Joy Harjo: NDN Girls Book Club x Words of the People
NDN Girls Book Club was thrilled to present a reading and conversation with former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo with Words of the People in Tvlsa, Oklahoma this past April.
The esteemed Mvskoke poet and jazz musician read to a packed room of attendees from a number of her collections and talked about the importance of rematriation, a term coined to describe the return of Indigenous lands to their peoples for caretaking while centering Indigenous matriarchal knowledge systems. Rematriation also extends to language work, and is understood to help to heal the wounds inflicted by settler-colonial patriarchal systems. Joy talked about the importance of reciprocal relationships with each other and the earth and how she is helping to usher in future generations of storytellers to empower Indigenous feminist narratives and ways of knowing. She spoke of her experience as a young woman navigating settler spaces in higher education, which eventually led her into the world of creative writing. Harjo recalled her relationships with other younger Indigenous women writers at the time, including Leslie Marmon Silko, fondly.
NDN Girls Book Club members Kinsale Drake (Diné), Lily Painter (Kiowa/Winnebago), and Pte San Win Little Whiteman (Oglala Lakota) helped to facilitate the event along with local organization Words of the People. A signing followed the reading and talk at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship.
Hear more about Rematriation here:
