Native American Heritage Month: Joy Harjo

It’s Native American Heritage Month, and by coincidence, I recently finished reading Joy Harjo’s book, Poet Warrior: A Memoir. For those who don’t know, Joy Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the United States, serving her third term. According to the Library of Congress, which awards the honor, she’s the first Native person to hold that post. (Their website includes a biography of her, in case you’d like to know more about her background and achievements. The National Women’s History Museum also features a profile of her.)

You might wonder why I’ve referred to the month as Native American Heritage Month but to Harjo as Native, rather than Native American. I made this choice based on Harjo’s own preference. As she explained in Poet Warrior:

Indigenous people within the boundaries of the United States use many terms for ourselves depending on generation, education, and geographical place. Generally, we use our tribal nations as identification. And as members within our nations we identify by clan systems, tribal town, moieties, and/or bands. The collective term for indigenous nations was, and still is for some of us, “Indian,” “American Indian,” and colloquially sometimes “skins.” The term “Native American” came into prominence out of the academic realm in the late eighties. I’ve resisted it and prefer the term “Native Nations” or “Indigenous” or even just “Native.” (29)

Because Native American Heritage Month is the official name of the month used throughout the US government agencies that sponsor the observance, I’ve chosen to use the term “Native American” in reference to it rather than just “Native Heritage Month,” although I can empathize with Harjo’s resistance to the term “Native American.” After all, Native people were living in the place later known by the shorthand name “America” long before that entity came into existence, so to call Native people who live there “Native Americans” is to potentially erase all their history that came before the founding of “America.”

Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo, June 6, 2019. (Library of Congress/Shawn Miller)

That said, the real purpose of this post is to reflect on some passages from Harjo’s recent book that resonated with me. In actuality, I have very little in common with Harjo. As I learned from her book, she grew up in Oklahoma, experienced physical violence in her childhood homes, has made a living as a poet, gave birth to two children, and is a grandmother. None of these things can be said of me. Beyond this, she is Native while I am White, in part descended from those who traveled on the Mayflower to what would become the United States and who instigated wars with and oppression of the Native population—violence and oppression that was joined by other White people throughout the centuries to follow. On the surface, it would seem we should be diametrically opposed in all aspects. Nonetheless, some of our thinking is similar, which I find an interesting phenomenon—how two people with disparate life experiences can nonetheless view and feel the meaning of life similarly. 

 

Of course, I’ve remarked on this phenomenon before, when reflecting on my reading of the autobiographies of John Kerry and Madeleine L’Engle. Nonetheless, even though I keep learning this same lesson over and over again, it comes as somewhat of a surprise each time. Perhaps this means I’m a slow learner. Or, perhaps it means that messages to the contrary—about people being more different than similar—are so strong that it’s easy to forget that similarities exist despite differences.

In any case, on to my reflections. At one point in Poet Warrior, Harjo wrote:

As I near the last doorway of my present life, I am trying to understand the restless path on which I have traveled. My failures have been my most exacting teachers. They are all linked by one central characteristic, and that is the failure to properly regard the voice of inner truth. That voice speaks softly. It is not judgmental, full of pride, or otherwise loud. It does not deride, shame, or otherwise attempt to derail you. When I fail to trust what my deepest knowing tells me, then I suffer. The voice of inner truth, or the knowing, has access to the wisdom of eternal knowledge. The perspective of that voice is timeless. (44)

I’m certainly not “near the last doorway of my present life,” or at least I hope not, but, like Harjo, I could say I have been down a “restless path” in my life. I’ve moved so many times as an adult that when I worked at West Point, the military members I met there were amazed that I had never been in the military myself. This is because the only people they knew who had moved as often as I did only did so because the military had stationed them around the country and the world. And since then, I’ve moved twice more.

On the other hand, Harjo links her restlessness to failures, which I wouldn’t necessarily do in thinking about my life. Almost every time I’ve moved, it’s been to take advantage of new opportunities for growth and development. Still, like Harjo, I have at times failed to listen to that “voice of inner truth” that “speaks softly.” This voice she mentions seems similar to the Biblical “still small voice” I learned about when I attended Sunday School as a child. Harjo says the voice “has access to the wisdom of eternal knowledge,” which seems similar to that “still small voice” of God speaking that we were taught to listen for. In the midst of loud messages telling us to take the most popular way, the showiest way, the most glamorous way, the “still small voice” would be the voice we should trust to follow a meaningful path in life. This seems similar to the voice Harjo is talking about, and while I’m not particularly religious these days, I can relate to her sense that when she hasn’t listened to this voice, she has struggled. These days, I would refer to that voice as intuition, and, like Harjo, when I’ve ignored my intuition, I’ve struggled. That gut feeling is there for a reason, so when I don’t pay attention to it, or when I act in opposition to it, things tend to go wrong.

Another passage from Harjo’s book that I could relate to is this one:

I have made choices that made no sense to anyone else, but they were the right choices for me….When I listen, I am always led in the right direction. That doesn’t mean the resultant path is easy. It might be the more difficult path. You may have to clear boulders, walk through fire after fire, or try to find footing in precarious flooding. You will play wrong notes and write wrong words that mean nothing to anyone else but you. And you may appear to have followed the wrong path even though it was the right path, as you fail over and over again. (44-45)

This is an extension of her previous passage about the voice she called “the voice of inner truth.” Here she says that when she does listen to this voice, she is “always led in the right direction.” She quickly clarifies this remark to emphasize that “right” isn’t always easy. In fact, she says “it might be the more difficult path.” Again, I can relate to her comments, in that I have not always had an easy life in reaction to listening to my intuition. This is hard to make sense of, because in the earlier passage, she noted that failures resulted from not listening to the voice, and in this passage, she notes that hardships can also result from listening to the voice. Here, though, are a few subtle differences. Whereas according to Harjo, not listening to the voice results in failure and suffering, listening to the voice results in “choices that made no sense to anyone else” and “play[ing] wrong notes and writ[ing] wrong words that mean nothing to anyone but you.” The difference between not listening to the voice and listening to the voice is that not listening to the voice results only in pain while listening to the voice results in creating personal meaning.

At the end of the second passage, though, Harjo throws us a curveball. Here she acknowledges that even when you listen to the voice, you may “fail over and over again.” How can this be? How can not listening to the voice result in failure and listening to the voice also result in failure? Perhaps this is life’s greatest lesson…that bad things happen to good people who are trying to follow their intuition to have a meaningful life. That nothing is guaranteed. That cause and effect does not always turn out the way we’d like it to. That all we can do is keep on keeping on despite hardships that result from our best intentions. Or, perhaps failure isn’t as bad as we think it is. Perhaps the failures that result from listening to the voice are the ones that lead us on the way to something better, some sort of growth, whereas the failures that result from not listening to the voice are the ones that lead us to the awful morass of suffering without end.

I don’t have all the answers to these possibilities. Neither does Harjo. To me, it’s interesting that I was able to find points of connection and also curiosity sparked by her writing about paths in life. Does it matter that she’s Native and I’m White? Or that she’s a mother and grandmother and I’m not? Or that she grew up in Oklahoma and I didn’t? Do these differences mean I can’t understand her thinking in the way she does? Perhaps. But perhaps I can make a meaning that matters to me out of her words. Which is better? Understanding her perspective precisely or taking a message away from her experience that speaks to me? What are your thoughts?