Suzan Shown Harjo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Suzan Shown Harjo
|
|
|---|---|
Harjo in 2009
|
|
| Born | June 2, 1945 El Reno, Oklahoma, U.S.
|
| Education | University of Arizona, School for Advanced Research |
| Occupation | 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 very important advocate for Native American rights. She is part of the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee nations.
Suzan is also a poet, writer, and lecturer. She has helped Native peoples get back over one million acres of their tribal lands. That's a lot of land!
She started her career in New York City. There, she helped create the first American Indian news show for WBAI radio. In 1974, she moved to Washington, D.C. to work on national policy issues. She even worked for President Jimmy Carter as a link between Congress and Native American affairs. Later, she led the National Council of American Indians.
Today, Harjo is the president of the Morning Star Institute. This group works for Native American rights across the country. Since the 1960s, she has worked hard to get sports teams to change names that are unfair to Native Americans. By 2013, many teams had already changed their mascots because of these efforts.
On November 24, 2014, Suzan Shown Harjo received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the highest award a civilian can get in the United States. In 2022, she was also chosen to be part of the American Philosophical Society.
Contents
Early Life and Beginnings
Suzan Shown Harjo was born on June 2, 1945, in El Reno, Oklahoma. Her mother was Cheyenne and her father was Muscogee. They lived on his land near Beggs. One of her great-grandfathers was Chief Bull Bear from the Cheyenne tribe.
When she was 12 to 16 years old, Suzan lived with her family in Naples, Italy. Her father was serving in the U.S. Army there. After returning to the U.S., she moved to New York City. In New York, she started working in radio and theater.
Fighting for Native Rights
Suzan Shown Harjo's work for Native rights began in the mid-1960s. In New York, she helped create Seeing Red. This was a radio show on WBAI FM that shared news from Indigenous communities. It was the first show of its kind in the United States.
She worked on this show with her husband, Frank Harjo. They also worked to protect religious freedom for American Indians. Suzan also worked in independent theater, producing and performing in many plays. In 1967, she saw sacred items from Native tribes in a museum. This made her want to work to get these items returned to their rightful tribes.
In 1974, Suzan and Frank moved to Washington D.C. There, Suzan worked to help Native American groups connect with lawmakers. She also worked as a news director for the American Indian Press Association.
Working with the Government
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter asked Harjo to be a special helper for Indian affairs in Congress. She worked with different parts of Congress to make sure Native American voices were heard. She supported things like hunting and fishing rights on traditional lands. She also helped with voting rights and land contracts.
Suzan Harjo's efforts helped pass the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in 1978. This law protects the right of Native Americans to practice their traditional religions.
She also fought for Native American land rights. She pointed out that the government had not paid tribes for land claims since 1966. She worked hard to make sure these issues were addressed fairly and quickly.
Leading the National Congress of American Indians
Suzan Shown Harjo was the Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) from 1984 to 1989. The NCAI is a group that works for all Native American and Alaska Natives people. It was started in 1944.
As a leader, Harjo kept working with Congress to support Native American rights. She helped get more money for Native American education. Thanks to her, funding for education increased in 1984, 1986, and 1988. She also pushed for more support for Native American businesses.
During the 1980s, she was worried about less government support for health clinics on reservations. She knew this could harm Native American health.
Harjo also continued her work to return sacred items from museums to tribes. She also worked on how researchers should handle Native American human remains and artifacts. Her work helped lead to new laws in 1989 and 1990.
She has also spoken out against negative images of Native Americans in movies and on TV. She has appeared on many TV shows to talk about Native American issues. These include Oprah! and Larry King Live.
Suzan Harjo also writes columns for the online newspaper Indian Country Today.
Important Federal Laws
Harjo played a big role in creating and passing several important federal laws. These laws protect Native American self-governance, arts, cultures, languages, and human rights.
One key law was the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA). This law protects Native Americans' right to practice their traditional religions. It also helped return sacred items to tribes.
She also helped with the 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act. This law created the museum in New York City and a new building in Washington, D.C. She also worked on the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This law allows tribes to get back human remains and ceremonial items from public museums.
Morning Star Institute
Suzan Harjo started the Morning Star Institute in 1984. She named it in memory of her late husband, Frank Harjo. As president, she works to protect sacred Native lands and cultural rights.
