You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries- -Or poetry, or art, or anythin… - Joy Harjo

It seems es that the Native American experience has often been bitter. Horrible things have happened over and over. I like to think that bitter experience can be used to move the world, and if we can see that and work toward that instead of killing each other and hurting each other through all the ways that we have done it. (The world, not just Indian people, but the world.) JH: Sure, because we're not separate. We're all in this together. It's a realization I came to after dealing with the whole half-breed question. I realized that I'm not separate from myself either, and neither are Indian people separate from the rest of the world.

No. I was not okay.
And neither was James Baldwin though his essays
Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight
To assert humanness in a black and white world.

There were no Native names in the American book of poetry when I began writing poetry, though there are many.