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Joy Harjo, Muscogee poet & musician

Born May 9, 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and an enrolled member of the Muscogee Tribe, Joy Harjo came to New Mexico to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts where she studied painting and theatre, not music and poetry, though she did write a few lyrics for an Indian acid rock band. Joy attended the University of New Mexico where she received her B.A. in 1976, followed by an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has also taken part in a non-degree program in Filmmaking from the Anthropology Film Center.

She began writing poetry when the national Indian political climate demanded singers and speakers, and was taken by the intensity and beauty possible in the craft. Her most recent book of poetry is the award-winning How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems. It wasn't until she was in Denver that she took up the saxophone because she wanted to learn how to sing and had in mind a band that would combine the poetry with a music there were no words yet to define, a music involving elements of tribal musics, jazz and rock. She eventually returned to New Mexico where she began the first stirrings of what was to be Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice when she began working with Susan Williams. Their first meeting occurred several years before in Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., a hint of things to come.

She is also listed in 100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History.

Read more about Joy here: http://www.nativewiki.org/Joy_Harjo