Native Americans

"it was that discipline of art which gave — you know, visioning is one way that — and the ability to vision and having tools for visioning — helps any of us out of almost impossible situations."

"The poems of Joy Harjo incorporate the aspects of identity, "children born, half-breed, blue eyes..." with the vision of spiritual life beneath the daily realities which face Indian women. She writes of earth, of change, and of the psychological genocide that is often so subtle we do not realize it exists. And she writes of the strength it takes to escape that destruction which often becomes destruction of the self."

"I marked myself once with a knife. I was disappearing into the adolescent sea of rage and destruction. The mark of pain assured me of my own reality. The cut could speak. It had a voice that cried out when I could not make a sound in my defense. I never made such a mark again. Instead I chose to slash art onto canvas, pencil marks onto paper, and when I could no longer carry the burden of history, I found other openings. I found stories. (North, p91)"

"Joy Harjo is one of the real poets of our mixed, fermenting, end-of-century imagination.""

"Political means great movers. To me, you can define political in a number of ways. But I would hope it was in the sense that it does help move and change consciousness in terms of how different peoples and cultures are seen, evolve."

"Joy Harjo is one of the more powerful voices among the second generation of the so-called Native American Renaissance, the movement that arose in the late 1960s with N. Scott Momaday, James Welch]], and Leslie Marmon Silko. Through these works, extraordinarily innovative in content but also in form, these Indian writers for the first time bore witness directly to their native world, interpreting it from within and freeing it from the portrayals by white writers that had been at best ambivalent, if not thoroughly distorted. The arduous, agonizing reconstruction of the tribal past, the dramatic confrontation with white civilization, the existential and artistic itinerary through present-day America, the shady liminal area inhabited by mixed-bloods-such are the major themes of a literary corpus that has now grown to considerable proportions, one that within a span of thirty years has been acclaimed by critics and readers alike for its vitality and its prodigious variety of voices and styles."

"When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go. (p171)"

"She's generous in her poetry, opening her sacred spaces and music to all, yet never naive or forgetful about hostility and hatred, as in "Transformations"... This is not forgiveness, turning the cheek. It's a claiming of power, the power of the poetic act, the courage and grace and knowledge it takes to reach, through "the right words, the right meaning” into that place in the other where "the most precious animals leave." It's about "tough belief," no sentimental gesturing. You hear it in the rhythms of Harjo's music, catching it in the bladed outlines of her images."

"I’ve been around Natives all over the — all over the world, but there’s something about Oklahoma Natives, you know, something about a Southern kind of openness, which makes more holes for laughter to go through, or for the ironic to live."

"Our class and our generation really shifted Native art, in the contemporary world art scene."

"In the short-root mind, a kind of mind of a people whose children don't even know the names of their great-grandparents, there is no past. Everything is right now. This kind of mind has its roots in the material culture, in what can be accumulated. My great-grandfather reminds me that we need to keep within the long-rooted mind. Because of the longer roots we have a larger structure of knowing from which to take on understanding. (p78)"

"Joy Harjo has always been one of my favorite writers."

"I realize writing can help change the world. I'm aware of the power of language which isn't meaningless words.... Sound is an extension of all, and sound is spirit, motion...Everything, anything that anybody says, it does go out and makes change in the world."

"The world is not disconnected or separate but whole. All persons are still their own entity but not separate from everything else-something that I don't think is necessarily just Native American, on this particular continent, or only on this planet. All people are originally tribal, but Europeans seem to feel separated from that, or they've forgotten it. If European people look into their own history, their own people were tribal societies to begin with and they got away from it. That's called "civilization."

"No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams. This legacy either will give those who follow us joy on their road or will give them sorrow. (p149)"

"think about it — about half of our lives, we’re out gathering information that we may not bring forth consciously, and for some of us, it’s like it’s a library that we go to when we need to know something. It works in that way."

"It seems es that the Native American experience has often been bitter. Horrible things have happened over and over. I like to think that bitter experience can be used to move the world, and if we can see that and work toward that instead of killing each other and hurting each other through all the ways that we have done it. (The world, not just Indian people, but the world.) JH: Sure, because we're not separate. We're all in this together. It's a realization I came to after dealing with the whole half-breed question. I realized that I'm not separate from myself either, and neither are Indian people separate from the rest of the world."

