Thanks for the emails of support. Sharon was questioned yesterday and the questioning will resume today. I will stay in and prepare myself and I plan to stay at the trial the rest of the week. I am scheduled to testify tomorrow. The person who should be on trial is at the university teaching students. More so, it is those powers in the university and state government who continue to cover up the real story for the protection of those whose names have not been revealed.
Chris Garcia, a former UNM president was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of his UNM office. There was a flash of stories when the story erupted, with a promise of more to come. The story has been hushed in New Mexico. There is no more word of Garcia, the prostitution ring or UNM's culpability. The creative writing professor prostituting with students appears to be under heavy protection, as does Garcia.
Sharon Warner has been made the fall guy of a corruption story that appears to have roots deep and wide through New Mexico government. Sharon has been vilified by many in the English Department, though she had always been respected and admired for the many resources she brought to the department, to the faculty and students. She continues to be scolded, told that this is all her fault, that she is responsible for the disruption and should shut up so this can be put behind the department. Just as what the dean told us when we met with he her to get her support, to speak on behalf of the students: "If you do not let this go and continue in your efforts to question authority, we can close down the creative writing program."
And what of the students we are all charged with teaching, with assisting in educating toward higher thought, toward the creativity we need to develop as a society, as many societies within a dynamic weave? Many will testify. They tried to file complaints but UNM would not accept their letters of complaint. This trial will give them a place from which to speak. And that is a good thing.
But who will hear?
2/21/12
2/20/12
UNM Sex Scandal Trial Begins Today
This morning begins a journey, from San Miguel to Leon then to DFW then to Albuquerque to testify in the trial of Sharon Warner with UNM. Yes, the UNM sex scandal case has not been settled. Basically it's this: a poetry professor was on an s and m prostitution website with students, engaged actively with them. Sharon was told to look at the site by the then English Department chair. When Sharon reported what she saw, the poetry professor took the site down then said Sharon was racist and making up the site and falsely accusing her. The university investigated Sharon for discrimination, even though the site and photographs were pulled up in archives, and is retaliating and harassing her. They continue to harass me with appeals against workforce solutions, to get back my unemployment money when I quit UNM for their dishonorable actions that threatened students and turned the department into a hostile and unprofessional workplace. Today starts Sharon's trial in Santa Fe. UNM continues to back up the professor who was basically using UNM for illegal activities. Please send prayers that justice is done here, for Sharon, and for the students who lost out on an education. I am considering reporting from this blog but have trepidation. When I testified at my first UNM appeal against my unemployment award case my van was trashed in the middle of the night.
2/14/12
February and March 2012 Calendar
February 17, 2012 at 6 pm
Joy Harjo delivers a Key Note Address at the San Miguel Writers Conference.
Joy Harjo delivers a Key Note Address at the San Miguel Writers Conference.
The Hotel Real de Minas
Real de Minas Ballroom
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Tel. 415-152-2626 or toll-free within Mexico 01800-466-5800
Real de Minas Ballroom
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Tel. 415-152-2626 or toll-free within Mexico 01800-466-5800
————————————————————————————
2/1/12
MNN Column January 2012
It’s very early morning here in Oklahoma, still dark and
quiet in the world. No buzz of what-I-have-to-do taking over the airwaves yet. The
time of the dark is set aside for rest, for pondering and understanding. We all
need to take our time in this place to remember who we are: a beloved people who
are still walking through immense tests, individually and as a distinct nation.
January first marks the beginning of the New Year in the
Gregorian calendar, a timekeeper we inherited from the Europeans. In this
calendar we are at the beginning of the year, a time for evaluating where we’ve
been, our failures and successes and for resolving changes. Most of us want to
lose a few pounds. Some of us need to lose the extra person we’re carrying
around. We all need to lose the weight of jealousy, unresolved grief that goes
way back past our parents, grandparents, all the way back. We need to lose
those patterns and habits that keep us from standing tall and breathing in the
beautiful day so we can walk forward together and help each other with inspired
thoughts and actions.
I like thinking of each dawn as the beginning of a new year.
Then, I get a new start every morning. Each day then becomes a microcosm of
each year. It’s not so overwhelming. For one day we can eat nourishing food, we
can be nice to the person at work who always tests us, we can make that extra
effort in all things, all thoughts, all actions. Then the string of days
collects a shine and all things are possible.
When you wake up in the morning go outside. Turn to the
East. East is the direction of beginnings. It is sunrise. When beloved Sun
rises, it is an entrance, a door to fresh knowledge. Breath the light in. Call
upon the assistance you need for the day. Give thanks.
