My name is Suzan Shown Harjo. My mother is Cheyenne and my father is Hodulgee Muscogee from the eastern part of Oklahoma. Both the Cheyennes and Muscogees were forced into Indian Territory by the white people who wanted the Cheyenne and Muscogee lands--Cheyenne lands in Wyoming and Colorado and the Muscogee lands in what is now the southeastern United States. So land has always been very important to me. And one of the things that I have helped Native Peoples do is recover over a million acres of land, including a lot of sacred sites. In 1967, I was part of an historic meeting following some ceremonies at Bear Butte in South Dakota, a sacred place to many Native Peoples, and this meeting was of Lakota and Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders, spiritual people, practitioners--and I was the only writer there and at various points in the meeting was told "write that up." And what "that" was was an agenda that later became a national agenda of recovery and protection of sacred lands, of return of our dead relatives and sacred objects from museums and other non-Indian repositories, and a promotion of general respect for Native Peoples as human beings in general society and popular culture in the United States. So, those three broad agenda items have really become my focus and are today the primary focus of Native Peoples in the United States.
Religious Freedom
Religious freedom is essential. We are the only people in the United States who are not brought under the protections of the First Amendment's freedom of religion clauses, when it comes to going into court to protect our sacred places, because of a Supreme Court decision about ten years ago. So, any effort to gain protections for our sacred places has to be done outside of the litigation arena. One thing that I have worked on in recent years was the 1996 Executive Order on Indian Sacred Sites, which gives a way of working with the federal agencies to reclaim, and at the very least protect, sacred places from further desecration and damage. These are essential elements to the future of Native Peoples.
Now, unfortunately, many of our Native Peoples had both religions and languages driven out of existence. They were driven underground for many years through the Civilization Regulations of the United States Interior Department of 1880 (and in effect until 1936). They [the US government] outlawed the Sun Dance and "all other similar religious ceremonies," outlawed the "anti-progressive" actions of so-called "medicine men" (as it was put in the regulations, "the arts of a conjurer"), outlawed "roaming off the reservation," outlawed ponies, outlawed honorings for birth, death, marriages and the like. These regulations had open-ended sentences. They carried stiff penalties of starvation and imprisonment, and anyone who violated the Civilization Regulations would be put on a list of hostile Indians, which was tantamount to a death sentence.
So, many of our religions were driven underground and a lot of them were ended. And those effects are still being felt today, which is why, in 1978, we needed an American Indian Religious Freedom Act. We needed--and still need--new law that allows us to protect our places of worship. So, we are fighting on a lot of fronts while trying to carry forward our traditions and values as Native Peoples.
Sovereignty
One recognition that we do have is that we are sovereign peoples. And that's good. It is misunderstood in the United States. Anytime Native Peoples choose to exercise sovereignty and treaty rights, there is a tremendous backlash. And why? I believe that it's a national psychosis and fear that if Native Peoples ever get in a position of owning what we should and controlling what we own that we will then be as bad to the white people as the white people have been to us. I think that's what is really operating the laws that are designed to keep us at a low level in society.
The policies are certainly in place under American law for us to enjoy most of our freedoms. But, there are still some laws designed to keep us at the bottom of society, and to keep us from our traditional goals. More than two-thirds of Native Peoples today have no traditional language, have no traditional religion. About one-third of Native Peoples today in the United States have no land base to speak of. Most Indian lands are not that productive either for farming or for oil and gas production. They just don't realize income. We are in a situation where money is scarce in most of Native America and Native Peoples--even though some have become crazy rich, a handful, with gambling money--most have an economically impoverished condition. Native Peoples are the poorest peoples in the United States, the least employed, and have the poorest health and housing conditions today. So, we are at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator that exists and at the top of every emergency situation. And, somewhere in there, some of us are doing what we can to change laws to secure our traditional rights, our treaty rights, our cultural sovereignty, our national sovereignty, our practical sovereignty.
Writing and Writing Laws
I am a writer, and that writing has taken a lot of forms. A lot of what I write becomes federal Indian law, and that involves writing and negotiating. The one area of public policy that I've been at the center of has been the cultural rights agenda, everything from American Indian religious freedom to protection of cultural, intellectual property.
A lot of my work is isolating. That is just the nature of writing. You don't do it by committee. And, much of it has been marginalizing, because I've been doing things that are cutting edge and, when you are on the edge, you do tend to be vilified by your adversaries, of course. [In] everything that I've been involved thus far, I've been called a radical or a militant and, fortunately, those radical and militant ideas that I've had have been signed into laws by every president since the one I actually worked for, President Carter. So, I am happy about that, and I am happy to have made lots of incremental advances for Native Peoples in the law.
Most of what I do is policy, and that involves the maturation of America. It is trying to gain enough agreement amongst the leadership in American society that something will be done. So, in that way, it is like gardening. It is making sure that everything is prepared for the coming season. It's work that requires patience when not much is happening and requires a lot of energy to make sure that something does happen.
Helping to Change
The things that I look back on as great achievements are those areas where I have worked with other people to gain something that they have identified as their top priority. And, with my own people, with Cheyenne and Arapaho People, it has been saving 120 acres of Bear Butte from a housing development project and getting the Secretary of the Interior to put up money to buy it and then taking it into trust. Now, that is just a little 120-acre tract of one butte in South Dakota, but it was mightily important that it not be altered from its original state because it contains a cave where one of our Cheyenne prophets found medicine that caused some visions that caused a restructuring of the societies of the Cheyenne Nation--a very, very important historical place, a very important Cheyenne government-shaping place, a religion-shaping place, a very important spiritual place, and a place where the Cheyenne people go at least once a year for ceremonies.
So, the things that I think are the most important for me to have stayed up late and gotten up early for are those things that most people in the world have never heard of, but they have cosmic importance to everyone in the world. One of our beliefs is that there are tribal people, Native People, in every part of the world that keep the world right for all peoples. You'll find tribal people in every quarter of Mother Earth saying prayers for the good day, and for rain for all, and for the earth to feed everyone, and for all of us to fulfill our purpose and to enjoy our time, enjoy our families. And that is how we spend our time and live our day and try to walk gently through life. So, those efforts that promote that kind of thinking and make life a little easier for the people who keep the world in order are the efforts I attach the greatest importance to.
