Remember

Poetry has a long tradition of representing and elevating nature to the status of the sacred and spiritual. In ancient times, poems that displayed such attitudes were called Idylls, which were often short and depicted nature as being a healing alternative to life in the cities. At the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, William Wordsworth founded the school of Romanticism with the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” Romantic poets believed that human beings were positively influenced by their connection to nature. Romantic poets expressed skepticism of a manmade world, human reliance on technology, and the dehumanizing quality of mechanization. Romantic tradition proposes that nature can stimulate the imagination, open the heart as well as the mind, and offer a vehicle for transcendence and connection with divinity.

The tradition of respecting the natural world long predates the Romantic movement in America. Indigenous American oral traditions, myths, and religious practices have always elevated the natural world, viewing natural forces as sacred. These faiths put less emphasis on one’s individual experience of nature, favoring communal connection. Many of Harjo’s poems address a universal “you” who stands in for many if not all people, reminding them to treat the natural world with respect because it is part of the human world, and humans are an aspect of nature. In “Remember,” the lines “Remember you are this universe and this / universe is you” (Lines 21-22) underscore this concept.

The speaker treats the elements around her as equals. In other poems, Harjo calls them family. In “Talking with the Sun,” for example, the speaker calls the sun “a relative” (Line 6). Throughout her body of work, Harjo expresses not only respect for nature, but also dependence upon it for her life and all human life. At a time when many Americans are concerned about a climate crisis, this focus on ecological respect has gained increasing popularity. When the speaker of “Remember” encourages all the people of the earth to “Remember the earth whose skin you are” (Line 11), she is implying that the survival of the species is dependent on the planet. Protecting the planet is necessary to human life because humans are part of the earth’s body. Certainly, the speaker is asking Indigenous Americans to remember the beliefs and attitudes of their ancestors, while also suggesting that all people “remember”—i.e., consider and adopt—the Indigenous people’s relationship with nature.

Though Harjo was raised in a home that was nominally Christian, like many of the Creek people, she rejected the religion when she was 13 years old. Her poetry expresses an affinity for the Muscogee faith—a form of animism that held all natural objects and inhabitants to be capable of human attributes and agency. This makes Harjo’s work an example of eco-feminism, an offshoot of Romanticism that treats all forms of life as interdependent, deserving of respect for its own sake and for the sake of preserving human life.