Suzan Shown Harjo
Suzan Shown Harjo (born June 2, 1945) (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee) is an advocate for Native American rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres (4,000 km²) of tribal lands. After co-producing the first American Indian news show in the nation for WBAI radio while living in New York City, and producing other shows and theater, in 1974 she moved to Washington, D.C., to work on national policy issues. She served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the President Jimmy Carter administration and later as president of the National Council of American Indians. Harjo is president of the Morning Star Institute, a national Native American rights organization. Since the 1960s, she has worked on getting sports teams to drop names that promote negative stereotypes of Native Americans. In June 2014, the Patent and Trademark Office revoked the Washington Redskins trademark; the owner said he would appeal. By 2013, two-thirds of teams with American Indian mascots had changed them due to these public campaigns. On November 24, 2014, Harjo received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor. Harjo was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Early years Harjo was born as Suzan Shown on June 2, 1945, in El Reno, Oklahoma. Her mother was Cheyenne and her father Muscogee, and they lived on his allotment near Beggs. One of her maternal great-grandfathers was Chief Bull Bear (Cheyenne). Between the ages of 12 and 16 she lived with her family in Naples, Italy, where her father was stationed while in the US Army. Upon her return to the States, she moved to New York City, where she worked in radio and the theater. Activism The roots of Suzan Shown Harjo's activism date from the mid-1960s, when she co-produced Seeing Red, a bi-weekly radio program on New York's WBAI FM station; it was the first Indigenous news show in the United States. Some of her pioneering radio work is preserved at the Pacifica Radio Archives in Los Angeles. She worked on it with her husband, Frank Harjo, whom she met and married in New York. They also worked on issues of protecting religious freedom for American Indians. In New York she worked in independent theatre and radio, producing and performing in numerous plays. After seeing sacred garments in the Museum of the American Indian in New York in 1967, she worked for repatriation to tribes of such items and for changes in museum policies. They moved to Washington D.C. in 1974, when Suzan Harjo started working as a legislative liaison for two law firms representing Indian rights. For a time she was also news director for the American Indian Press Association. Harjo was elected to the Common Cause National Governing Board in 1982. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter appointed Harjo as a Congressional liaison for Indian affairs. Harjo worked with multiple subcommittees within Congress to advocate Native American positions in the formation