What the First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate Means to Indigenous People

'Joy Harjo is a musician, poet, and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation; she also became the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate.   Harjo has brought poetry to the people, and put her identity as an Indigenous woman at the forefront of her work since she began writing as a college student in the early 1970s. She is the author of eight books of poetry, as well as a memoir, and fiction for young adults and children. Joining The Takeaway to discuss what Harjo's appointment means to them and for the Indigenous community in the U.S. are Kimberly Blaeser, a poet and professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and  Esther Belin , a Navajo artist and poet. Blaeser is also the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.'