Suzan Harjo

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Muscogee) is a prominent Native American leader in the arts, culture and policy. 

A poet, writer, curator and advocate, she has helped Native Peoples protect many sacred places and recover more than one million acres of land.

The first Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholar (University of Arizona, 2008), she also was the first Native woman to receive the Montgomery Fellowship (Dartmouth College, 1992) and was awarded unprecedented back-to-back fellowships as a 2004 School of Advanced Research Scholar and Poetry Fellow.

A Founding Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, she began work in 1967 that led to the NMAI, to repatriation laws and to museum reform; and she directed the NMAI Native Language Project and hosted the NMAI Native Writers Series for its first three seasons. Guest Curator of the upcoming NMAI exhibit, “TREATIES: Great Nations In Their Own Words,” she also curated the 2007 “American Icons Through Indigenous Eyes” for the District of Columbia Arts Center; the Peabody Essex Museum’s 1996-1997 major exhibition, “Gifts of the Spirit;” and the 1992 “Visions from Native America,” the first Native art exhibit ever shown in the U.S. Senate and House Rotundas.

She has led successful national campaigns for laws in four decades to promote and protect Native nations, sovereignty, children, arts, cultures, languages and repatriation. She also has been in the forefront of efforts to eliminate so-called Native references in American sports.

A member of the Native American Policy Committee of the Barack Obama campaign and an Advisor to the Transition (2008-2009), she was a Carter Administration Special Assistant for Indian Legislation and Liaison and a past Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians.

Ms. Harjo is President of The Morning Star Institute, a national Native rights organization founded in 1984 and based in Washington, DC.                                

IF YOU LIKE Suzan Harjo:

• Winona LaDuke
• Linda Hogan
• Walter Echo-Hawk