{"id":36763,"date":"2024-02-03T07:12:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T12:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/kiowa-n-scott-momaday-a-giant-of-native-american-literature-dead-at-89\/"},"modified":"2024-02-03T07:12:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T12:12:08","slug":"kiowa-n-scott-momaday-a-giant-of-native-american-literature-dead-at-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/kiowa-n-scott-momaday-a-giant-of-native-american-literature-dead-at-89\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiowa N. Scott Momaday, a giant of Native American literature, dead at 89"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kiowa Pulitzer recipient N. Scott Momaday (Courtesy photo) \u201cIs it possible to overcome great disadvantage\u201d ~ N. Scott Momaday<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

SANTA FE, N.M. \u2013 Navarre Scott Momaday, Kiowa, a writer, poet, educator and master storyteller, has died. His Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel \u201cHouse Made of Dawn\u201d is credited with the start of a renaissance in contemporary Native American literature. He was 89. Momaday<\/a><\/u> died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher HarperCollins announced. He had been in failing health.<\/p>\n

On Facebook, friends and organizations shared condolences and remembrances lamenting the loss of a \u201cbeloved member of our community and an inspiration to all,\u201d and, \u201ca giant of Native American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vice chairman of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma Joseph Tsotigh said, \u201cThe C\u00e1uig\u00fa and the world have lost one of the most eloquent voices of our generation! It\u2019s with deep sadness that I acknowledge the passing of a magnificent, talented and irrepressible author, poet, and raconteur Dr. N. Scott Momaday. The world will never know another like him. Hegau \u00e9m \u00e2uib\u00f2\u00f1:[d\u00e0u\u201d.<\/p>\n

I\u00f1upiaq author and poet Joan Kane, a visiting associate professor at Reed College, recalls encountering Momaday\u2019s writing during her first year as a student at Harvard College. \u201cHow late and accidentally to come to the work of one of the most influential of American writers! Without Momaday\u2019s many contributions to academia as well as literature, it\u2019s hard to imagine the increasing representation of exemplary Indigenous scholarship and creative works we\u2019ve seen especially in the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also recalls the first time she met Momaday in person, when he spoke at a large, informal social gathering of tribal librarians, archivists, museum staff and journalists. There, she said, he listened as much as he spoke. Kane said she saw \u201cin his comport, that it\u2019s just as important to be present to each other as Native people through our serious efforts as it is to connect with humor, approachability and ease.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScott was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary poet and writer. He was a singular voice in American literature, and it was an honor and a privilege to work with him,\u201d Momaday\u2019s editor, Jennifer Civiletto, said in a statement. \u201cHis Kiowa heritage was deeply meaningful to him and he devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially the oral tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHouse Made of Dawn,\u201d published in 1968, tells of a World War II soldier who returns home and struggles to fit back in, a story as old as war itself; in this case, home is a Native community in rural New Mexico. Much of the book was based on Momaday\u2019s childhood in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, and on his conflicts between the ways of his ancestors and the risks and possibilities of the outside world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in both worlds and straddle those worlds even now,\u201d Momaday said in a 2019 PBS documentary. \u201cIt has made for confusion and a richness in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite such works as John Joseph Mathews\u2019 1934 release \u201cSundown,\u201d novels by American Indians weren\u2019t widely recognized at the time of \u201cHouse Made of Dawn.\u201d A New York Times reviewer, Marshall Sprague, even contended in an otherwise favorable review that \u201cAmerican Indians do not write novels and poetry as a rule, or teach English in top-ranking universities, either. But we cannot be patronizing. N. Scott Momaday\u2019s book is superb in its own right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Joseph Heller\u2019s \u201cCatch-22,\u201d Momaday\u2019s novel was a World War II story that resonated with a generation protesting the Vietnam War. In 1969, Momaday became the first Native American to win the fiction Pulitzer, and his novel helped launch a generation of authors, including Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Louise Erdrich. His admirers would range from the poet Joy Harjo, the country\u2019s first Native to be named poet laureate, to the film stars Robert Redford and Jeff Bridges.<\/p>\n

