I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in th… - Joy Harjo

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I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in the livestock and the Navajo speakers were saying, "We need a word." How do we come up with a word that will tell the people that even though you can't see it, there is something dangerous here that can harm you and you can't use these waters, when it was the only source of water for their livestock?

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About Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951) is a poet, musician, author and the first Native American United States Poet Laureate.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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Additional quotes by Joy Harjo

My father told me that some voices are so true they can be used as weapons, can maneuver the weather, change time. He said that a voice that powerful can walk away from the singer if it is shamed. After my father left us, I learned that some voices can deceive you. There is a top layer and there is a bottom, and they don't match.

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Poetry is the art that is closest to music, standing between music and narrative orality (which can be speechmaking, sermon or theater). Poetry is the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic by nature and not bound by time. Because of these qualities poetry carries grief, heartache, ecstasy, celebration, despair, or searing truth more directly than any other literary art form. It is ceremonial in nature. Poetry is a tool for disruption and creation and is necessary for generations of humans to know who they are and who they are becoming in the wave map of history. Without poetry, we lose our way.

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