Chords for Bill Miller - Creating The Last Stand

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_ _ [D] And all of a sudden, I get this challenge [E] from the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra to say,
hey, if [F] you ever want to write anything that's native, [D]
a symphonic piece, [Am] let us know.
We'll
try to find the grants and the funding.
We'd love to do a [G] project with you.
So that was
a challenge to me, and [F] I didn't have any funding.
If anything, I had a couple of free Southwest
Airlines tickets, and they just started [Em] flying to Philly when this all [Am] happened.
So I thought,
I'm going to go up to [G] spend time with Josh.
He's a piano player.
He's a [F] classical background.
I'm going to start making this piece called The Last Stand.
[F] And the reason I picked that,
[G] I'm not Lakota Sioux.
[A] I'm not Cheyenne or a Western.
My tribe is from New York State,
Mohicans.
But [F] as a child at nine years old, I started going out to the Little Bighorn
Monument or Custer's Last Stand, that [Am] battlefield, when I was nine with my grandfather.
And [G] I've
been to that battlefield up through high school, even [F] in college I visited.
And I was
always _ moved by the [C] planes, by the [Em] topography of it, and moved [Fm] by the history of it.
And
I read every book out [C] on that battle, and even talked to some of the descendants from
the battle.
[Fm] And [F] so timing came [N] into play, and mystical things came into play, and imagery
came into play, and art, music.
And I combined every asset that I have with my heritage to
say I'm going to do an honorable piece about this Last Stand.
And the difference with it,
well first of all, The Last Stand lasted about 25 to 35 minutes, they say.
It lasts as long
as a white man takes to finish his dinner.
And so I made the piece that long [Em] in honor
of the battle.
But the difference with my music, it isn't an archaeological piece, meaning
it's perfect about the battle.
At the end, the movement, which didn't happen in history,
not yet, is the reconciliation.
It's a reconciliation piece.
It's a piece of healing.
Because I
want to see that land healed.
It was a great victory for Indian people, but it was also
a great loss at the same time.
Because the government, you know, Crazy Horse was killed
just a bit after that, and a lot of our people were pushed into [F] reservations and forced to
live certain ways.
And [C] things just changed for this country.
[Am] And I do believe that the
healing has to come from the land up, from our Creator, to recognize what this land means
[F] to us.
And then it has to come up through the indigenous, the First Nations people,
then through slavery, [G] and through Hispanics, [Am] and then through our European brothers [Am] and
sisters who came through here, and the immigrants, [C] and then on up until now.
If [Dm] they take it
out of order, I just [F] think it will never heal right.
And so this is, for [G] me, my [Am] contribution
to the healing process.
This is the first contribution [A] I'm making [Ebm] with The Last Stand.
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