"People often forget that everything they say, everything they do, think, feel, dream, has effect, which to me is being Indian, knowing that. That's part of what I call "being Indian" or "tribal consciousness.""

"I think of poetry as a kind of lyricism. I think of poetry as a place beyond words, that we — you know, the paradox is, we use words to get there."

"I can remind people that they use poetry, go to poetry, frequently, and may not even know they are. A lot of song lyrics are poetry. They go to poetry for a transformational moment, to speak when there are no words to speak."

"The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth's peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming."

"European and American settlers soon took over the lands that were established for settlement of eastern tribes in what became known as Indian Territory. The Christian god gave them authority. Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music. (p19)"

"I don't see time as linear. I don't see things as beginning and ending. A lot of people have a hard time understanding native people and native patience-they wonder why we aren't out marching to accomplish something. There is no question that we have had an incredible history, but I think to understand Indian people and the native mind you have to understand that we experience the world very differently. For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and of everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness."

"what happens in this country is that Natives are — our stories, our presence has basically been disappeared from the American story because if it’s true — if it’s true that we’re still here, and if it’s true that what did happen was, you know, was grand theft and massacre — then there’s something inherently broken with the story that needs to be repaired. The other thing, too, is that we are here. And yet, people expect us to be in our traditional outfits, if we’re recognized. They don’t recognize us unless we’re mascots or we’re wearing our traditional outfits."

"It's like this, living is like a diamond or how they cut really fine stones. There are not just two sides but there are so many and they all make up a whole."

"I want to have some effect in the world; I want my poetry to be useful in a native context as it traditionally has been. In a native context art was not just something beautiful to put up on the wall and look at; it was created in the context of its usefulness for the people. (what do you hope your poems do?) JH: I hope that on some level they can transform hatred into love. Maybe that's being too idealistic; but I know that language is alive and living, so I hope that in some small way my poems can transform hatred into love."

"Poetry has given me a voice, a way to speak, and it has certainly enriched my vision so that I can see more clearly."

"I think a lot of America, when they think back in history and see Natives, we were hiding out in the woods, wearing rags and so on, but we had huge societies. I have a great, great, great uncle who had the largest horse-racing establishment on the Eastern Seaboard, a Muscogee (Creek) man and half Irish. And they wanted that, they wanted what we had."

"I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the [1979] Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in the livestock and the Navajo speakers were saying, "We need a word." How do we come up with a word that will tell the people that even though you can't see it, there is something dangerous here that can harm you and you can't use these waters, when it was the only source of water for their livestock?"

"I truly feel there is a new language coming about-look at the work of Meridel LeSueur, Sharon Doubiago, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker - it's coming from the women. Something has to be turned around. (1990)"

"Our physical living is held together by plant sacrifice. We eat, wear, and are sheltered by plants and plant material. Nearly all of our medicines are plant-derived. We need to take time with them, get to know them. (Part Six: Sunset, p287)"

"Many people assume that all Indian people lived a long time ago in a certain in a certain way and wore certain clothes, so if you don't look like that now, you're not really Indian people; but all cultures change. In our case, the change has certainly been abrupt and shocking, and we have had to a struggle to maintain the heritage within that terrible upheaval...Maybe all artists now must struggle to understand the connections between the world of heritage and the present world. Those worlds certainly do converge and maybe poems are points of convergence or, in some sense, paintings of that convergence. Maybe the artist has always worked to find those connections, but I think the struggle is especially important in these difficult times when the illusion of separation among peoples has become so clear...*For me the illusion is that we're separate. That's the illusion."

"...you pick up the saxophone again, I suppose it's like writing poetry, you are picking up the history of that. Playing saxophone is like honoring a succession of myths. I never thought of this before but: the myth of saxophone and here comes Billie Holiday and there's Coltrane. I love his work dearly, especially "A Love Supreme." That song has fed me. And all of that becomes. When you play you're a part of that, you have to recognize those people. (1993)"

"(In the dedication to In Mad Love and War you affirm that "the erotic belongs in the poetry, as in the self." Can you elaborate?) It has taken me years to divest myself of Christian guilt, the Puritan cloud that provides the base for culture in this country... or at least to recognize the twists and turns of that illogic in my own sensibility. In that framework the body is seen as an evil thing and is separate from spirit. The body and spirit are not separate. Nor is that construct any different in the place from which I write poetry. There is no separation. (1993)"

"You were born of a generation that promised to help remember. (p23)"

"I think the natural movement of love is an opening, a place that makes connections...You have to be open in that way to write a poem that really works, and I think there's always love involved in the act of creation."

