A Tribute to Indigenous Day

Two hundred and nineteen years ago my fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in subjugation and dedicated to the proposition the European men are created superior.

Soon we will be engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any notion so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a battle field of that war. The original nations have come to claim that field, as a final resting place for those who across this continent gave their lives that their nations might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that they do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave native peoples, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for their living heirs, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that their nations, upon Father Sun, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by

the people, for the people, shall not perish from Mother Earth.