9/21/12

Recent Radio Interview On First Person Radio


RECENT Radio Interview
On First Person Radio
with Laura Waterman Wittstock


Hear Interview:
Joy’s Interview is at 7:40 in the recording.
http://migizi.org/media/FPR_2012-09-12.mp3

More Information: http://tinyurl.com/6tna7hm

Joy at National Book Festival in DC


Reading and Book Signing

Saturday, September 22

At the DC National Mall
10:55-11:40 am Joy Harjo/Book signing at noon.

More Information: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/author/joy_harjo

9/11/12

Joy Harjo RADIO Interview September 12



First Person Radio
Wed. September 12, 2012
KFAI   9 - 10 am Central Time
Local Stations: 90.3 Minneapolis & 106.7 St. Paul


Laura Waterman Wittstock interviews Joy Harjo. about her new book - Crazy Brave. Its a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo’s tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary.

9/5/12

September 8th Joy Harjo Performance



September 8th
Joy Harjo Performance 
and she will MC the Indian Summer Music Festival
7 pm
Indian Summer Music Festival, Milwaukee Lakefront
Henry Maier Festival Park, 200 North Harbor Drive, Milwaukee, WI

September 6th Poetry and Music Performance w/ Larry Mitchell


September 6th 
Poetry and Music Performance w/ Larry Mitchell followed by book signing
Returning The Gift Writers and Storytellers Conference 2012
7 pm
Weasler Auditorium at Marquette University 
1506 W. Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, WI


9/3/12

My last Muscogee Nations News Column: July 2012



Itʻs summer and Indian stories are in the making everywhere. The days are long and languid and the nights are warm and full of singing, full of story potential. Everybody’s singing stomp dance, powwow, church, and humming popular songs with ear buds in their ears. And it’s not just two-legged humans but all the other humans: birds, frogs, insects and too many mosquitoes.

One of these days Iʻd like to start collecting some of those contemporary “old” Indian stories. Many of them have their beginnings in the summer, but are usually told on long winter nights. One category of these stories that youʻll never find in the publishing world is painting stories. Like many of you, (some of you behaved, like my sister Margaret) I lived through those wild Indian parties and 49ʻs as a high school student at the Institute of American Indian Arts and a student at the University of New Mexico. I see them now as part of a test, a kind of coming of age. Some of us made it through, barely, some of our friends…didnʻt…and others are still stuck there trying to catch the thrill of the first high. Some good stories came out of the journey because we needed them to make it.  Laughter is the grease that slides us through difficulty, even tragedy.

Painting was a tradition at those parties. The first person to pass out was the canvas. We young women would dig through our purses and backpacks and pull out fingernail polish, tape, glue, cotton balls and any other items that might be decorative. (I hear superglue later made an appearance.) Oh, and scissors if the painting posse was being especially devious. And then the victim was…decorated on the face, arms, and sometimes…other…places. Imagine waking up and looking in the mirror. One of the best painting stories was told to me by an Umatilla man who has many, many contemporary “old” stories. He told of waking up to the sun on his face, naked on a roof without a ladder, his body painted…everywhere.

And then thereʻs the classic kind, like the story my cousin George Coser, Jr. told us the other day as we drove downtown Tulsa on the way to the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. “There used to be a church over there. They used to serve food for the homeless,” he said as he pointed to a parking lot. Then he told of a friend of his driving over to pick him and a buddy up to take them out to lunch. They were excited and as they headed to Tulsa imagining all their favorite eating places there. His friend pulled up to the church and next thing he knew they were standing in line for their free lunch! Now thatʻs a real Indian story!

Then there are the other kinds of stories that feed the soul of our tribal culture in a different way. Those are the stories we heard at the Thlopthloccco Tribal Town meeting out near Okemah, attended by ceremonial grounds and other cultural leaders a few weeks ago. These were the deep philosophical stories of the roots of meaning for our people, with the overhanging question of how are we going to continue as a Mvskoke people, when many of the children do not know their clans or arenʻt brought into the function of the clans?  There is never one answer but many answers, many stories. Another important story we heard was by the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative, about the restoration of and reculturing of plants that have traveled with us and nurtured us through our human stories. 

Mvto, mvto to all the culture bearers, those who choose to remember in a time of forgetting. Mvto to the spirits of all the stories that carry us to laughter, to deeper understanding of our predicament, our place here on this Earth.

This Song is a Pathway

There is a small bird that is not flashy and loud like the blue jay who lives here. Blue jay likes everyone to know he’s here and is especially good looking. That little bird is not the color of passion, and is not known to carry good luck to humans like the redbird. Nor does it blush with orange on its chest which marks it as a keeper of knowledge of the history of a place like the robin whose family has lived her for generations. You would miss this small bird if you scanned the horizon. It is small and brown. Yet, it has a tone so pure your heart opens so it can know the movement of love that is within the architecture of all life. That tone is a doorway. I need that bird’s song this morning. I use it as my path to enter this new day. When I step out into this song I trust my heart. I can hear it singing