"Cuyahoga" is the name of the river in Northern Ohio that the city of Cleveland was built around. There were many tribes of Indians which used to live in the region ("This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang"), and they simply called the river the Crooked River due to its zig-zag nature and many U-shaped turns. "Cuyahoga" is an Indian word meaning "crooked."
The lines, "This land is the land of ours, this river runs red over it," "Underneath the river bed we burned the river down" and "Bury, burn the waste behind you" refer to how the once-pristine river became so polluted that it famously caught fire several times between 1929 and 1969. The last river fire in 1969 garnered much national attention, and helped expose the problems industrial waste was having on our environment. This helped spur the creation of the Clean Water Act as well as led to the formation of a new government agency, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA).
R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe explained in the November 12, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone: "It's an Indian word I mispronounce in the song. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire in 1969 because of pollution dumped into it. The song addresses environmental devastation and our history with Native Americans, which isn't pleasant."
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