Professor Stevens to participate in forum at U.N.

James Thomas Stevens

James Thomas Stevens, associate professor of English at SUNY Fredonia and coordinator of its Native American Studies program, has been invited to return to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in New York City.

A member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Stevens will introduce two Native American poets, Joy Harjo and Maurice Kenny, at the forum on May 28. He will also serve as moderator during their presentations.

Harjo, who combines poetry with music, is the author of numerous books of poetry, and has received many honors, including the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, an American Book Award and a fellowship with the Arizona Commission on the Arts. A saxophonist, she has performed her jazz and poetry throughout the world.

Kenny, whose most famous works are personae poems, is a recipient of a National Public Radio Award for Broadcasting and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. He has been published in almost 100 journals, including special issues on Native American writing.

Neither poet is a stranger at SUNY Fredonia.

Harjo gave readings on campus in 2008 during a visit arranged by Ashley Murawski, president of the Native American Student Union, and supported by the SUNY Native American Western Consortium, the Center for Multicultural Affairs and the English Department. Kenny read to a full house during the Mary Louise White readers series in 2005.

“They have both been major influences on me since I was an undergraduate,” Stevens said. He has known of Kenny’s work since he was a teenager, and learned of Harjo’s writing in 1989. Stevens will follow in the footsteps of Harjo and other important Native American writers by devoting a year to teaching at the Institute of American Indians Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.

This will be the second time Stevens, a graduate of the MFA program at Brown University, has participated in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He was a featured speaker with Cherokee writer Allison Hedge-Coke at the 2006 forum, which produced the Indigenous Rights Declaration.

The forum is the United Nations’ central coordinating body for matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world’s indigenous peoples, who number more than 370 million in some 70 countries. It functions as an advisory body within the framework of the United Nations System that reports to the UN’s Economic and Social Council.