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- [00:00]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Hey rethinking listeners. This week we're excited to share a special episode from the podcast no Small Endeavor. Hosted by Lee C. Camp, the show explores what it means to live a good life through conversations with remarkable thinkers, artists and change makers. In this episode, Lee sits down with Joy Harjo, the three term US Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Joy opens up about poetry's power as ceremonial language in times of crisis. Her journey from Native rights activism to becoming one of America's most celebrated poets, and how her work emerged from a need for healing, healing and justice. It's a moving conversation about resilience, identity and the role of art in helping us navigate our most challenging moments. We hope you find this episode thought provoking and inspiring. And if you're curious to hear more, you can find no Small Endeavor wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy the show.
- [00:50]
Lee C. Camp
I'm Lee Seacamp and this is no Small Endeavor exploring what it means to live a good life.
- [00:59]
Joy Harjo
Poetry. It's ceremonial language that taps on your heart and says, okay, let's pay attention here.
- [01:08]
Lee C. Camp
That's three term U.S. poet Laureate Joy Harjo on this, the first in our three part poetry series.
- [01:15]
Joy Harjo
So my work came about out of a need for healing. I mean, justice is part of that.
- [01:21]
Lee C. Camp
We discuss the Native poets who inspired her, the importance of history and place in her writing, and her new book, Girl Warrior.
- [01:29]
Joy Harjo
That's some of the most subtle kindness perhaps is to look at somebody and see them say, okay, you have a story and here we are in this moment. So I honor you, Paul.
- [01:43]
Lee C. Camp
Coming right up. I'm Lee C. Camp. This is no Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a a good life. Years ago, I found myself particularly grieved by yet another new war and what I understood to be the fear and falsehoods that were fueling that so called preemptive war. One day, especially heavy, I was biking in South Nashville and came upon a weeping willow. Its own saddened branches bowed down to the earth, heavy with the griefs of the creation. And thus I was reminded, yes, we must contend with our crises and challenges, with the devastation of war, political unrest and oppressions by the mighty. Yet none of these, alas, are new. However, the specifics of the challenges of our own day pose hitherto unknown challenges, such as the continued rapid unfolding of climate change and its attendant devastation, or the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, its proponents professing utopian like goods. While we also wonder regarding the potential devastation it might leave in its wake. What can it mean to live a good life in the midst of such seasons. Grappling with that question, I remembered a line from my friend and NSC friend, poet Chris Wyman. In his beautiful memoir, My Bright Abyss, he asks the question, what is poetry's role when the world is burning poetry? At such a time as this, some might be tempted to answer simply nothing. But maybe not only not nothing, maybe something necessary, something deeply human, maybe something indispensable. In part one of this series, we are pleased to welcome Joy Harjo, distinguished poet, musician and three term US Poet Laureate. The second poet in history to hold this prestigious role for a third term. Joy is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and much of her work draws on First Nation storytelling and histories. Her extensive literary achievements include 10 celebrated poetry collections, notably Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, shortlisted by the Griffin Prize, and in Mad Love and War, winner of an American Book Award, Joy has been inducted into the National Women's hall of Fame and awarded a National Humanities Medal. Julie, we're very honored to have you with us today.
- [04:18]
Joy Harjo
Well, it's good to be here.
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Lee C. Camp
Thank you so much for your time. How about you? Began to formulate an answer perhaps to that role of how you think of your work as a poet, giving us a response to the challenging times in which we find ourselves.
- [04:33]
Joy Harjo
That's my whole next book of poetry.
- [04:35]
Lee C. Camp
Well, it's good timing then.
- [04:38]
Joy Harjo
Well, maybe the world is always burning. Certainly right now we're at quite a crisis of a magnitude. I don't know, I mean, I think of Krakatoa and that eruption and plague and all those things and dictators that rise up and fall down, but we're in quite a mess right now. And when I'm with Native people, we say, well, we've been through this before and we'll still be here after. But I think the work of poets, I mean, you think about how is the world constructed and what kind of world are we in of? I mean, we seem to be okay, and then here comes hatred and here comes dictators and here comes this onrush of struggle and suffering, poets, philosophers, people fixing cars, whatever. We all, you know, think about why are we here? What do we, what does it mean? And when we construct this world essentially with our dreams and our dreams get formulated into our thoughts and our thoughts into words and then into action. And poetry demands another kind of language. It's not everyday language, it's ceremonial language, language of ritual, language that not just taps you on the shoulder, but maybe taps on your heart or at the edge of your soul and says, okay, let's pay attention here. It shifts us into deeper perceptions of connection. So the role of poets is to, you know, we're witness. All of us are witness to history. But poets bring that refined and tough language to the attention, to the oral aural, to the oral attention of the people. Because, you know, language is sound. It's resonance.