Through this work, she has helped return one million acres of land to tribes. These include the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, Zuni, Taos, and Mashantucket nations. She has also helped pass laws that protect Native American children and tribal lands.
Changing Sports Mascots
The Morning Star Institute runs a program called Just Good Sports. This program works to end the use of Native American mascots and stereotypes in sports. Suzan Harjo has been working on this issue since the 1960s.
She was one of the Native plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Washington Redskins football team. They argued that the team's name was offensive to Native Americans. In 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed that the name was "disparaging."
Thanks to Harjo and others, many sports teams have changed their mascots. By 2013, two-thirds of teams with Native American mascots had changed them. She also works with college and high school teams to remove these stereotypes.
Harjo also worked on the 1992 Alliance. This group found new ways to mark 500 years since Columbus arrived in the Americas. Native Americans saw this as the start of very difficult times for them. She made sure that surviving tribes were celebrated, while also remembering those who were lost.
The Morning Star Institute also organizes the National Prayer Day for Sacred Places. This yearly event highlights efforts to protect places that are holy to Native Americans.
Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian
Harjo was a trustee for the Museum of the American Indian from 1980 to 1990. When it became the National Museum of the American Indian in 1990, she was a founding trustee until 1996. During this time, she helped create the museum's rules for exhibits and for returning items to tribes.
From 2004 to 2005, Harjo directed a project to save Native languages. She helped create ways to store artifacts safely and find lost artifacts in other places.
In 2014, Harjo put together an exhibit called "Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations." This exhibit was at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. She also edited a book that went with the exhibit. The book is like an encyclopedia of treaties between Native nations and the United States.
Academic Achievements
Suzan Harjo has been invited to many universities to teach special classes. In 1992, she was the first Native American woman to receive the Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College. This college was originally started to educate American Indians. In 1996, she was the first Native person chosen as a Visiting Mentor at Stanford University.
She also received two fellowships in 2004 from the School for Advanced Research (SAR). At SAR, she led two seminars about Native Identity and Native Women's Cultural Matters. In 2008, Harjo was the first Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholar at the University of Arizona.
Writing and Poetry
Suzan Harjo first published her poetry in an Italian magazine when she was just 12 years old. She says she started writing poetry because of the rich stories from her Cheyenne and Muscogee grandparents.
For the first International Women's Day in the 1970s, Harjo wrote a poem called "gathering rites." She read it at a special event in New York City. She was one of 20 American women writers featured that day.
During her fellowships in 2004, Harjo wrote poetry inspired by her work on land claims and repatriation laws. She also writes for Indian Country Today Media Network and First American Art Magazine.
Personal Life
In New York, Suzan married Frank Ray Harjo. He was an artist, and they worked together on the Seeing Red radio show. They had two children together. Frank passed away in 1984.
Works
Books
- Romero, Mateo. Painting the Underworld Sky: Cultural Expression and Subversion in Art. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-930618-79-4. (Harjo wrote the foreword)
- Deloria Jr., Vine. We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf. Lincoln: Bison Books, 2007. ISBN: 0-8032-5985-9. (Harjo wrote the introduction)
- Suzan Shown Harjo, editor. Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2014. ISBN: 1-58834-478-9.
- Verzuh, Valerie K. Indian Country: The Art of David Bradley. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2015. ISBN: 0-89013-601-7. (Harjo wrote the foreword)
Exhibitions
- "Visions from Native American Indian Art," 1992, U.S. Senate Rotunda Building; Washington D.C.
- "American Icons Through Indigenous Eyes, 2007, District of Columbia Arts Center; Washington D.C.
- "Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations," 2014, National Museum of the American Indian; Washington D.C.
Film/Video
- Documentary, Sacred Earth: Makoce Wakan (1993), about the Native Americans' sacred lands and their need of protection.
Articles
- "Chief Offenders" , Native Peoples Magazine, Summer 1999 (about sports mascots).
- "American Indian Religious Freedom Act after Twenty-Five Years: An Introduction," Wíčazo Ša Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, Autumn 2004.
- "Washington 'Redskins' is a racist name: US pro football must disavow it," The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
- "The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think," Politico, June 23, 2014.
Poetry
- Repatriation Laws and Policies: An Oral History Poetry Collection (2004).
- Several of her poems were published in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Fall 2005.
Plays
- My Father's Bones, written with Mary Kathryn Nagle, 2013.
