Joy Harjo: Herself

Sacred space--I call it a place of grace, or the place in which we're most human--the place in which there's a unity of human-ness with wolf-ness, with hummingbird-ness, with Sandia Mountain-ness with rain cloud-ness? . . .It's that place in which we understand there is no separation between worlds. It has everything to do with the way we live. The land is responsible for the clothes you have on, for my saxophone, for the paper that I write these things on, for our bodies. It's responsible for everything." -Joy Harjo

The Multi-Talented Muskogee Creek Poet

The Muskogee Creek heritage, tribal memories, freedom, love of nature, and survival skills all inspired Joy Harjo to write her unique poetry that "challenges the prevailing boundaries of southwestern writers." Growing up in the Muskogee Creek Tribe, Harjo was born on May 9, 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alexander Posey, another creek poet, inspired Harjo as she was growing up in Oklahoma. She attended the University of New Mexico for the painting and theatre program, but started writing poetry when the national Indian political climate was seeking vocalists and speakers. Harjo received a BA from The University of New Mexico in 1976, and then was further educated at the University of Iowa and earned a MFA in 1978. Harjo's education experience opened her up to create poetry that symbolizes her Native American heritage.

Harjo shares the desires of the Navajo Beauty Way with Luci Tapahanso, another Native American poet and relates to Simon Ortiz's pueblo stories, despite their different backgrounds. Such works as The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994) went on to win the Oklahoma Book Arts Award and In Mad Love and War (1990) won the American Book Award and the Delmare Schwartz Memorial Award. While her poetry was being recognized, she took the ideas that inspired her to write her poetry and began to produce music lyrics. Harjo's talent is not only targeted to poetry and song writing, but she also creates scripts and screen plays. Her love of nature and tribal memories has not only persuaded her to grow as a poet, but to become an editor, filmmaker, artist, and photographer. She currently resides in New Mexico, where she is not far from her roots of Native American Muskogee Creek culture. Joy Harjo feels strongly about her heritage and the surroundings that have driven her to be such an original poet

She is typically considered a Native American poet, and this is the part of her ancestry with which she identifies most closely. Harjo’s birth name, however, was Joy Foster, and between her mother and father, she can claim Creek and Cherokee Indian, African American, Irish, and French heritage. She is an official member of the Muscogee tribe of the Creek Nation, and much of her poetry derives themes from growing up with a mixed ancestry, never feeling that she was fully accepted by any race or ethnicity.

In 1970, with the permission of her family, Joy Foster took the surname of her paternal grandmother, Naomi Harjo. An enrolled member of the Muskogee tribe, Harjo credits her great-aunt, Lois Harjo Ball, who died in 1982 and to whom Harjo dedicated her book She Had Some Horses (1983), with teaching her about her Indian identity.

Joy Harjo wrote on her blogsite:

It can be disconcerting to hear someone else speak or sing your
poems. “Eagle Poem/Song” has been licensed and recorded and
performed in many different, mostly classically European styles.
The poem is transformed, becomes something else. The other
recordings or performances become stepchildren of a sort.
They make a new life for themselves in the arms of someone
else’s music. It’s always a little strange. The words are the
constant, yet the context changes. The poem goes from wearing
red cowboy boots and jeans to wearing furs, a glint of diamonds
and heels—and hangs out in different company.

For much of America I am a ghost. I learned this first several
years ago when I was invited to perform at Auburn University
in Alabama. The university is located not far from the historic
grounds of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, at a bend in the
Talapoosa River. My several-greats-grandfather, Menawa (we spell
it Monahwee) fought Andrew Jackson in a last attempt to hold
onto our homelands in the East. Monahwee’s band of Red Stick
warriors were slaughtered. They were outnumbered by troops
and firepower. Monahwee survived though he had seven bullet
wounds. He was forced to go to Indian Territory, which
eventually became Oklahoma. He lived to be almost a hundred.
(One of my cousins promises to show me where he is buried
the next time I’m back there.) We still have many stories
of him. Even after the reluctant move to Indian Territory
he once again became a fugitive. He dove between a woman
and the husband who was beating her, on the streets of
Okmulgee. He had to go into hiding. Justice has both
global and intimate implications and is a familial theme.

After I walked the grounds of the battle I began to get sick.
And just before the reading I had acquired a terrible case
of bronchitis. (I’d never had bronchitis before and never
had it after.) The lungs energetically process grief. Still,
I had to perform. When I stood up to read I introduced myself
as Monahwee’s granddaughter. The audience gasped. I was a ghost.
According to American and Alabama state history, we had all
been destroyed on that day in March 27,1814.

Most of America still believes this and suffers affront when
we step outside of our place of silence in history and walk
into a classroom, show up in textbooks, or start casinos like
Mr. Trump.

My grandmother, Naomi Harjo, the daughter of Henry Marsey Harjo
and Katie Monahwee, played saxophone in Indian Territory.
My great-aunt Lois who made art, even had a BFA in art and
supported my path as a poet told me that because her family
dressed well and had cultivated European manners (their
allotted land was on the largest oil fields in the country)
most people took them for Jewish or Chinese. How could they
be Indians?

Cotton Mather may not have originated the deceitful conceit:
Indians are demons, not human beings, but he imprinted that
into the atmosphere at the birth of the American imagination.
Words are powerful and even have their own lives, make families,
after they leave our mouths. Words spoken at the birth of anyone
or anything are some of the most potent.