When you go out you will see that the birds are out singing
up the Sun. The plants too are turning in that direction.
And at dusk, as Sun leaves us, return to the station of remembering.
When Sun leaves it makes a doorway. We have access to eternity. Breath out. Ask
for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let it all go.
The birds and animals turn inward and let go, as do the
plants.
We are all in this ceremony together.
Another new beginning this morning is that of the new
leadership. Tomorrow is the inauguration. It is therefore a sunrise point, and
the beginning of a new path of meaning for the people. May we be guided by
kindness, wisdom, and inspired knowledge. May leadership take great care of the
resources of our people. Money, talents and knowledge are some of our
collective resources.
“Everything matters”, said the brilliant jazz trumpeter
Miles Davis. “Everything”.
Mvto.
1/22/12
Walk
A dead umbrella
Carryout Styrofoam
Crow with orange in his beak
Blue wad of gum
Ferns drinking rain
Winds visiting from the north
A black squirrel who likes my singing
Crisp holly with red berries
A dead umbrella
More winds
Giants with roots into the earth and sky
I lean against them before turning in
My song returns from where it came
c Joy Harjo January 22, 12 Vancouver, BC
1/6/12
Muscogee Nation News Column December 2011
Muscogee Nation
News Column December 2011
On the way back
home I made it up to Santa Fe to perform music with keyboard player Robert
Muller at the Santa Fe Winter Indian Market. Many Mvskoke citizens were there
at the market, selling their art. Kenneth Johnson had a booth where he
demonstrated his remarkable art of jewelry making. Mary E. Irene and Linda
Irene were there with their beautiful art.
A few weeks
before was part of an honoring stomp dance led by George Coser, Jr. for the
induction Mvskoke citizen, the jazz tenor saxophone player Jim Pepper into the
Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in Tulsa. Pepper started the first jazz fusion band,
he helped set off the world music movement with Choctaw/African American jazz
trumpet player Don Cherry, and Pepper had a hit song with Witchi Tai To. That’s not all. He was one of the first to blend
jazz with tribal music. Jim’s father was of the Kaw people of Oklahoma. Jim’s
sister Suzy Pepper Henry attended with her husband Steve Pepper. Also watch for
young Cherokee alto sax genius Sharel Cassity. She received a commendation.
She’s from Oklahoma. I saw her performing at the Blue Note in New York City,
and she “blew me away”, so to speak.
Congratulations
to all of us. When one person succeeds, we all succeed.
In honor of being a home,
one of my songs, “Goin Home”--
Last dance and the night is almost over--
One last round under the starry sky.
We’re all going home someway, somehow when it’s
over.
Hey e yah, hey e yay, aye e yah aye e yay
If you’ve found love in the circle then hold onto
it, not too tight.
If you have to let love go then let it go. Keep on
dancing.
“I don’t care if you’re married sixteen times
I’ll get you yet.”
Goin home, goin home
“I’m from Oklahoma got no one to call mine.”
“A love supreme, a love supreme—“
Everybody wants a love supreme.
“When the dance is over sweetheart, take me home in
your one-eyed Ford.”
But first, we have to stop and pick up Grandma, my
uncle, my aunties…and then there’s all my kids…
Goin home, goin home, goin home
It’s time to go home
Be kind to all you meet along the way
Mvto mvto to everybody
For all the good times
Good night, sleep tight.
Goin home, goin home
Goin home
Drive safely, or better yet, don’t drive at all.
Don’t forget: hold somebody’s hand through the
dark.
Goin home, goin home
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē,
hv-ya-yi-ca-res,
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē,
hv-ya-yi-ca-res,
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē,
hv-ya-yi-ca-res,
Kul-ke-kvs, kul-ke-kvs,
kul-ke-kvs
12/1/11
Muscogee Nation News November 2011
Here's last month's Muscogee Nation News column. Will try to tend to this blog more--Facebook seems to get too much of my attention.
The last two months I have lived in Tulsa, helping out my mother. I left
Tulsa when I was a teenager. I fled a difficult home to go to high school at
the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was then a
Bureau of Indian Affairs high school with an emphasis in arts. There was also a
two-year postgraduate program. I remember three other Creek students there:
Sandy and Phyllis Fife, and Richard Ray Whitman. That school literally saved my
life, as it did for many of the students who attended. It affirmed my identity
as a native person, as an artist, and it gave me a refuge from an abusive
situation at home. I left Oklahoma in a trail of pain.
