Claire Maracle

Claire Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and a Cherokee descendent raised on Muscogee, Osage, and Cherokee land. They began acting and modeling as a child and fell in love with slam poetry as a teenager. Today, as Executive Director of Words of the People, their arts activism is driven by the belief that language is a tool for connection, education is a vehicle for liberation and fluent futures are built by the active, creative celebration of living languages.

An interdisciplinary artist and organizer, their leadership spans over a decade of arts activism. Claire’s work bridges storytelling, liberation, and collective care. They co-founded Poetic Justice, bringing literacy and poetry workshops to carceral settings that provided a framework for education as liberation. They served as Creative Director & Lead Educator for Louder Than a Bomb Oklahoma, instrumental in helping Tulsa launch the first regional offshoot of the Chicago program. Claire dedicated their time to mentoring youth in spoken word as a tool for self-determination and collective healing.  Their poetry has appeared in This Land Press, Emerge Magazine, New Words Press, Frontier Poetry, Wayfarer Magazine and elsewhere.