The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term embraces many distinct populations, societies, and ethnic groups, who each have their own particular traditions, cultures, and historical identity.
There are an estimated 7 million Maya living in this area at the start of the 21st century. Ethnic Maya of Guatemala, southern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras have managed to maintain substantial remnants of their ancient cultural heritage. Some are quite integrated into the majority hispanicized Mestizo cultures of the nations in which they reside, while others continue a more traditional culturally distinct life, often speaking one of the Maya languages as a primary language.
The largest populations of contemporary Maya inhabit Guatemala, Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador, as well as large segments of population within the Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas.
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as "indigenous" according to one of the various definitions of the term, though there is no universally accepted definition.
In the late twentieth century, the term began to be used primarily to refer to ethnic groups that have historical ties to groups that existed in a territory prior to colonization or formation of a nation state, and which normally preserve a degree of cultural and political separation from the mainstream culture and political system of the nation state within the border of which the indigenous group is located. The political sense of the term defines these groups as particularly vulnerable to exploitation and oppression by nation states. As a result, a special set of political rights in accordance with international law have been set forth by international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. The United Nations have issued a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to protect the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and natural resources. Depending on which precise definition of "indigenous people" used, and on the census, estimates of a world total population of Indigenous people range from 220 million Indigenous peoples in 1997 to 350 million in 2004.
Maya Angelou ( /ˈmaɪ.ə ˈændʒəloʊ/; born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet. She has published six autobiographies, five books of essays, numerous books of poetry, and is credited with a long list of plays, movies, and television shows. She is one of the most decorated writers of her generation, with dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years, and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
Angelou's long list of occupations has included pimp, prostitute, night-club dancer and performer, castmember of the musical Porgy and Bess, coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, author, journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization, and actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. Since 1991, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, claiming to be raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.
Man I love you
But that ain’t good
Cause you’re hurting me
And I know you would
See what I give
And what I get
There’s something wrong
And you know that
Maybe I’ll be better off without you
Maybe you’ll be better off without me
I want to need you
And what I know
Is that my love for you
Won’t let me go
See what I give
And what I get
There’s something wrong
And you know that
Maybe I’ll be bettre off without you
And maybe you’ll be better off without me
Maybe I’ll be better off without you
And maybe you’ll be better off without me
Without me
Without me
Without me
Baby maybe baby
Without me
I've seen streets, we're youth
Are forced to take the long way home
And I've seen mothers mourn
The loss of there only born
Still I believe, we are given nothin' more than we can beg
A vision is only blurred when life seems unfair
Who am I to judge the man with the needle in his veins
When he's just chasing freedom to escape the pain
Of the worlds fast paced pipe dreams and shortcomings
He's just trying to make do and find a way out of nothing
It's like, we damned if we do and damned if we don't
And it's a very thin line between respect and being broke
And being one red button away from World War III
Always called the minority
And always, always pulled over
Facing police brutality
Why is every street a living hell?
Probably 'cause they want us to fail
Yeah, three strikes and surely back to jail
Like the slave ships when they sail
Years and years of civil rights chasing to pass that bill
But ask yourself, people have we changed or are we standing still
Down and out struggling in this concrete jungle
One check away from starvation, poverty
But they say being free is about speaking your mind
Prophesies too much and that's where they draw the line
A line as thin as the line between war and peace
A line as thin as the line between west and east
One button away from World War III
Being called a minority
And being pulled, always being pulled over
And subject to brutality
Why is every street like a living hell?
Probably 'cause they all just want us to fail
And three strikes and surely back to jail
Like the slaves ship when they sail but they don't know that
My people whose pains are cornered
My peoples all shapes and colors
My peoples got more peoples with ills
That's more peoples, more siesters and brothers
My people stay strong as an ox
My peoples will never fail
My peoples will always remain
Remain with a story to tell
My peoples was paints on the door
My peoples all shapes and colors
My peoples got more peoples with ills
That's more people, more sisters and brothers
My people stay strong as an ox
My peoples will never fail
My peoples will always remain
Remain with a story to tell
My peoples was paints on the door
My peoples all shapes and colors
My peoples got more peoples in jail
That's more people than sisters and brothers
My people stay strong as an ox
My peoples will never fail
My peoples will always remain
Remain with a story to tell
My peoples was paints on the door
My peoples all shapes and colors
My peoples got more peoples with ills
More people, more sisters and brothers
My people stay strong as an ox
My peoples will never fail
My peoples will always remain