Sierra Harrop

Oklahoma is where I’m from. These dusty plains, rolling hills, ancient mountains, high deserts, and metropolitan cities are the places that made me. There are five distinct regions of the state… but if I had to pick one icon to show you who I am, it's the red dirt. It's more than mud that sticks when you walk, it's a way of life and a musical genre, and a whole culture.   I haven’t lived there since 2009, but it never leaves you.

Oklahoma isn’t the South. It isn’t the Midwest. It's touched by Cajun and Ozark influence, it's friendly enough with its neighbor to the south and west - Texas, but it really is its own thing. My family was in Texas in the 1840’s, but my generation was born on the north side of the Red River.

Oklahoma is a melting pot of outlaws and oil executives, a culture heavily influenced by the native nations who not long ago commanded these Plains, and many more proud tribes who were forced here. 

You’re raised to serve others here. You work hard for yourself but also without hesitation for your neighbors and fellow Okies in times of need. This state has had more collective trauma than any other. From a wild start to development with a land rush… to the booms and busts of an oil based economy. Agriculture is the third biggest industry here… and the wild weather for which Oklahoma is famous doesn’t do the farmers and ranchers any favors. Cold dry air slides off the Rockies, mixes with warm moist air from the Gulf. There’s a rock formation west of here, in the Texas Panhandle called the Cap Rock. It causes storms to fire off in a dryline that sets up a collision of these forces during the spring time. Mile-wide tornadoes are not uncommon. In the winter, ice storms destroy the power grid for weeks at a time, as the roaring wind blows freezing rain into airfoils on the lines and they snap. When it's not icy, it's dry. That same wind causes horrendous wildfires. 

If it's not the economy or the weather, it's some asshole who blows a building up because he’s mad at the government. The whole state comes together to help and heal when times of need come. That togetherness, unity and sense of community in Oklahoma isn’t like anything I’ve seen anywhere else. It makes the tragedies and traumas be a shared wound when we face them.

I grew up in a town called Lawton. To the north is the Wichita Mountains, to the south, is the Big Pasture - once leased to white ranchers from the nations settled near Fort Sill. The Comanche, The Kiowa, and the Fort Sill Apache. I never appreciated it as a kid, but I was so lucky to be exposed to these amazing cultures at such a young age. I don’t have enough Native blood to claim it, but I got to have Tim Nevaquayah as my middle school art teacher. I got to visit Quanah Parker’s star house and take a tour led by one of his descendants – before the people that lay claim to it now have let it go to shit. I grew up fishing at the base of the Medicine Bluffs, and visiting the grave of Geronimo. Now when I go home, I always visit him and try to honor the great warrior and later entertainer that he was. He made the best of a bad situation, and saw international fame in his later years as an exposition act. When he’d ride on trains, people would buy the buttons off his shirt, he’d stop at the next depot and buy more to sew on and sell. I think he would have a wildly successful podcast, if he were alive today – and not in the toxic way. 

Playing the hand you’re dealt is a key theme in the land that shaped me, and that’s the energy I carry. Whether you’re a warrior turned enterprising entertainer… or a queer kid with a flare for storytelling. Oklahoma is a place unto itself, and I can’t think of a better place to be from.