Harjo’s music, poetry tell of Native experience

Joy Harjo’s right hand is more than just a body part.

It’s the instrument she’s used to write volumes of
poetry, the tool she uses to play the saxophone, and the canvas
she’s used for exotic tattoo art.

For Harjo, a UCLA professor in the English and American Indian
studies departments, her tattoo is only one aspect that makes her a
professor who is out of the ordinary. To start, she is one of the
few female Native American faculty members at UCLA. She is also the
namesake of her rock band Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice.

Before Harjo was involved in her band, which combines poetry
with tribal music, jazz and rock, she published numerous volumes of
poetry including “She Had Some Horses” and her most
recent best-selling “A Map to the Next World: Poems and
Tales.”

Born in Tulsa, Okla. to a waitress and a metal worker, she
wasn’t raised in a highly academic environment, but she did
receive some exposure to the arts.

“I didn’t grow up in a literary house,” she
said. “But there was always music. There wasn’t a poet
next door, but my aunt was an artist and we knew art.”

As a member of the sovereign state of the Muscogee, Harjo treats
art as an integral part of life.

It is thus not surprising Harjo entered the University of New
Mexico as an art student. She laughs as she admits her brief stint
as a pre-med student, but grows serious again.

“Something very significant happened: I took a poetry
workshop like the ones I teach now and I changed my major,”
she said.

Her identity as a Native American is integral to her poetry. Her
work is a frank discussion of her heritage and the problems facing
Native Americans today. Though her work is intensely crafted,
drawing pictures with languid descriptions, her subjects
aren’t always pretty and her language is not always
polite.

“I like the African tradition of the poet as
truthteller,” she said. “It’s a poet’s
responsibility to have an ear to the heart of the nation and an ear
to the heart of the everlasting.”

She describes the difficulty in getting others tuned to the
heart of her nation.

“One of the hardest things for natives today is
invisibility. Natives are relegated to “˜other,’
probably because of collective national guilt,” she said.
“We’re only one-half of one percent of a country that
we were 100 percent of a few generations ago.”

Unfortunately, invisibility is only one link in the heavy chain
of Native American problems. Harjo said infant mortality among
Natives is high while life expectancy is low.

“It’s amazing that we’re still here,”
she said.

But Harjo is still here, and she’s making new waves
through her music and poetry.

Playing in Poetic Justice has been a chance for her to showcase
her saxophone skills and to bring out the inherent musicality of
her poetry. And this past summer, she produced a music video which
is set to be shown at the San Francisco Film Festival.

This Sunday, Harjo will be reading at the J. Paul Getty Museum
along with fellow acclaimed poet Gail Wronsky. The performance will
be an opportunity for audiences to understand her writing off the
page in a more dynamic environment.

“I don’t do things like this to show off,” she
said. “I feel like I am there for them … to serve an
audience.”

POETRY: Joy Harjo will be at the Getty Museum on

Oct. 6 at 3 p.m. Call (310) 440-7300 to make a reservation.