Suzan Shown Harjo facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Suzan Shown Harjo
Harjo in 2009
Born	(1945-06-02) June 2, 1945 (age 80) El Reno, Oklahoma, U.S.
Citizenship	Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, American
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 was born on June 2, 1945. She is a member of the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee nations. Suzan is a strong voice for Native American rights in the United States.

She is a poet, writer, and speaker. She also works as a curator and helps shape government policies. Suzan has helped Native peoples get back over one million acres of their tribal lands. In the 1970s, she helped create the first Native American news show for radio in New York City. Later, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work on national issues. She worked for President Jimmy Carter's government and later led the National Council of American Indians.

Today, Suzan Harjo is the president of the Morning Star Institute. This group works for Native American rights across the country. She has worked since the 1960s to stop sports teams from using names that are unfair to Native Americans. In 2014, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the highest award a civilian can get in the United States. In 2022, she was chosen to join the American Philosophical Society.

Early Life and Moving to Washington

Suzan Shown Harjo was born on June 2, 1945, in El Reno, Oklahoma. This area is part of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal lands. Her mother was Cheyenne, and her father was Muscogee.

When she was 12, her family moved to Naples, Italy, because her father was in the US Army. They lived there for four years. After returning to the U.S., she moved to New York City. There, she started working in radio and theater.

Standing Up for Native Rights

Suzan Shown Harjo's work for Native American rights began in the mid-1960s. She helped create Seeing Red, a radio show in New York. It was the first news program in the U.S. made by and for Indigenous people. Some of her early radio work is kept in the Pacifica Radio Archives. She worked on this show with her husband, Frank Harjo. They also worked to protect religious freedom for Native Americans.

In New York, she also worked in independent theater. After seeing sacred Native items in a museum in 1967, she began working to have these items returned to their tribes. She also pushed for changes in how museums handled Native artifacts.

In 1974, Suzan and Frank moved to Washington D.C. There, Suzan worked for law firms that helped Native Americans. She also served as news director for the American Indian Press Association. In 1982, she was elected to the Common Cause National Governing Board.

Working with the U.S. Government

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter asked Suzan Harjo to work with Congress on Native American issues. She worked with different groups in Congress to make sure Native American voices were heard. She supported rights like hunting and fishing on traditional lands. She also fought for voting rights and land contract rights.

Native activists were trying to get fair payments from the government for their lands. These payments were promised in old treaties. Some government officials wanted to limit how long tribes could ask for these payments. Suzan Harjo worked hard to protect religious freedom. Her efforts helped pass the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in 1978. This law helped protect Native American religious practices.

In 1982, Suzan Harjo pointed out that the government had not paid tribes what they owed since 1966. She also fought for land rights. She worried that delays in Congress would make it harder for tribes to get fair deals.

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. It was started in 1944.

As a leader, Harjo kept working with Congress to support Native American hunting and fishing rights. She also pushed for more money for Native American education. Under her leadership, the NCAI helped get more funding for education in 1984, 1986, and 1988. She also worked to get government documents about Native American programs. She asked for continued support for Native American businesses. In the 1980s, she was concerned about less government support for health clinics on reservations. This led to higher death rates among Native Americans.

During this time, Harjo continued her work to return sacred items from museums to tribes. She also worked to change how researchers handled Native American human remains and artifacts. Her efforts, along with many others, led to new laws in 1989 and 1990.

She has also spoken out against unfair pictures of Native Americans in movies and TV. She has appeared on many TV shows to talk about Native American issues. Suzan Harjo is also a writer for the online newspaper Indian Country Today.

Important Laws for Native Americans

Suzan Harjo helped create and pass several important laws. These laws protect Native self-governance, arts, cultures, languages, and human rights.

• 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.
• The 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act: This law created the National Museum of the American Indian. It has two locations, one in New York City and a main building in Washington, D.C.
• The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA): This law allows tribes to get back human remains and ceremonial items from museums and other public places.
• The 1996 Executive Order on Indian Sacred Sites: This order helps protect places that are holy to Native Americans.

Morning Star Institute and Sports Mascots

Suzan Harjo started the Morning Star Institute in 1984. She named it after her late husband, Frank Harjo. As president, she works to protect sacred Native lands and cultural rights. She also supports Native art and research. Through her work, she has helped return one million acres of land to tribes like the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, Zuni, and Taos.

The Morning Star Institute also runs "Just Good Sports." This program works to end the use of Native American mascots and stereotypes by sports teams. Suzan Harjo has been working on this issue since the 1960s.

In 1992, Suzan Harjo and seven other Native people filed a lawsuit. It was called Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc. They asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the trademark of the Washington Redskins football team. They said the name was unfair to Native Americans. The judges agreed with the Native Americans. However, the team appealed, and the case went to court. The U.S. Supreme Court did not hear the Native American group's appeal.

Another case, Blackhorse et al. v. Pro Football, followed. In this case, six young Native Americans also challenged the team's trademark. Suzan Harjo continued to speak out for a name change. On June 18, 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office again said the name was "disparaging" and revoked its registration. The team owner said he would appeal.

Because of Suzan Harjo and others, many changes have happened in sports. By 2013, two-thirds of teams that used Native American mascots had changed them. She also works with college and high school teams to remove names that are unfair to Native Americans.

Harjo also worked on the "1992 Alliance." This group found other 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 tribes who survived were celebrated, and that tribes who were lost were remembered. Harjo has also written poems about this history.

The Morning Star Institute organizes the "National Prayer Day for Sacred Places" every year. This event helps protect and save places that are holy to Native Americans.

Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian

From 1980 to 1990, Suzan Harjo was a trustee for the Museum of the American Indian. 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 language materials safely. She also helped write a guide for finding lost language items in other archives.

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 U.S. It also includes her own thoughts on U.S. policies and how they affected her family.

Academic Achievements

Suzan Harjo has been invited to universities to teach special classes. These classes focus on poetry and policy. In 1992, she was the first Native American woman to receive the Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College. This fellowship was originally created to help educate Native Americans. In 1996, she was the first Native person chosen as a Visiting Mentor at Stanford University.

The School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico gave her two fellowships in 2004. She received the Dobkin Artist Fellowship for Poetry and the Summer Scholar Fellowship. At SAR, Harjo led two seminars about Native identity and Native women's cultural topics. In 2006, she led a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. In 2008, Harjo was chosen as 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 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 an event in New York City. She was one of 20 American women writers featured that day, including Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni. Harjo has also read this poem at the US Capitol.

During her fellowships in 2004, Harjo wrote poems inspired by the stories she heard while working on land claims and laws about returning Native items. She also writes columns for Indian Country Today Media Network and is a writer for First American Art Magazine.

Personal Life

In New York, Suzan married Frank Ray Harjo, who passed away in 1984. He was an artist, and they worked together on the radio show Seeing Red. They had two children together.

Works by Suzan Shown Harjo

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 Native Americans' sacred lands and their need for 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.
• "Carlisle Indian School's History Must Be Preserved So Those Who Suffered Aren't Forgotten." Indian Country Today Media Network, October 11, 2012.
• "Washington 'Redskins' is a racist name: US pro football must disavow it," The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
• "Cultural Heritage, Art, & Living Beings: Justice Lost in Translation," First American Art Magazine, No. 1, Fall 2013 (about the Paris auction of Hopi Friends).
• "The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think," Politico, June 23, 2014.

Poetry

Harjo's poems have appeared in many journals. They have also been published in several collections of poems.

• 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.