- [06:33]
Lee C. Camp
You've spoken about how this is very personal for you. At one point, you said, in a strange kind of sense, writing frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice because I have to. It is my survival. What's that looked like for you, for your writing, your poetry to be your survival?
- [06:57]
Joy Harjo
I don't know. When I said that, that was probably a little ways back. I think when I first began writing, I began writing as part of native rights movements. I had no plan to become a poet or a writer. When I started writing poetry, I was a studio art major and involved in native rights movements. And I didn't do it consciously and say, well, I'm going to be a poet now. I started writing out of, you know, after hearing these eloquent speeches and responses to community people being questioned by kennecott copper, coal companies, companies of extraction who were going on to native lands in the southwest, not far from Albuquerque and new Mexico. And the native communities would call in native students because we were getting educated just to witness or to listen or to help and to hear those people speak. And how they made connections between the land, between history and what being a human being meant to them, and how it was connected, inspired me, or just took hold in me. And I started writing poetry out of that impetus. So my work came about out of a need for healing. I mean, justice is part of that. You know, justice for anyone becomes a kind of healing.
- [08:26]
Lee C. Camp
Elsewhere. I read that you said the importance of you becoming a student at the university of New Mexico had been very significant, that you began to understand how much language, putting together words can make a difference in terms of transformation of nations, transformation of lives, and so on. What do you remember about that moment in which you began to see the power of words in that way?
- [08:48]
Joy Harjo
It was hearing native poets for the first time. I mean, I grew up in Tulsa, and we have. We could see the work of native artists everywhere, including, like, my aunt, whose painting is behind me, Aunt Lois Harjo, and others in the community. I mean, we were aware. We knew the artists, knew their names, but poetry was something else to. Teachers were terrified of it. They approached it, you know, as something they had to do. And if I put myself back again as a student, you know, in eighth grade or sixth grade, and the teacher said, okay, here are songs on paper. Let's listen to them. And then if they read them, that would have been so much more magical than saying, we have to do this. We're mandated by the state to do this section on poetry. So I'm going to labor through it and get through it as quick as I can, you know. But we didn't read Native poets in state history. We all had a required Oklahoma State history. Native history was only like the first few paragraphs, and yet it's everything here in this state. So I began hearing Native poets. I think the first Native poet I met was Simon Ortiz, Acomo Pueblo. And what struck me was that he wrote poems that were about our lives and in the cadence of the English that we spoke in our contemporary young Native communities. Although he was older, he was kind of a different generation than me. But that opened the door. Leslie Silko, who. She was writing her novel Ceremony when I first met her, she was living in Alaska and came to visit, and we became close and had quite a correspondence for a while. But her poetry, she's a wonderful poet as well as short story writer and novelist, but that poetry was in her novels. Just like, you know, Toni Morrison, one of the finest novelists of our time. Her novels are poetry. I mean, there's an attention to language. And Jim Welch, Blackfoot writer, who is known for his novels, but he wrote one of the best American books of poetry called writing the earth. Boy 40. And when I heard them, and then I was going through these experiences as a young Native woman and as being part of different gatherings of people telling stories and organizing that, I started writing poetry.
- [11:24]
Lee C. Camp
You mentioned that in your state mandated Oklahoma history, there was very little attention given to Native poets or Native history. Were you aware as a child of much of that history or much of that overlooked history or that literary tradition? Or was this something that you only came to learn as you began hearing these poets in this time in college.
