CONTEST in honor of the paperback release of CRAZY BRAVE

First, thank you/mvto to all those who have supported the story, my poetry and music.
I'm having a contest.
I will send a signed, hardback copy of CRAZY BRAVE and a CD of my original music to the best crazy brave stories I receive from you, from your life--one page or less, via FB. I'll pick the top three to ten, depending on the number of stories I receive. I'll post the best here and on my blog. You have until 5PM Friday August 2nd Oklahoma time.  The winners posted next week!

Fire Study

Study in Fire, Taos, 2013 c Joy Harjo and Mekko Productions Inc.

Glenpool Creek Indian Community Demonstration and Dance Party Tonight

Tonight: 
*Indian Tacos by Autumn Star Catering, a Mvskoke/Creek business by Tricia FieldsAlex Alexander
*George Coser's Wednesday Night Stomp Dance Group
*Selby Minner and her Blues Band (I'll be sitting in)
* D.j. Sapphire Satepauhoodle spinning tunes for a community dance. I've requested funk, soul, r and b, etc.
Starts at 6PM at the Glenpool Creek Indian Community Center off of 141st and Highway 75. 
Come out!!

Green Corn

Green Corn or busk, our Mvskoke new year is inherently about the acknowledgement and honoring of the plant world. We become in harmony with it. Our human worlds and plant worlds are utterly interdependent. Or rather, we are more dependent on them, than us, but our decisions matter, not just to seven generations and more of human descendants, but to the seven or more plant descendants, animal descendants and elements descendants. We make sacrifices to take care of each other. To understand each other is profound beyond human words.

Independence Day

I celebrate independence anywhere it happens. The question here is how. When a diversity of peoples is destroyed or diminished in a holocaust of outrageous proportions for independence, does this truly result in liberty, justice and freedom for all? In a few generations indigenous peoples of America have been reduced to one-half of one percent. Imagine Africa with one-half of one percent Africans. We have been essentially disappeared in the story of America. Our massive libraries of knowledge, rich cultural and intellectual gifts have been disparaged, destroyed and broken by interloper religions and a hierarchical system of thought in which indigenous people exist only as savages. What then does this say about liberty and justice in this country? 

For healing the wound needs to be opened, purged and cleansed. Our stories need to be allowed. Our traditional ways and languages need to be honored. This country needs to apologize and reparations must be made. We all need to come together, every one of us to make a true plan for liberty and justice for all. As long as indigenous peoples are disappeared and disparaged, or surface only in Hollywood movies like The Lone Ranger, this country will remain as a child without parents, who has no sense of earth, history or spirituality.

Note to self today:

Do not feed the monsters.
Monsters are those thought threads that denigrate and disrespect self and others. 
Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to land and live. 
Some are sent to you deliberately or inadvertently. They can come from arrows or gossip, jealousy or envy. Or from just...thoughtlessness. 
Instead, have a party.
Invite your helpers to the table. Give them something to do. They want to be helpful. And just celebrate.
Feed the birds.

Second note: A positive mind makes a light slippery surface and anything not of it, slides off.