A Tribe Called Red - Before feat. Joseph Boyden

[Verse 1: Phone Operator]
You have a collect call from an inmate at an ALie Nation correctional facility. To accept the charges press 1. (Beep). Thank you, connecting now

[Verse 2: Joseph Boyden]
It’s me, Jack. Listen, you got to find Charlie.
You guys got to find him. You gotta find him and pass this on to him before it’s too late
I think it’s too late already, but I’m begging ya, try for me. You guys got pull, you do. People listen to you. You know they do
So maybe, just maybe that kid Charlie, he’ll hear this too? Charlie, I don’t know how I’m going to survive in here, I think I wanna die. I mean it. I’m surrounded by animals, beasts without nations - it’s a human zoo, with the hyenas in charge and I’m just at the start of the sentence and I got no relations. When you guys find him, please tell him this: "You still come to me sometimes, Charlie, your thin face, your cheekbones sharp as knives
You were lost, no doubt about it. You ran away from that residential school, and all you wanted, you said, was just to get home. Your face still haunts me, and it’s always at moments when I least want to remember you. When another news report announces the find of another murdered Indian woman and I wonder if this is the one who will be mom
I think of you Charlie when I am walking in my hood and the cops throw me on the concrete because I rock my colors. I remember you when I’m jonesing for something I know I can’t have. I hate to say it but sometimes I wish I never met you, I wish they never did in that school what they did to you. You’re still hurting Charlie, we’re gonna hurt for a long time, we hurt from the before, and it makes us hurt so bad right now