I
have returned frequently to Oklahoma over the years, to keep a connection with
my family and my tribe. I kept a close relationship with my father, a Creek
man, who lived his last years in Texas near the Gulf waters. We both loved the water. When the
abusive stepparent died in the early nineties, only then could I return to my
mother’s house. Before then, I saw
my mother at work, or elsewhere.
We human beings are faced with
all kinds of tests in this world. We don’t always understand them. There are
some things that take an eternity to understand. There has never been any doubt
as to my mother’s love, and I have to believe that the love of the Creator (who
is not invested in any religious affiliation) remains steadfast and center to
any path, to any endeavor begun with the intent to bring kindness to the world,
though sometimes it may seem otherwise.
I considered the path of our
people and the test of our path as I gathered with many others in the tribe for
the 26th Annual Council Oak Ceremony on a warm, fall day in Tulsa.
We stood together at the place the Locvpokv people from our nation arrived
after our forced removal from our Alabama homelands. The Locvpokv people placed
ashes from their original fires at the base of an oak tree on the hill where we
now stood, many years and generations later, near the Arkansas River. I felt
the connection between us like the beautiful and mysterious light from the
fire, threading us together. I drank in every word spoken, felt every little
breeze, and particle of sun. I listened to the poetry in the speech by our
Chief of Staff, Edwin Marshall, the wise threading of history in the words of
Ted Isham, our Cultural Preservation Manager, and took to heart the words of
the many other speakers.
We may not understand the why of the
injustice of the bloodshed, the forced move far away from our beloved lands,
but we are in a story that winds through eternity. And we are still standing
together.
I needed the people that
afternoon. I was fresh with grief from my mother’s passing from this world.
I felt the memory of the
people as it lives in our bones. I renewed my promise to carry my part of the
story home the best way possible.
This is home. This is what
home means.
11/17/11
Literary Salon Spotlights Famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop
NOVEMBER 14
Las Vegas
Literary Salon Spotlights Famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop
Acclaimed authors to read at The Lady Silvia Saturday, November 19th
6-7:30 pm
6-7:30 pm
LAS VEGAS - Five acclaimed writers, all classmates at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will gather for conversation and readings on Saturday, November 19, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm at The Lady Silvia located in Soho Lofts, 900 S. Las Vegas Boulevard #140.
Poet Joy Harjo, writer Michelle Huneven, literary activist Glenn Schaeffer, writer Doug Unger and journalist Eric Olsen will reflect on their shared experiences as young writers in Iowa City nearly thirty years ago.
The salon will feature the just-released, We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop published by Skyhorse Publishing. The book will be for sale and the authors will be available for book signings.
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is one of the most highly regarded creative writing programs in the U.S. The program began in 1936 and its alumni have won seventeen Pulitzer Prizes, as well as numerous National Book Awards and other major literary honors. Four recent Poets Laureate have been either graduates or faculty of the Workshop. We Wanted to Be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly 30 graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers’ Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years—writing, passionately jousting, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City—were the young versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T.C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Ann Phillips, Joy Harjo, and many others.
The event is FREE and open to the public. A cash bar with refreshments will be provided. The Lady Silvia is located in the Soho Lofts building at the corner of Fourth and Hoover Avenue, with free parking available across the street.
The Saturday salon is sponsored by the Vegas Valley Book Festival and Nevada Humanities with support from Lady Silvia, Art Futures Las Vegas, and Vegas Seven Magazine.
More information: 702.229.5431
11/6/11
MNN Column October 2011
We are beginning the season of transformation. It is the
time to bring in the harvest. The squirrels in my mother’s neighborhood in
Tulsa are putting away for winter. We are all reaping what we have sown. This
is happening at many levels of our existence.
I remember our beloved Mvskoke person Phillip Deere ’s words
as many of us stood together at America’s Capitol at the end point of The Longest Walk the summer of 1978. This time marked the end of a long walk
of a protest of indigenous peoples to the Capitol, to make our presence known,
to once again come to the face of colonized power to address them, one human
being to another.
Following is an excerpted version of Deere’s words to remind
and inspire us. They are prophetic and remain pertinent and living for us.
Mvto. Mvto.
We are part of nature. Our
pipes are red. Our faces, many times, we paint red. But we represent the
Creation. We hear about Red Power. There are many definitions to Red Power.