- [11:48]
Joy Harjo
When I was growing up? Well, my father was Muscogee Creek and my mother was. Was Cherokee. I don't know how much her mother grew up in a Cherokee family, but they were not enrolled. But what I grew up hearing, I think from both of them, was Native history. And my father especially was very pronounced in his pride and in his family. He comes from quite historically important family. And so I would hear some of that later. I found out that we're related to Alexander Posey, a major American poet who is also Muscogee Creek, distantly related. You know, I didn't know as much as I know. You know, I went digging around. I think it was a different age then. You know, my father was born in 1930, and that was. I think of it as an age of chaos, especially for Native communities coming out of removal, you know, in the 1800s and trying to reconstruct and everything that went on. And it was our generation that brought everything up again and began organizing. But it was very clear to my father about the injustices going on. And it was heartbreaking. I think that's what he died of more than anything, was a broken heart. But he was still rowdy.
- [13:16]
Lee C. Camp
You've written in your book Crazy Brave about some of the struggles of your father and about his alcoholism. And how do you see his alcoholism related to that kind of broken heart that you just discussed?
- [13:30]
Joy Harjo
Well, what I like, and I can't remember who said it, but years ago, some of us were sitting around younger Native people with an older person, and we were talking about addiction and alcohol, which is, you know, it infects everybody, not just natives. But he was saying, well, people are just looking for a vision. And that's always stayed with me. There is that nice little buzz at first that everybody kind of wants to ride, and then it feels good. And then the thought of going back into the real world gets a little bit difficult. I can read a new poem, actually.
- [14:10]
Lee C. Camp
Yeah, please.
- [14:11]
Joy Harjo
It'll be in the new book. And I had it pulled right up here. It's called Overwhelm. There was a door between the men arguing and me in the small town hotel where I returned late to my room. Then they went quiet, which can be more dangerous. I became stealthy in my mind. Bad spirits find doorways in stupor. I used to seek lift from the overwhelm and drink. I'd ride over the meadow of doubt flowers to the field of miracles where anything was possible in the blur. I never drank alone. It was the circle that drew me from the haunting to the waters. We remembered songs that we thought we had forgotten and we were beautiful beyond belief. The profane danced wildly with a sublime. How ridiculous now to think we were happy in the quick shelter we sought from truth. I now understand how a whole country can drink from the waters of illusion and go down and how easy fury can turn to gunshots then give way to torpor. I needed a respite from this story. Then as in now. I counted the steps from midnight to home to your Arms, the dark skies of eternity were lit with small fires they showed me the way.
- [15:55]
Lee C. Camp
As you think about that vision of escape from the torpor that you described there, and earlier you used the language of the tragedies of history and that they were heartbreaking, what are specific ways that that historical drama, trauma, impacted your own childhood?
- [16:21]
Joy Harjo
I think as a kid, you're just a kid, and your world, you assume that, you know, that's just how people live. Like any kid, I think the perspective starts widening, or it can. It depends on your mindset, you know, from child. I mean, it's natural. There's a perspective of infancy, which could be of eternity more than we think, because we're fresh from that doorway to the perspective. When you're around seven and you move out into the larger world and you start to see other circles of community and you make your own community with friends, I think that's when you start realizing, oh, I'm native. Okay, this is this and this is that. Sometimes you torque yourself into ways to fit, or you get edgy in your ways of not fitting. And then when you reach adolescence, it's at a fever, you know, this fever of perception. And I have a new book out in October called Grow Warrior, Their Coming of Age Stories. And in one of the stories, I talk about adolescence. I talk about how there's a chrysalis period, and adolescence is, case in point. You go from being a boy to a man or a young person to an adult. And that's quite a process. And I liken it to being in a chrysalis and going from being a caterpillar to a butterfly. And yet how we are in that now, perhaps as a country, we're in the gooey moment of chaotic, where you're no longer a caterpillar, but you're not a butterfly yet, and you don't know how it might happen or what's going to happen. And so I think too, you know, as a kid, you move through time differently. When you get to my age, there's a huge shift. I love the perspective from here. So as a child growing up, I mean, certainly the history was there. I mean, there was the race riots that had happened in Tulsa. There was a lot of segregation. The world was black and white and native. My community was mostly native and white. There was a little bit of overlap, but I didn't really know about the race riot. I didn't really understand how we wound up there from Georgia or Alabama. They were realities that we crossed into. And then the word was in our schools it was all America and white America. We didn't read black writers either. We read mostly writers from England or from the Northeast. My idea of a poet was an old white guy declaiming in a raincoat, you know, even though there was Emily Dickinson, but even she was in a raincoat, you know, in a country far away or there are daffodils in a field or it didn't had nothing to do with me or my history or how poetry comes from history and place. And then I came to love Yeats, but not through what anybody was teaching in my education. My mother loved poetry, but, you know, I came to poetry really through music, through song lyrics. But then I think now of. I would like to think that what was happening is the students were beginning to see that all of America, you know, there's poets, all of us, all the cultures and various streams of poetry, identity. We had become present in the classroom in a way that was not when I was a student in the 50s and then the early 60s and then now it's within a few flicks of the wrist of a crazy man. It's undone by one person. By one person. I mean, he has support, obviously, but, you know, no one is minding the store, so to speak.
