Intro (Spoken, dry beat) They keep saying were. I keep saying are. Verse 1 Walk into the museum, cold marble floors, Ancestors behind glass like they closed the doors. Placard says extinct, circa, pre-— Funny how the past keeps looking like me. Gift shop feathers made overseas, “Native-inspired” but inspired by who, please? They want our pain neat, labeled, tame, But my bloodline don’t fit your frame. Hook (Catchy, confident) Not the past. Not a phase. Not a story you can misplace. Still breathing. Still loud. Still standing on stolen ground. Not the past—say it again. Not the past—we’re still in it. Verse 2 They teach survival like it already ended, Like we didn’t adapt, didn’t bend it. Cold winters made us sharp, not weak, Hunger taught discipline—listen when we speak. You call it history, I call it now, Same land, same fight, just different crowd. Same treaties, same lies in ink, Same wolves watching the borders shrink. Hook (Repeat, crowd-ready) Not the past. Not a phase. Not your guilt on display. We didn’t vanish. We didn’t fade. We outlived every map you made. Bridge (Half-time, spoken) This ain’t nostalgia. This is continuity. We don’t need your apology. We need the land to breathe. Verse 3 (Stronger, sharper) Every time they say long ago, I hear please don’t ask what we still owe. But the ground remembers every name, Every fence, every fire, every claim. I’m not a relic, I’m not a warning sign, I’m a future that survived its time. You want closure, you want peace? Start by admitting we never left. Final Hook (Big, final) Not the past. Say it clear. We are still here. We are still here. Not a memory. Not a myth. Still living, still resisting. Outro (Beat drops, last line) You built a museum. We built tomorrow.