Sometimes we refer to Red
as the blood. But all colors of Man have the same color of blood. The fish
life, they have blood also. The animals, too, have red blood. Everyone has red
blood. But everyone was not made out of the red clay of America.
Only the Indian people are
the original people of America. Our roots are buried deep in the soils of
America. We are the only people who have continued with the oldest religion in
this country. We are the people who still yet speak the languages given to us
by the Creator. Our religion has survived; our languages have survived.
Long before this building
(the Capital) was built, my ancestors talked the language that I talk today…I
see, in the future, perhaps this civilization is coming near to the end. For
that reason, we have continued with the instructions of our ancestors. We are
the only people who know how to survive in this country. We have existed here for
thousands and thousands of years. The smartest man in America does not know and
cannot date the time that we originated.
This is our homeland. We
came from no other country. Regardless of how many millions and millions of
dollars are spent on an Indian, to make him someone else, all these millions
have failed to make a White Man out of the Indian. We are the evidence of the
Western Hemisphere!
…I feel sorry for the
non-Indian. I can see the confusion among them. This society is confused. I can
see that as a bystander…If I were with the society, I too would be confused. In
the beginning of time, when everything was created, our ancestors also came
about in this part of the world. There is no Indian here, on these grounds that
will say that we came across the Bering Straits. There is no Indian standing
among us who will say that we descended from apes and monkeys.
We have always looked at
ourselves as human beings…
We are the original people
here…We have forgotten in a short time what when the first people landed on our
shores, they could not survive. Even the pilgrims could not survive. The
Indians showed them the way of survival. We taught them how to live.
We taught them how to
plant corn. That corn was a Tree of Life for us. We showed them that this is
life here in America. And they survived.
Not too many years
afterwards, foreign agents came to our house and tried to tell us how to farm.
Not too many years afterwards, they began to tell us how to live. They began to
tell us that our religion was wrong; our way of life was no good. This is not
the agreement that we made. This is not the treaty that we made with the U.S.
government, or any other country….We had an unchanging government. The law of
love, peace, and respect, no man-made laws will ever take the place of it! And
this is the law that we have always lived by.
Because we understood this
law, every Indian door was open. Through these doors walked Christopher
Columbus. Through these doors walked the Pilgrims, because of that law of love
and respect that we had for all human beings.
But time changed. After
entering our door, they took advantage of the Native people here. Their greed
-- we have seen it. Many of our people have died. Many of our people were
massacred because they wanted more land. We gave them land through treaties. We
gave and we gave, and we have no more to give today!
Not only land was taken,
even the culture, even the religion, under man-made laws, were taken away from
the Native people. But we managed to survive. We continued with our way of
life.
The jailhouses, the
prisons in this country, are no more than four hundred years old. Prior to the
coming of Columbus, more than four hundred tribes, speaking different
languages, having different ways, having different religions, lived here. None
of these tribes had jailhouses. They had no prison walls. They had no insane
asylums. No country today can exist without them! Why did we not have any
prisons? Why did we not have jailhouses or insane asylums? Because we lived by
an understood law.
We understood what life is
all about. To this day, we are not confused. My elders, spiritual leaders,
medicine men, clan mothers, have no disagreements. We are not that confused. We
come to you with one mind. We do not disagree on our religion. I have never tried
to convert the Lakota people into Muskogee ways.
On every corner there is a
church, each of them trying to convert the other one. We did not come here with
that kind of confusion. We respect one another's religion. We respect one
another's visions. That is our only way of existing in this country here --
that is our survival. This is our strength. Even though we are greatly
outnumbered, our ideas will overcome those numbers!
People in this society
have been driven away, and have been taken away so far from reality that they
will not sit down under a tree and talk to us. They won't even sit down in
their office to listen to the Indian. We have experienced this all this time,
even in the local offices at home. Those who are holding positions through the
government refuse to listen to the grassroots Indians because they have been so
far away from that natural way of thinking. They have to look at a piece of
paper and get directions from the higher-ups. Even their minds are controlled.
They can't make decisions for themselves.
…Every tribe has a trail
of tears. We wonder when it is going to end. I would like to see the time come
when we can act like human beings and be able to sit around and iron our
problems out.
…Your life is at stake.
Your survival depends on this…
Phillip Deere 1929 to 1985
10/5/11
Native American Music Awards: Please Vote
RED DREAMS A TRAIL BEYOND TEARS is up for ARTIST OF THE YEAR and BEST WORLD MUSIC RECORDING. LAST CHANCE TO VOTE!
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