- [20:25]
Lee C. Camp
Foreign. You're listening to no Small Endeavor and a conversation with Joy Harsho. I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at Lee at no Small Endeavor. We would be most appreciative if you would go to your favorite podcast tab where you're listening right now, and write up a glowing five star review of no Small Endeavor. Those reviews help extend the reach of the beauty, truth and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world. And we'd be grateful for you taking two minutes to go out and do that for us. Coming up, Joy and I discussed the complexity of Muscogee history, democracy's roots in native culture, and the importance of awe in a life well lived. I understand that you discovered there's a complexity about your own story in that your father was raised with a lot of wealth. And maybe it was what it was, your grandfather, great, great grandfather, who owned the Harjo Oil Company, and that your father had actually been raised in a 21 room house. Yeah, but you'd only learn this later. So what was that discovery like and how did you make sense of that?
- [21:54]
Joy Harjo
Well being Native? I mean, we've been so equated with a trauma story or that All Natives are poor or all Natives are this. Our stories are complex. Someone reminded of a story, they used to call her Creek Mary, who in the 1700s, a Muscogee woman who garnered a lot of power by marrying a trader and also garnering a lot of trade and being an asset to her community by, in a way, being kind of a diplomat, you know, a major force in the trade economy, which was what was primary in the Southeast at that time. So it didn't surprise me. I mean, I knew that there had been oil money. There's a story, and I've been collecting research. We've heard, of course, in a very big way, culturally, about the Osage and their story. But, you know, the Muscogee people have a story, too. Same thing with the oil companies. They would come in and kill off parents to gain guardianship. There's all those kinds of stories. So that my grandparents survived that. I mean, my grandfather. My great grandfather became quite a. An interim principal chief. But he was very respected for his humbleness and his take and his studiedness on what was going on in our community, say, in the 20s and the early 1900s, and was quite a respected person. He had the first car, and I just found out recently, he had our Harjo oil company, and I wonder what happened to that. And other family members were sharecroppers on my mother's side. My grandmother, who was a painter, also played saxophone in Indian territory. Obviously, put that in your images of Native people. You know, we run the gamut. Our story as Muskogee people as a whole is very different than, say, the Lakota and Pine Ridge, which gets presented as the primary story of Native people. But we're not all Plains people. You know, our music, our culture is different, like Pacific Northwest people, very different. You're dealing with water, other ways of getting food, a lot of salmon, et cetera. I mean, that all makes a difference for any community, not just anthropological studies of Natives, but it works the same for Jewish New York City. How you bring food to the table. That's culture.
- [24:30]
Lee C. Camp
A moment ago, you spoke of companies of extraction, which, of course, is kind of classic colonialism. And I'd love to hear you share a little bit with us about how you began. I think in your book In Mad Love and War, you began to think about those sorts of themes. How have you begun to process this sort of systemic reality of colonialism and the sorts of ways that such power can wield such devastation in its wake?
- [25:03]
Joy Harjo
How does anybody process it, really? I mean, it's really come to Bear with this current administration Allowing extraction and public lands and protected lands. I can remember hearing old people who were probably my age then saying they're not going to stop until they take everything, but we'll still be here. And yet I just don't want to believe I can't. I have children, grandchildren. They're all our children. In the work I do in traveling, I meet a lot of young people. And I see them in their hearts and what they're doing and the story they're bringing forth together. So I know it will go on, but at what cost to all of us? And it reminds me how much power one person can have. And that ultimately each of us is a power source, every one of us. And so we have to figure out, you know, what it is that we were put here to do, what we need to take care of and develop that and go to work doing that.
- [26:22]
Lee C. Camp
When you think of exemplars who have withstood the overreach of power, who are some particular images or stories that you carry with you to fuel your own.
