Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, has been selected as the 23rd U.S. poet laureate, a move that will inspire Native American people throughout the country, says Kellie Thompson, director of the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Her selection will inspire us in expected ways — maybe to become poets and artists — but also in unexpected ways, like speaking our truth in spaces where it typically has not been heard, as Native American people and as women,” said Thompson, a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians.