What I think about Amos, Raiders, and Litefoot

In her rendition of Home on the Range, Tori Amos is making a statement about the definition of “Americanness” that the traditional song intrinsically promotes. There exists a sizable and widely-recognized category of folk and traditional songs that are definitively American. Kids sing them at summer camps and in school and know every word without ever being asked to think about what they are actually singing. Tori Amos challenges these cultural norms in Home on the Range by reconstructing these familiar texts to tell a different story – that of the Cherokee removal. The idea of “this land is your land” is juxtaposed against images of a “Cherokee bride.” Tori Amos uses music to ask us all to question the white man’s history and to reverse our own cultural complacency.

The Raiders song Indian Reservation similarly deals with the public perception of the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears. The song is used to publicize the horrible realities of the Indian removal. Lyrics like “they took the whole Indian nation/ locked us in this reservation” and “maybe someday when they learn/ the Cherokee nation will return” convey a sense of blame and of sadness for the cultural ignorance that resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. Yet, there is a theme in the Raiders’ song that is less present in Tori Amos’ Home on the Range, the fact that despite the mistreatment that the Cherokee have endured, they are “so proud to live, so proud to die” for their people and what they believe in. I am certainly not the first to propose that the community and sense of mutual responsibility experienced by many Cherokee (and other American Indians) is what has allowed them to surmount staggering odds and remain a vibrant community today.

Pride in being Cherokee is also the primary sentiment expressed in the raps by Litefoot. The lyric “red be the color/ no wonder why I’m hot” shows Litefoot’s central theme of Native pride. However, as a Cherokee rapper, the music still appeals to a broader community of youth, allowing the message of the songs to expand to a more universal concept of taking pride in one’s heritage. The content of Litefoot’s music is similar to that of other rap – accumulating money and women, and taking pride in one’s own community. It is expected that a community, like young members of the Cherokee Nation, should have their own version of the generation’s popular style of music.

Art is a fundamental and often overlooked lens through which to view a community. Examining the Cherokee through their own music facilitates the understanding of cultural themes which they deem important that are often devalued by outsiders.