- [26:36]
Joy Harjo
Courage, Stories of courage, I think it's everyday people. I still remember her, and I don't remember her name, but this young Navajo woman. When I was a student and I'd be working so hard, and I went to work and I had a full load, and I had two kids and pretty much on my own. And then I'd feel a little ragged. And then she would come into a meeting, and she was just well put together with. I think she had about four or five little children with her, all very well behaved. And she was like me, taking a full load. And I was just thinking, this is, you know, what it takes. I honor what it would take for her to get up and cook and fix everything and get the kids ready. And all the things that you have to do to make a family. So much so that before I stopped painting and switched my major to creative writing, I was going to start working on a series of women warriors or warriors, period. Because the people that you see in history books Are usually those picked out, not by the community. I think about who would the community pick? Who do we see that no one else sees? And those are people. Sometimes they go through incredible hardship. Maybe the family knows and no one else knows. But then they manage to get their high school diploma, you know, or they manage to make it through college. They manage despite having to take care of family members. And, you know, there's all kinds of stories of people who have survived incredible things. And nobody knows their story.
- [28:41]
Lee C. Camp
In Your memoir, Crazy Brave, you say, I am seven generations from Monawi, with the rest of the Red Stick contingent, fought Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in what is now known as Alabama. Our tribe was removed unlawfully from our homelands. Seven generations can live under one roof. That sense of time brings history close within breeding distance. I call it ancestor time. Everything is a living being, even time, even words. That passage struck me with a particular poignance because I had read this right before going home to Alabama a month ago. And my grandparents lived in Dadeville, which is just very close by where the Battle of Horseshoe Bend happened. And I was raised in Talladega, which there was another battle with Andrew Jackson that is memorialized in a little historical marker there in downtown Talladega. And those two battles in Talladega and at Horseshoe Bend, where all my people are from and where I was from, led, of course, to the displacement of your people on the Trail of Tears. And so having read that and then being home and making a special stop by the historical marker, I didn't know what to do with that, other than to be aware of the sad and poignant way in which all of a sudden I found this connection with you, my heritage, that profited off of the injustice to your heritage. Maybe my question is, I know you use this notion of story field, but maybe that seems like this sort of awareness that we're all a part of this shared story. We find ourselves at different places in the story, but it certainly draws us in a profound way, I think, to see one another's humanity, at least at a minimum, in a way that we might not otherwise.
- [30:56]
Joy Harjo
Yeah, that's the complexity. And actually, I need to correct that. In the book, I'm actually six generations. I really wanted it to be seven because of the seven generations, but it's not. It's Six Generations and American Sunrise. That book deals directly with that history and how Menajhwi and his family, he had different wives, and one family was totally killed at Horseshoe Bend. The women, the children. And I'm descended from Betsy Kozer. And he went on the trail. I have the emancipation records in that book bending our way, and it has a lot of those emancipation officer records about him and the Fish Pond people. Fishpond Meeko and his family traveling together from Talladega, Alabama, to On the Trail of Tears and how Manajui liked to party. I mean, I like those human things, those human moments. But, yeah, I mean, what do you do with that? I downloaded a biography of Andrew Jackson because I'm Trying to figure something out, trying to understand people, making people inhuman is a problem. So that you can't sit and talk and reason with each other and do so without an assumption that because of your culture or someone like skin color or any of those things gives your opinion more value or makes you more of an authority or allows you to dominate. And that was the whole point of democracy, in a way. And the way it was set up based on Native cultures, the Iroquois and the Muskogee, is about consensus and talking respectfully and listening. Listening is a big part of it. One on one with groups, and then there's a breakdown. I think guns enter into it in a big way. Gun power, authority, assumption of authority based on religion, which has been a major destructor in the world in terms of forcing your way onto other people and so on. So that, yeah, I think about it. I think about the contradictions, the contradictions even of how we wind up here, you and me, or how I had a position at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and my husband and I went all over that part of the world. We found houses that some of our family members had lived in. And I remember going to what they said was Sequoyah's cabin, the birthplace not far from Knoxville, and going in there and discovered that Sequoyah fought with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. He fought against Muscogee Creek people. I think about what was going on then. People trying to survive, seeing the onslaught, not knowing, you know, and other people, settlers coming in, many of them just trying to have a little piece of land or a home from a place where they had nothing or they were starving or no chance to have anything. And it's complex. But then I think the simplicity is that it would be like somebody in a spaceship coming in and saying, okay, you guys, we're going to tear down your churches or your places and you've got to live like us. And marching your kids into their schools and trying to make them like them. And yet here we are as two people, and that's important. And I think that's going back to the original question, is where poetry comes in. To be able to sing together or to come to an understanding in a way that's beyond the small human mind.
