Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo

Born: May 9, 1951
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
Joy Har­jo, the 23rd Poet Lau­re­ate of the U.S., is a mem­ber of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hick­o­ry Ground). She is only the second poet to be appoint­ed a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. Born in Tul­sa, Okla­homa, she left home to attend high school at the inno­v­a­tive Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Indi­an Arts, which was then a Bureau of Indi­an Affairs school. Har­jo began writ­ing poet­ry as a mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mexico’s Native stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion, the Kiva Club, in response to Native empow­er­ment move­ments. She went on to earn her MFA at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop and teach Eng­lish, Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Amer­i­can Indi­an Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­­for­­nia-Los Ange­les, Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, Ari­zona State, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i, Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Indi­an Arts, and Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, while per­form­ing music and poet­ry nation­al­ly and internationally.

Movies for Joy Harjo...

Cara Romero: Following the Light
Title: Cara Romero: Following the Light
Character: Herself
Released: October 16, 2022
Type: Movie
Cara Romero's contemporary fine art photography captures Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from an Indigenous female perspective.
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Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting
Title: Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting
Character: Interviewee (Self)
Released: January 14, 2021
Type: Movie
Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.
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Love and Fury
Title: Love and Fury
Character: Herself
Released: June 12, 2020
Type: Movie
Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo follows Native artists for a year as they navigate their careers in the US and abroad. The film explores the immense complexities each artist faces concerning their own identity as Native artists, as well as pushing further Native art into a post-colonial world.
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Words from a Bear
Title: Words from a Bear
Character: Self
Released: January 29, 2019
Type: Movie
A visual journey into the mind and soul of Pulitzer Prize–winning author Navarro Scott Momaday, relating each written line to his unique Native American experience representing ancestry, place, and oral history.
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Games of the North
Title: Games of the North
Character: Narrator
Released: April 18, 2011
Type: Movie
For thousands of years, traditional Inuit sports have been vital for survival within the unforgiving Arctic. Acrobatic and explosive, these ancestral games evolved to strengthen mind, body and spirit within the community. Following four modern Inuit athletes reveals their unique relationship to the games as they compete across the North. As unprecedented change sweeps across their traditional lands, their stories illuminate the importance of the games today.
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Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Title: Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Character: Narrative Poetry
Released: January 1, 1982
Type: Movie
Jaune Quick-To-See-Smith, Shoshone French Cree painter, discusses her abstract paintings, which depict her Indian heritage with scenes of early plains lifestyles.
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Pepper's Pow Wow
Title: Pepper's Pow Wow
Character: Self
Released: December 31, 1969
Type: Movie
A look at the life of Native American jazz saxophone pioneer Jim Pepper, the first widely recognized musician to fuse Native American music with jazz.