Sing

Have you ever felt as if you didn’t quite fit in the world? I sure have for most of my life. It used to concern me, but it doesn’t anymore. I have often been the odd one out, not in step, not holding beliefs of the mainstream, trying to conform but never with much success. I am my own person, and as long as I do no harm, march to my own drummer. That drummer is true, loyal, and helps me find my authenticity, heart center, and truth. I have been not enough, too much, not up to par, ridiculous and often looked at with disdain if not pity that I couldn’t conform. I met with violence as a child because of this lack of conformity, but somehow I survived and feel stronger in myself as I approach my older age and eightieth decade. Other women’s lives and challenges, who remained true to themselves despite struggles and nonconformity, inspire. But no one ever tried to “erase” me. I could just drift along on the fringes, out of sync but still functioning within society.  

Joy Harjo has always inspired me, perhaps equally for her tenacity as for her talent. Both were extraordinary. She experienced things much differently than I have. They tried to “erase” her. She lived deliberately, from her heart, and came from a long line of warrior women. 

photo credit PR Review

Joy was born on May 9th, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the eldest of four children, and her birth name was Joy Foster. She changed her surname to Harjo, which was her grandmother’s family name. Her father was a Muskogee Creek, and his mother came from a long line of respected warriors and speakers who served the Muskogee Nation. Joy’s great-great-grandfather was the famous leader, Monahwee, a leader in the Red Stick War against President Andrew Jackson during the 1800s. Her mother was of mixed Cherokee, Irish and French descent. Artists and musicians surrounded her while she was growing up. Her mother wrote songs, and both her grandmother and aunt were artists. These women were influential in her life and inspired her to explore her creative side. The first poem she wrote was during her eighth-grade year. 

Joy found her creativity and expression, but she also faced many challenges growing up. In her autobiography, she speaks about her father’s struggle with alcohol and the resulting violent behavior that led to her parent’s divorce. Later, her mother remarried, but to a man who also abused the family. This abuse and insecurity resulted in her losing her voice, not being able to speak out loud because of the trauma. She said, “I remember the teachers at school threatening to write my parents because I was not speaking in class, but I was terrified.” Of course, that would have made things much worse for her. Joy began to express herself through painting. 

At sixteen, Joy left home and enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Here she not only witnessed but because a part of what she calls, “the renaissance of contemporary native art.” Joy blossomed here and joined one of the first all-native drama and dance groups. She also wrote songs for an all-Native rock band. 

Joy attended the University of New Mexico as a pre-med student. However, the art and creativity around her that inspired her led to a switch in focus, from medicine to art, then creative writing after she met fellow Native American poets. At twenty-two, Joy began writing poetry. She published her first book, The Last Song, in 1975. 

The following year, Joy began the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at the University of Iowa. “Poetry found me,” she later said. But words weren’t enough. In her thirties, she taught herself the saxophone and fused jazz with verse, transforming her readings into something part concert, part ceremony. She brought drums, songs, and a new rhythm into halls that insisted on “pure” academic poetry. Critics called it unruly. She called it survival.

After graduating, Joy began taking film classes and teaching at various universities, including the Institute of American Indian Arts, Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Arizona, and the University of New Mexico. 

Joy Harjo is the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate. She launched Living Nations, Living Words — a map of Native poets across the country, ensuring that no one could ever make the claim again, “We don’t know any Native writers.” It was a direct answer to centuries of silencing. Joy recalls standing before a room of white male poets who were mocking her and dismissing her “Indian voice,” heckling that she didn’t belong there. With her head held high despite her shaking hands, and did not argue or respond. Instead, she began reciting one of her poems, one so fierce that the entire room was silenced. 

Joy published eleven books of poetry including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, several plays, children’s books, and non-fiction works, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Joy Harjo has won many awards for her writing including; the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, a PEN USA Literary Award, the Poets & Writers Jackson Poetry Prize, two NEA Fellowships, a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2009, she won a NAMMY (Native American Music Award) for Best Female Artist of the Year.

What makes Joy Harjo’s story so powerful is not just her art but her persistence. She walked into rooms that did not want her, carrying both her own pain and the memory of her people. She turned humiliation into fire, violence into testimony, invisibility into presence. Her life shows that resistance isn’t always loud or public. Sometimes it is a woman at a podium, mocked into silence, who decides to sing instead.