Suzan Shown Harjo

Suzan Shown Harjo
Born	(1945-06-02) June 2, 1945 El Reno, Oklahoma, United States
Education	University of Arizona, School for Advanced Research
Occupation(s)	Advocate for American Indian rights poet, writer, lecturer, curator
Spouse(s)	Frank Ray Harjo (deceased), John Alan Shown (deceased)
Children	Duke Harjo, Adriane Shown Deveney
Parent(s)	Susie Rozetta Eades and Freeland Edward Douglas

Suzan Shown Harjo (born June 2, 1945) is a well-known Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee advocate for American Indian rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate, who has helped Native peoples recover over a million acres (4,000 km²) of land. She serves as President of the Morning Star Institute, a national Native American rights organization based in Washington, D.C.

Early years

Harjo was born on June 2, 1945 in El Reno, Oklahoma and lived on her Muscogee family's allotment near Beggs, Oklahoma. Her great-grandfather was the Cheyenne Chief Bull Bear.

Between the ages of 12 and 16 she lived in Naples, Italy where her father was stationed while in the US Army. Upon her return to the States, Harjo moved to New York City, where she worked in radio and the theater.

Activism

The roots of her activism date from the mid-1960s, when she produced "Seeing Red," a bi-weekly radio program on New York's WBAI FM station which was the first Indian news show in the United States. Harjo moved to Washington D.C. in 1974.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter appointed her a congressional liaison for Indian Affairs. Harjo has been involved in major advances in US federal Indian policy, and served as the Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1984 to 1989.

She has also spoken out against the negative portrayals of Native Americans in movies and television. One of Harjo's biggest concerns is the decline in health clinics on reservations and the subsequent higher mortality rate amongst Native Americans.

Harjo is outspoken against author Ward Churchill's controversial claim of Native American ancestry and has publicly denounced him.

She has appeared on many television programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, C-Span, and Larry King Live. She has been the president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington D.C. since 1984. Harjo is also a columnist for the newspaper Indian Country Today.

Federal laws

Harjo developed important federal laws protecting Native sovereignty, arts and cultures, language, and human rights. These include the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act;. Which allowed the protection of Native Americans from assimilation and also in doing so, hold onto their cultural rituals within one’s tribe. the 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act; the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which allows tribes to reclaim their human remains and ceremonial items from publicly funded institutions; and the 1996 Executive Order of Indian Sacred Sites.

Morning Star Institute

A president of the Morning Star Institute, founded in 1984, Harjo promotes traditional cultural rights, artistic expression, and research. The organization sponsors Just Good Sports, devoted to ending stereotypes.

Along with seven Native plaintiffs, including Vine Deloria, Jr. and Mateo Romero, Suzan Shown Harjo was a party in Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., filed on September 12, 1992 with the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to cancel the registration of the Washington Redskins football team, as the name was disparaging to Native Americans. The three PTO judges unanimously ruled in favor of the Native Americans plaintiffs. However, Pro Football appealed to the United States District Court, which ruled against the plaintiffs on the question of laches. The US Supreme Court declined the plaintiff's petition for judicial review and refused to hear the Native American group's appeal. This case was followed by Blackhorse et al v. Pro Football , in which six young Native American plaintiffs challenged the federal trademark licenses of the Washington football team's disparaging name.

The Morning Star Institute organized the National Prayer Day for Sacred Places, which in 2009 fell on June 22, and the 1992 Alliance, which addressed the Native response to the Quincentennial of Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

Scholarship

In 2008, Harjo became the first Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholar at the University of Arizona. The School for Advanced Research (SAR), in Santa Fe, New Mexico, awarded her two back-to-back fellowships in 2004, the Dobkin Artist Fellowship for Poetry and the Summer Scholar Fellowship. At SAR, Harjo chaired two seminars, about Native Identity and Native Women's Cultural Matters. At the University of Pennsylvania Museum in 2006, she chaired a seminar on US Civilization and Native Identity Policies.

Writing

Harjo first published her poetry in an Italian magazine, when she was 12 years old. "I began writing poetry because of the poetics and density of Cheyenne and Muscogee oral history as related by my Cheyenne mother and her parents and my Muscogee father and his parents," says Harjo. For the first International Women's Day in the 1970s, Harjo wrote the poem "gathering rites" and read it at "Women/Voices at Town Hall" in New York City, where she was one of 20 American women writers, including Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni. Harjo also presented the poem on the West Steps of the US Capitol.

As an Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellow and an IARC Summer School at the School for Advanced Research in 2004, Harjo developed oral history poetry about her experiences working for repatriation laws and policies.

Personal life

She has a son, Duke Harjo, graduate of Reed College with her late husband Frank Ray Harjo, and a daughter, Adriane Shown Deveney, actor, artist, poet, with her late husband, artist, John Alan Shown.

Published by Suzan Shown Harjo

• Article by Suzan Shown Harjo
• Statement for the Oversight Hearing on Native American Sacred Places
• Romero, Mateo and Suzan Shown Harjo. Painting the Underworld Sky: Cultural Expression and Subversion in Art. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1930618794

External links

• Indian Country article on Suzan Shown Harjo
• Harjo's poetry on Beltway quarterly
• "Nobody Gives Us Sovereignty: Busting Stereotypes & Walking the Walk." Video of lecture at University of Arizona.

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