Joy Harjo, poet: 'The land is not ours; we are just the administrators'

Joy Harjo is one of the most respected poets in the United States. As a member of the Muscogee Nation, she became the first Native American to be named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the Library of Congress, commonly referred to as the Poet Laureate of the United States. She renewed this honor twice and held it until 2022. Other writers to hold the title include Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Nobel laureates Louise Glück and Joseph Brodsky, as well as the incumbent Ada Limón.

In addition to being a poet, Harjo is a saxophonist, singer, artist and playwright. She has collected her memories of an intense life in two volumes of memoirs: Crazy brave (2012) and Poet Warrior (2021). Her existential journey led her to live in several states – including New Mexico, Iowa, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Colorado and Tennessee – before returning to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she was born in 1951. an abusive father before leaving for college in Santa Fe. There she discovered her literary calling.

Harjo is the author of ten collections of poetry and a handful of children’s books, non-fiction titles and plays. She has also published seven music albums. In October, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Joe Biden during a private ceremony at the White House. A few weeks later, Biden traveled to Arizona to apologize federally administered boarding school system that has ripped indigenous children and youth from their families for decades. These youth were held in facilities where their customs and languages were forbiddento assimilate them into the dominant white culture.

Ask. How would you define the place of Native Americans in American society?

Answer. It’s a complicated space, even though many things have changed since I came into this world. Racism and a caste system that organizes society based on money persist. But sometimes generations bring about change… and sometimes those changes are overturned by those who want to maintain power or maintain their greedy structures.

Q. Did you find it easy to make your voice heard when you started writing poetry in the mid-1970s?

A. As indigenous people we have always been at the mercy of waves of recognition by the ‘other’. I was fortunate to study at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a liberal arts college at the center of a cultural movement. After the occupation of Alcatraz (which lasted eighteen months, between 1969 and 1971) and the explosion of the indigenous rights movements, one of those waves of recognition emerged. Then the focus came back to us after Wounded Knee (the 1973 takeover of the South Dakota town of the same name by American Indian Movement activists). Years later it was Standing Rock (the 2016 protest against the construction of an oil pipeline in Sioux territory in North Dakota).

It always happens like this: there is a certain recognition and then we are forgotten for a while. In 2020, the Supreme Court’s ruling (which ruled that almost the entire eastern half of Oklahoma is Native territory) was critical, as was the (murder of) George Floyd. In recent years there have been developments in the cultural field: the series Reservation dogsthe Oscar nomination for actress Lily Gladstonemy reflection as poet laureate…

This time, I think the attention will continue because Native Americans are inextricably linked to what it means to be American.

Q. Where do you see the country going?

A. I am a child of the civil rights era. I fought for the rights of indigenous peoples, I grew up surrounded by poets and thinkers of the Chicano movement and everyone else who fought to change things. To see women’s rights are being dismantled makes me sad now. It makes me think we are at a crossroads. And not just in this country, because the whole world is connected, we are all connected to what it means to be human. Global warming, economic systems that no longer care for us and only care for the rich… we are seeing a major shift taking place.

Q. Some of the historic indigenous leaders inspired the rise of the environmental movement that is currently led by the youth.

A. You don’t have to go back to the wisdom of our ancestors to understand that it is not a good idea to get more from nature than you are going to use. You must act with respect. The land is not yours. We are just the administrators. We live in a world dominated by a power system that behaves greedily, that digs and digs and destroys river ecosystems, fisheries and everything else. It’s gone too far. There is a delicate balance in this world, and it must be preserved. Animals, plants, insects, people, rain, mountains… we are all part of a bigger story. If we act without respect, there are consequences.

Q. Did you like it? Killers of the Flower MoonMartin Scorsese’s latest film?

A. Yes and no. I don’t think it’s my place to be a film critic. Let’s say it’s an important movie, but at the same time it’s the classic movie that deals with Native American issues while the main characters are not Native Americans.

Q. Was the sack of the Osage Nation—described in the film—a well-known incident among Native Americans?

A. Among us, yes. The same thing happened in our Muskogee Nation (both are in the state of Oklahoma). Part of the land my family was assigned turned out to contain one of the largest oil fields in the world. They say it looked like an oil lake. My great-grandparents were millionaires and my grandfather was the first to own a car. When my father died and we inherited his oil stocks, they were worth about $30 a share. They then sent us a letter telling us that the mineral rights had been sold. I never looked into it enough, but there was clearly a lot of corruption. Murders also took place here. And one woman – who was one of the richest women in the world – was given a legal guardian, because it was thought at the time that if you were a full-blooded Native, you didn’t have the capacity to take care of your country. .

Q. When did you know you were going to be a poet?

A. As a child, I didn’t aspire to become one because I didn’t know Natives could do that. Painting was possible, because my grandmother painted. I didn’t decide to write until I started college, when I started hanging out with other poets. Then poetry took hold of me.

I was a single mother with two children. How was I going to earn a living? But it didn’t matter: once it had me in its grip, I didn’t do anything else. Luckily I succeeded in the end.

Q. One of your first dreams was about Emily Dickinson. You wrote that you identified with her idea of being a nobody.

A. As a child I really liked Dickinson. I still love her. She was an original poet. That’s something I’ve always looked for, both in writing and in music: not to look like anyone else.

Q. Over the years you have become someone. In 2019, you were named Poet Laureate of the United States.

A. You don’t dedicate yourself to poetry to achieve something like that. You do it because it moves you. Poetry gives you something. For me it is not limited to books. Rather, it is an art related to music and dance.

Recognition has never been easy for indigenous writers. When I was in college, I remember looking for N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (House made of the dawn 1968). And since it wasn’t in the literature section, but in the anthropology section, we were often put into non-literary categories.

It was a surprise when I got a call about the price. I thought I was getting a call from the Library of Congress to participate in a festival they put on every year in the summer. I already had an audience then. Then came the recognition.

Q. What role does poetry play in indigenous communities?

A. I have traveled around the world and have seen that poetry is more central in other societies than in the American one. However, during the pandemic, people took refuge in poetry, just as we use it in the special moments of our lives. Many of my art school classmates were less than a generation removed from what we call the “generation of orality.” That includes an awareness of the power of orality. Poetry is part of that. Some of this has been lost due to the digital revolution.

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