"President Andrew Jackson went against Congress to remove Southeastern Native peoples from the lands there into Indian territory, or what became known as Oklahoma. Of course, we did not go willingly. There were several scuffles and fights and even massacres against this illegal removal. But we were force-marched from our homelands. I think a lot of America thinks it was only the Cherokee — or the so-called "five civilized tribes," that included the Muscogee (Creek) — but these kind of removals or forced migration or marches happened all over the country."

"when I went to first grade, when we started to learn how to read, I was so thrilled about what happened with symbols and that suddenly it opened up a world to me. I read all of the books in the first grade classroom and was sent into the second grade, and it became like a hunger for me. I liked the sounds, of course, I like the sound that words make. I like the percussion, the percussive elements and the images and so on. Just like the same kind of thing I heard in my mother's song-making. But the more I read and the more the ability grew, the deeper I could read, the more stories and I could be transported in — much the same way that I could be in that kind of visionary dream world when I was younger. And when we get to about 7 — and I think this happens to a lot of us — we forsake those realms of knowing and understanding, and reading helped give that back."

"I'm already tired of hearing about this madman Columbus and discovery. Yet, this quincentenary is important because crucial attention is being paid to the indigenous peoples of this america. I say there never was an "encounter." To have an encounter would be quite a groundbreaking event! That would require Euro-Americans and Europeans to meet native peoples with respect. I don't know that it's ever been done. There was always a hidden agenda, a hierarchy in which the lives of native peoples were counted as worthless, as were the cultures. What a tremendous loss for everyone! (1992)"

"Really, all poetry is a prayer, you have to go to the center place, inside you, to write poetry. (1994"

"...it is what we are made of, the stories that we carry with us. Stories create us. We create ourselves with stories. Stories that our parents tell us, that our grandparents tell us, or that our great-grandparents told us, stories that reverberate through the web. (1994)"

"We talk about needing food, clothing and shelter, but ... that's bodily. But we also need to feed our spirits, and we need to feed our souls, and maybe we even feed history and grow it one way or the other. (2020)"

"I think it’s easier to honor the male in our culture because it’s much more accepted. There are almost no truly powerful and sustained images of female power. None. Look at Marilyn Monroe? The Virgin Mary? And what images exist for Indian women? The big question is, How do we describe ourselves as women in this culture? It’s unclear."

"(What do you believe/feel/know lies at the heart of your body of work?) JH: Compassion. Joy. (2003)"

"In the middle of all the tension and destruction, there is a laughter of absolute sanity that might sound like someone insane. Maybe laughter is the voice of sense. I always tell my students that you cannot take everything too seriously because at will kill you. If you carry bitterness and hatred around, it gives you arthritis, rheumatism, cancer. Certainly, I have to be aware of everything that is happening, but I can't let it kill me. (1994)"

"I’m a great-grandmother now. I was a grandmother in my 30s and a teenage mother. And what that’s given me is a kind of a broader sense of the story field."

"Yes, we're still struggling to have a place here, though, ironically, we have a place. It's the fearful ones who try and keep us out who are still looking for a place. (2008)"

"Even a lost place within yourself is a place, albeit liminal, a kind of border town. You can make a temporary home if you need to from found materials and shreds of forgotten dreams, and you can even dress to appear somewhat ordinary as you run away, a refugee from yourself. I rolled up the map of my known world and set it aside for some kind of strange autonomy. (Part Four: Diamond Light, p187)"

"Alcoholism is an epidemic in native people, and I write about it. I was criticized for bringing it up, because some people want to present a certain image of themselves. But again, it comes back to what I was saying: part of the process of healing is to address what is evil. Evil causes disease, when something isn't settled. The very process of the healing is talking about it and recognizing it. Alcoholism is hiding, it comes out of an inability to speak. (1994)"

"A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected. Death does not sever the connection; rather, the story expands as it continues unwinding inter-dimensionally. (p30)"