Suggest alternate or new lyrics for the Oregon State Song.

[Ken Burch]

While I live in Alaska, I was born in Salem and have always had mixed feelings about the existing words of our State Song, with it's talk of conquest and empire. Sort of sounds like it was ghost-written by Rudyard Kipling or something.

So I've written a couple of stanzas, about two groups that have been historically less-than-fully accepted in the state, but which merit inclusion: immigrants and Native Americans/First Peoples:

1) Land of the rainbow’s children
Drawn from around the world
Sharing their own traditions,
Banners and dreams unfurled.
Their place, your place, and my place;
Here, we will live as one.
Hail to thee, land of welcome
My Oregon

2) Land of the ancient peoples
Here since the world was born.
Bearers of great traditions
Threatened, but now reborn.
Once starved and mocked, now growing
Dance in the morning sun
Hail to thee, founding people
Of Oregon.

And a verse in honor of the state's activist political culture:

3) Land where the fight for justice
Ceaselessly carries on.
Land where the fire of dreams
Will never be tramped upon.
Marching for peace and freedom
Struggling to see the dawn,
Hail to the, land of Conscience,
My Oregon.



What do you think? Anyone who has any other suggestions could add them here.