Momaday was born Dec. 27, 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma. In a PBS interview for American Masters, he said he was born in poverty, in a house with no electricity or plumbing, \u201cWe would be considered at the very bottom of the scale in terms of land and poverty. I came from that by the virtue of good luck and perseverance into a kind of existence that has been visible. I have achieved a kind of reputation and I think the legacy has to do with what is possible. It is possible to overcome great disadvantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Native American people at the turn of the 20th Century had a sense of defeat after being conquered, put down and held down.\u201dIt was terribly hard for them to come out of that, to survive that kind of poverty of the morale, let\u2019s say.<\/p>\n

But they have done it to a large extent. There\u2019s still a ways to go. I want my legacy to be the example of how one can survive against those odds,\u201d said Momaday.<\/p>\n

Momaday told PBS in a 2019 documentary that the ancient oral tradition is at the heart of today\u2019s storytelling. \u201cThe landscape, which is the embodiment of spirit, in my view, is somehow informed with language and oral tradition. I think the voices of ancestors going back into geologic time are there. They\u2019re in the landscape and when called upon they can be \u2013 they proceed out of the landscape and into the hearts of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The influence of ancestors and traditions helped shape \u201cThe Way to Rainy Mountain,\u201d written in 1969 and \u201cThe Names: A Memoir\u201d in 1976.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Arizona and New Mexico, where his parents taught on reservations, allowed Momaday to experience not only his father\u2019s Kiowa culture but also those of other southwest Native Americans including the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo traditions.<\/p>\n

He attended the University of New Mexico and earned a PhD in English Literature at Stanford University in 1963.<\/p>\n

Over the following decades, he taught at Stanford, Princeton and Columbia universities, among other top-ranking schools, was a commentator for NPR, and lectured worldwide. He published more than a dozen books, from \u201cAngle of Geese and Other Poems\u201d to the novels \u201cThe Way to Rainy Mountain\u201d and \u201cThe Ancient Child,\u201d and became a leading advocate for the beauty and vitality of traditional Native life.<\/p>\n

Addressing a gathering of American Indian scholars in 1970, Momaday said, \u201cOur very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves.\u201d He championed Natives\u2019 reverence for nature, writing that \u201cthe American Indian has a unique investment in the American landscape.\u201d He shared stories told to him by his parents and grandparents. He regarded oral culture as the wellspring of language and storytelling, and dated American culture back not to the early English settlers, but also to ancient times, noting the procession of gods depicted in the rock art at Utah\u2019s Barrier Canyon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not know what they mean, but we know we are involved in their meaning,\u201d he wrote in the essay \u201cThe Native Voice in American Literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey persist through time in the imagination, and we cannot doubt that they are invested with the very essence of language, the language of story and myth and primal song. They are 2,000 years old, more or less, and they remark as closely as anything can the origin of American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Momaday with a National Medal of Arts \u201cfor his writings and his work that celebrate and preserve Native American art and oral tradition.\u201d Besides his Pulitzer, his honors included an Academy of American Poets prize and, in 2019, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

In his book of poetry, \u201cDeath of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems,\u201d Momaday wrote:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bequest<\/p>\n

Oh, my holy and unholy thoughts
\nWill lie scattered on these pages.
\nThey will do to make a modest book,
\nNot something for the ages,
\nBut leavings for a lonely child, perhaps,
\nOr for an old man dreaming.
\nIn his poem \u201cDeath of Sitting Bear,\u201d he also wrote of Sitting Bear:
\nO Sun, you remain forever but we Kaitsenko [elite warriors] must die
\nO earth, you remain forever but we Kaitsenko must die.<\/p>\n

Momaday was married twice, most recently to Regina Heitzer. He had four daughters, one of whom, Cael, died in 2017.<\/p>\n

Momaday was married twice, most recently to Regina Heitzer. He had four daughters, one of whom, Cael, died in 2017.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

(Contact Joaqlin Estus at jestus@ictnews.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post Kiowa N. Scott Momaday, a giant of Native American literature, dead at 89<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Kiowa Pulitzer recipient N. Scott Momaday (Courtesy photo) \u201cIs it possible to overcome great disadvantage\u201d ~ N. Scott Momaday SANTA FE, N.M. \u2013 Navarre Scott Momaday, Kiowa, a writer, poet, educator and master storyteller, has died. His Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel \u201cHouse Made of Dawn\u201d is credited with the <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> February 3, 2024<\/p>\n

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