Joy Harjo

Group 1

Horses

• Psychic dualism
  • a part/separate
  • Diaspora of Indigenous Americans
  • Kosmagram → the above and below; not fully present, but not dead (spiritually)
• White, red, yellow, and grey
  • IMPORTANT FOR THE KOSMAGRAM
  • Phases/season of life (community, internal, etc.)
  • Horses are a metaphor for experiencing time

Border

• Immigration to Canada
• Alienation/other/foreign
• Straying away from the boxes/Not part of the pack/Limited freedom
• Each horse had a different ailment/different Americans experience

Fear

• Identity
• Ancestry
• “Backwards” (in between or liminal)

Anchorage

• Hardship
• Roots
• Communal
• Inter

Overall notes

• Sovereignty
• Survival
• Multiple dimensions

Group 2

Introduction

• Not separation between poetry/storytelling/etc. just as there is none between humans/nature/animals

Skeleton of Winter

• Resilience→ rabbits are torn apart, but get to the other side
• Ancestors living in her
• Memory alive not just a name

Remember

• representation of family/life
• Earth is an alive poem
• we are all connected

New Orleans

• Past, future exist at same time
• Place as memory
• History in places

She Had Some Horses

• Personality
• Women’s qualities or hers?
• Maxine Hong Kingston → ghosts
  • Memory of the past that may or may not have occurred
  • Connection
• These horses are trained/domesticated UNLIKE the previous horses → WHITE PEOPLE

Other notes

• How do you reclaim?
  • Having a connection to your ancestors
  • Represent your family well in your waking life/someone on the planet
• Embodying ancestral knowledge/wisdom
• Intergenerational Transfer→ epigenetics; trauma often enhances this knowledge