User:Joce21/sandbox

Harjo was born on May 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first of four children, Harjo’s birth name was Joy Foster. Her father, Allen W. Foster, was Muscogee Creek, and her mother, Wynema Baker Foster, has mixed-race ancestry of Cherokee, French, and Irish. Harjo adopted her name, in honor of her grandmother, upon becoming a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

At age 16, Harjo attended an Institute of American Indian Arts, then a BIA boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for high school. Harjo loved painting and found that it gave her a way to express herself.

Harjo enrolled as a pre-med student the University of New Mexico. She changed her major to art after her first year. During her last year, she switched to creative writing, as she was inspired by different Native American writers. She graduated in 1976. Harjo earned her master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978. She also took filmmaking classes at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.