- [35:03]
Lee C. Camp
Coming up is a short break followed by our conversation with on the long shadow of colonialism, the power of story, and the so called ordinary people who have inspired joy. You mentioned religion and the role of religion and certainly the destruction of the imposition of religion. What was your conception experience of religion or God or faith as a child and how has that developed or changed?
- [35:46]
Joy Harjo
Oh, man. I don't want to get in trouble talking about religion because I already have made enemies because of a few things I've said, like saying it's been a major cause of conflict and wars all over the world. If I go back to my earliest consciousness, and I can remember even being an infant and even before, but to the earliest consciousness, for me, creation was being an incredible awe. And I found that outside and I found it with the trees and found it usually not where human beings were, you know, but I would see it in acts of kindness. I was, I think, deeply spiritually aware as a child. And I think maybe most children are. And then they get these ideas or they learn things. And by the time you go to school, you're being perhaps mined in a way, going back to extraction, economy or extraction. You're being mind or your energy. We start to lose track. I mean, little children are very creative. They don't judge, but they repeat what they see. And yet I think people still come in as who they are, even as they come up through families. And my mom was. She called herself a Methodist. And my grandfather Henry Marcy Harjo, the one who had the oil company was, you know, he and my grandmother, Katie Minaji, met at a boarding school. I think they had been orphaned after the trail in church. I mean, that's all church. But you know, Muskogee people are very spiritually minded people. And I think they use then religion. They would. They would make it fit the culture in a way. And you see that with the churches and the Pueblos, you know, where there's a native Catholicism and so on. And that's sort of what Muscogee people did in the way that some of the Muscogee churches, where they arranged them somewhat like the ceremonial ground. So it's difficult to talk about. I mean, I started going to. I got involved in an evangelical church because they were coming to the school and putting up notices about vacation Bible school. And they had candy attached to it. So of course I was hooked and went. And I loved the stories, you know, and I loved the innate spirituality of it. But what I had a very hard time with and what eventually made me leave was that this is the only way. And I thought that doesn't make sense. And there was a lot of racism. I mean, there were people who wouldn't talk to me. I mean, I'm light skinned, but there were people, because I was a native, would not sit with me, would not talk to me. But there were other people who were wonderful and treated me like a relative. And I just went there because it became a kind of refuge, the spirituality beneath all of the judgment and the racism that was there. So I left that. But really, I'd like to think of. Well, it's about. For me, my understanding. It's about this incredible love beyond belief, you know, and then we humans, we're who we are. We get in here and make stories and get ourselves into a lot of trouble.
- [39:35]
Lee C. Camp
You said that in many cases, you experience this all at the creation or in nature or moved by kindness. And I'm just wondering what particular pictures come to mind of nature or acts of kindness that especially move you in that way.
- [39:54]
Joy Harjo
I've had incredible mentors in poetry and healing and healing arts and in just family. And I think for somebody to give of themselves, I see that a lot in teachers. And I experienced it with teachers, like in sixth grade, where she didn't have to say anything, and I would come in and I was going through some rough stuff, and she could see that. But there was something in her manner she didn't have to. I didn't want her pity. I didn't need pity. But I just felt that she saw me. And to me, that's some of the most subtle kindness, perhaps, is to look at somebody and see them, even in a moment, even somebody on the street, is just to see them say, okay, you have a story. And, you know, your story is just as important as mine. And here we are in this moment. So I honor you, and I honor that you're part of me in this story. I remember the writer Meridell Le Sueur. I had two kids, and they met her not long before. And I was just starting to write poetry, and one day I get a cash in the mail, you know, that I absolutely needed for food. And there it was. And that's part of it. You know, it's just reaching out and to people, not necessarily people that, you know, you don't have to know people. And I like watching it in children, innately in children. I've seen it in animals, too.
