Intellectual Bio

CODY HARJO’S INTELLECTUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Stvnko. My name is Cody Harjo and I am of Seminole and Cherokee descent from my father’s side and Otoe, Iowa, and Creek descent from my mother. I am of the Panther and Buffalo Clans and a member of the Tusekia Harjo Band. In Seminole culture our bands are our political affiliation, which we are also born into. I am the direct descendent of hereditary Otoe chiefs Ar-Ke-Ke-Tah and White Cloud. My grandpa Floyd Harjo was an elected chief of the Seminole Nation and now my father holds that honor. This is a very abbreviated version of a formal introduction in my community. Typically a respected elder who knows my family, our history, and therefore me would speak on my behalf. For someone who has lived a good, long life these introductions can last over
an hour. The elders from my diverse tribal communities are my first and most influential teachers. Only elders are given the floor for public speaking, because they are the keepers of our traditions. It is our job to listen and learn when they choose to talk. Growing up I heard many elders ask the community to consider, what will happen in the future when they are gone and can no longer guide us?

My entire family is from the state of Oklahoma. To shorten a very long and complicated history, after a serious of wars and legal battles the United States government removed various groups from the their traditional homelands to Indian Territory. Diverse tribes migrated from the East Coast, the Deep South, and the Great Plains to this new land. This land segregated for us by the United States Government was supposed to be in our possession for as long as long as the “grass grows, and the river flows.” Except the United States is a country that always needs more and more. Parts of Indian Territory were opened for white settlement via the land runs and created Oklahoma Territory. Eventually two competing ideas for a state emerged. The all-Indian state of Sequoyah and the supporters for the state of Oklahoma. A single vote over-ruled this division and joined both territories under the banner of Oklahoma. At least this is how it was told to me.

I consider the most engaging way to communicate a people’s history is through stories and songs. Some of the more passionate history lessons came from my grandfather, Floyd Harjo, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Historian Jane F. Lancaster offers this summary of early Oklahoma Seminole - U.S. relations, “the first few decades under U.S. control brought contraction of their land, loss of the Florida territory, war, and gradual removal to an unknown land” (23). It’s understandable that Grandpa Harjo’s lectures were underscored with us versus them tone. I never knew history, as a subject, could be boring until college lectures. One must develop a thesis and support the argument with research and data in the academic history world. The excitement of the story is lost.

Colin Calloway chair of the Native American Studies Department at Dartmouth College and my advisor was the ideal person to guide my course of study. Through his advisement I stopped considering all points of contact as always being conflict. I looked beyond the short years since the Declaration of Independence was signed to see this country’s Indigenous population as being part of the international stage since 1492. Now I prefer to focus on the economic, political, and scientific contributions Indigenous knowledge has contributed to humanity.

While amiably working through the history curriculum I siphoned my enthusiasm for stories into the Film and Television department. I thought I wanted to be a director, or an editor but the screenwriting courses were the only production courses available to freshmen. I was hooked after the first class. There is a strict story telling structure for the 90 to 120 pages composing a screenplay that fascinates and challenges
me. Christopher Vogler introduces Joseph’s Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Face, as the foundation for his story structure theories in The Writer’s Journey. Vogler notes, “The pattern of the Hero’s Journey is universal, occurring in every culture, in every time. It is infinitely varied as the human race itself and yet its basic form remains constant” (20). There is a beauty to this structure that demands the writer, no matter the age, gender, race, or cultural identity, to create compelling characters with conflicts that can engage a global audience.

After emerging from Dartmouth College with a degree in History modified with Native American Studies and a minor in Film and Television studies, I still managed to love history and story. My first job with the Great Plains Chautauqua managed to unite both interests. On their website the Kansas Humanities Council describes the Great Plains
Chautauqua as a “revival of the traveling tent Chautauqua’s that entertained and educated Kansans during the first decades of the 20th century.” It was my job to write an accurate first person characterization of a famous American in history. The other Chautauquans were history professors or PhD students, so there was much to learn about scholarship and public presentations from those established educators. Traveling through five states in ten weeks and presenting in costume under a tent, sometimes felt like historical vaudeville. The Chautauquan technique of turning a third person historical lecture into a first person characterization and dressing the part could be the difference of three versus three hundred in the audience. This experience taught me to be fearlessly creative about crafting programs to engage the general public’s
interest in history. The following summer I participated in the Institute of American
Indian Arts and ABC/Disney Summer Television and Film workshop. The program introduced the techniques of television spec writing, the importance of the pitch, and the uneasy union of creativity and profitability. But it sparked an interest in the business side of producing for television and film.

In the spring of 2008 I accepted a job in the education department at the National Museum of the American Indian - George Gustav Heye Center in New York City. This move also allowed access to New York University’s continuing education program to further
develop an understanding of producing. Every instructor in this program discussed the possibilities of new media with either excitement or trepidation. It is a new frontier for production, creativity, communication, and legal issues that the New School curriculum appears ready to help me explore. My primary interest is the media management component. I hope an M.A. degree will give me the skills and confidence needed to help manage and grow tribal media outlets. In ten years I want to be part of the process that helps tribes control their image, share their history, and communicate their contemporary issues.

My personal strategies to achieve this goal are already in place. I engage diverse audiences to discover common interests for American Indian history and contemporary lives. Whether working in rural America or with the international audiences New York City offers, the misconceptions regarding us are largely the same. Probably the most
damaging is: we were wiped out by the divine right of manifest destiny and therefore no longer exist. The second is the idea that we lived and continue to exist in a primitive state. Both ideas combine to generate an ignorance that goes beyond sports mascots but infects local, state, and federal legislation. The worst results are blatant disregard of treaty rights that can negatively impact our health, education, land, culture, economic development, and basic human rights. This leads to the question, whether this dilemma of ignorance can be remedied through education? I believe some of it can.

Another misperception is that we are all the same. American’s Indigenous people are diverse and separated by differing languages, histories, culture, and geographies. It was only in the 20th century that a yet to be solidified pan-Indian identity developed. A goal of mine is to consider points of unification through the understanding of our 20th century history and our contributions to the development of the United States. I’d like to create a website that utilizes essays, mini-mentries,
short narrative webisodes, etc. to educate about this time period in the most engaging way possible. I hope a global audience will enjoy and learn from the content. However I cannot lose sight of the group who needs this information the most, American Indian youth. The tribes of North American are unanimous that monumental efforts are needed to preserve their remaining heritage and culture. Media in all its forms is capable of addressing this critical and immediate need. My favorite examples are elder episodes on YouTube, which are then linked to facebook pages. I came to New School to examine the possibilities for preservation that new media could hold for my tribes. Our elders cannot be with us forever and their passing should not leave a void in our history and stories.


WORKS CITED
Kansas Humanities Council:
http://www.kansashumanities.org/programs/GreatPlainsChautauqua.html
Lancaster, Jane F. Removal Aftershock. The Seminoles’ Struggle to Survive
in the West, 1836-1866. Knoxville; The University of Tennesee Press,
1994.
Volger, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey 2nd Edition. Mythic Structure for
Writers. Studio City: Michael Wise Productions, 1998.
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