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Special Issue Articles

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2026): American Studies in the Classroom: Arts, Culture, and Critical Pedagogy

Indigenous Poets as Cartographers of Crisis and Memory: Joy Harjo's Poet Laureate Signature Project Living Nations, Living Words

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v7i1.240
Submitted
July 8, 2025
Published
May 6, 2026

Abstract

Joy Harjo's signature project as US poet laureate was published as an intricately designed online experience and as the eponymous printed anthology Living Nations, Living Words. While both versions feature the same poems, they differ in several respects. This article elucidates the argumentative gist of the project's online and printed versions and briefly discusses poems by Deborah A. Miranda, Kimberly Blaeser, Laura Tohe, and Craig Santos Perez. Harjo's project prefigures routes towards a future in which Native poets' conceptualizations and dynamic engagement with maps, historical trauma, and collective and individual memories will allow all readers to revise their understanding of the beginnings, components, and implications of histories of "America" and of "American" poetry.

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