- [41:43]
Lee C. Camp
So going back to what you said there about being seen and being seen as someone who has a story, I would love it as we close, if you would do an experiment with us and if you were to perhaps tell Joy Harjo's story in brief fashion, what would be the key moves or highlights of who you are?
- [42:08]
Joy Harjo
Oh, man. I actually wrote something. I. I said that my mother was the sun and I was the Moon, you know, and I was observant and fierce and dark, dark in my countenance. And then it took a lot of trials and dealing with dragons and struggles. And then at some point there's a blooming with words, words and music and they start to bloom. And that plant makes friends with plants all over the world. Something like that. That's not very good.
- [42:51]
Lee C. Camp
Well, I think that it's quite lovely. And I would say we're grateful for the way in which you have blossomed and bloomed with words and the way in which you have sought to bear witness to history and bear witness to peace and bear witness to reconciliation.
- [43:12]
Joy Harjo
I have one story, actually, about a plant. We think of animals, but I wrote it's a story in my book Girl Warrior. And somebody gave me an African violet plant. I never had one, but it bloomed and bloomed and bloomed and you have to water it a certain way. And I had to leave in. I left instructions for watering, but I didn't for that plant. And by the time I got back, the roots had started rotting. And I tried to make the plant come back and it tried, but it wasn't. It always gave me flowers. It bloomed constantly. And so I told it, I said, I really miss your flowers. And right before it died, it gave me one flower. And I think, okay, I know it heard me. You know, I had that relationship. And life is in all things. You know, there's communication with all things, even planets and our organs in our bodies, you know, of course, with each other. Sometimes there's communication, sometimes not. You know, there's resonances. But that's a story. I think, of a planet hardly had anything left, but it used some of its last energy to give me a flower.
- [44:30]
Lee C. Camp
Well, thank you for the flowers that you've given us. And talking to Joy Harjo, three term US Poet Laureate. Thank you, Joy, so much for your work and thank you so much for your time with us today.
- [44:41]
Joy Harjo
Thank you. Foreign.
- [44:54]
Lee C. Camp
Here'S one closing take on today's interview. As you heard, Joy Harjo's people six generations ago were forcibly removed from their land by the United States federal government from the region in which my own people four or five generations ago took up residence. Her people's Muscogee language still lingers there. There's Che Hawk, the highest point in Alabama, a Muscogee word for high place. There's Talladega, my hometown, another Muscogee word meaning boundary. And still today, the most prominent historical marker in my hometown celebrates the defeat of Joy's people regarding the so called Battle of Talladega, the marker reads, this short battle was a decisive victory for the young United States and Indians lost about 50, Jackson lost 20. In succeeding battles, Old Hickory broke. Here I'll replace the racial slur with the phrase Native American. In succeeding battles, Old Hickory broke the Native Americans power in the Southeast forever permanently claiming this land for a greater nation. Describing all this to Joy and I used the word poignancy, this sadness infused with a bittersweet regret. Something heartbreaking with no simple solution. Yes, said Joy, it's complex. And yet here we are, two people seeking to come to some understanding that transcends just one small human mind. These days, many prefer to ignore the heartbreaking poignancy, the complexity. Yet it's not clear to me how willful blindness will ever serve us well. Amidst such complexity. Joy pointed us to two things we can do. First, bear witness. Put yourself in another's shoes, even if you have to imagine alien ships tearing down your home, abducting your children. And then, bear witness. Second, practice all. Awe at the beauty of sky and river and land and plants that give us one last bloom and blossom. And awe in simply seeing another human being, each carrying their own story. All this seems to be no Small Endeavor, and it's one closing take on our rich conversation with Joy Harjo. You've been listening to no Small Endeavor and our interview with Joy Harjo. Her new book, Girl Warrior, comes out October 7th. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education and religion. Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible, Christy Bragg, Jacob Lewis, Carried Harmon, Jason Cheesley, Sophie Byard, Kate Hayes, Mary Evelyn Brown and Audrey Griffith. Our theme song was composed by Tim Lauer. Thanks for listening and let's keep exploring what it means to live a new a good life together. No Small Endeavor. It's a production of Tokens Media LLC.
- [48:25]
Joy Harjo
And Great Feeling Studios.
- [48:30]
Podcast Host/Announcer
That was an episode of no Small Endeavor with Lee C Camp. You can find more episodes wherever you get podcasts or by clicking the link in our episode notes.