singing from the tree of life
I am undestroyed
My life is my sundance
A man who has hung
from the tree of life
Has a special compact with pain
He’ll be hard to break
Sundance takes place inside
not outside of me
Hard to break
To give your flesh
is to give your life
And what you have given
you can no longer lose
Pain explodes into
bright white light
Into revelation, wordless vision
Of what it is to be in touch with
all beings and all being
Every time a pin pricks your
finger from then on
The small pain will be a reminder
of that larger pain
And a still greater realm
beyond reach of all pain
I am undestroyed
My life is my sundance
Slur the buds Slur the buds
And if the stars have a meaning
Then my life has a meaning