FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Poetry Promise, Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival and Clark County Poet Laureate Present: LET THERE BE NO REGRETS; an online series featuring our United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo
Free online series runs September 23, 29 and October 1
LAS VEGAS NEVADA – Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019. She is the first Native American to be so honored.
Joy will read poems from her new publication An American Sunrise via Zoom on Tuesday, September 29 at 5:00 p.m. (PST). She will also participate in a webinar conversation with author Terry Tempest Williams about the August, 2020 publication of the first Norton Anthology of Native American Literature, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, on Thursday, October 1 at 5:00 p.m.
The author of nine books of poetry, plays and children’s books, and a memoir, her honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writers’ Award, a Rasmuson US Artist Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer, educator, conservationist, and activist. Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West.
In conjunction with the Joy Harjo program, the 20th annual Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival (LVJFF) will be presenting a free online screening of a PBS documentary film entitled Unspoken Americas: Native American Boarding Schools, as part of its ongoing virtual film series. Watch film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo1bYj-R7F0
A webinar discussion of the documentary will be on Wednesday, September 23 at 5:00 p.m. moderated by Joshua Abbey, Director of LVJFF featuring Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis and Professor Andrew Woolford Ph.D. with the University of Manitoba.
Justice Montoya-Lewis is the first Native American Justice to serve on the Washington State Supreme Court, and the second Native American to serve on a state supreme court nationwide. Justice Montoya-Lewis has spent her career as a practicing attorney, tribal court judge, superior court judge, associate professor, and advocate for juvenile justice reform, equity, and tribal communities
Professor Andrew Woolford Ph.D. is the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars whose research is centered in the field of genocide studies, with specific emphasis on cultural techniques of group destruction deployed against Indigenous Peoples in North America. He is the author of This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide and Redress in North America.
REGISTRATION for the FREE Joy Harjo program series:
www.lvjff.org or www.poetrypromise.org
LET THERE BE NO REGRETS
for Bears Ears National Monument
We’re not losing the birch trees; the birch trees are losing us.
—Wayne “Minoghzhig” Valliere
The songs and stories that formed us are restless
and need a place to live in the world of our grandchildren.
They are weary with waiting.
Earth continues to dream her earth dreams
Though desperate thoughts fed by money hunger roam our minds
To the destroyers, Earth is not a person.
They will want more until there is no more to steal.
Earth who does not know time is patient.
The destroyers will destroy themselves.
So many earth spirits take care of this place. They emerge from the cliff walls.
They emerge from the waves of waters.
Our ancestors are not only human ancestors.
What do you see when you fly to the top of the ancestor tree?
Let there be no regrets, no sadness, no anger, no acts of disturbance to these lands.
—from An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo
The Joy Harjo program series is presented by:
Poetry Prominse, Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival, and Clark County Poet Laureate
The Joy Harjo program series is supported by:
Nevada Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, Nevada Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Clark County Nevada, City of Henderson, City of Las Vegas, League of Women Voters, Nevada National Organization for Women, and Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Vegas
In-kind support from:
The Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, Spill the Honey Foundation, Nevada State College, UNLV Native American Alumni Club, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Justice Center, Brave New Voices, Jewish Nevada/Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada, Anti-Defamation League of Nevada, ZACHOR Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, Las Vegas Review Journal, Imagine Communications and numerous individual sponsors.
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