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Scott Momaday

 An interview to N Scott Momaday
on the website Academy of Achievement
 When I published The Way to Rainy Mountain , someone who was writing a review -- or interviewing me -- said to me, "You know, you're very lucky to know who you are, with respect to your grandparents, your great-grandparents, five generations back. You know about that. I don't know that about myself, or my people." And that came as a surprise to me, because I hadn't thought about it, you know. And I had taken it for granted. But I sometimes think that the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian, in that sense. Because very few people know about their ancestry, going back even a generation. I'm always appalled by students who -- you know, I say, "Well look, you've got an oral tradition. You've got a family oral tradition, if nothing else. Tell me about your grandparents." And sometimes they just don't know about their grandparents, and I find that very sad, and alarming, but it's true. It's true.
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mom0int-5#

To a child running with outstretched arms in Canyon de Chelly

To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly

Navarro Scott Momaday

You are small and intense
In your excitement, whole,
Embodied in delight.
The backdrop is immense;

The sand drifts break and roll
Through cleavages of light
And shadow. You embrace
The spirit of this place.

House made of Dawn

House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around. […]

The Canyon is a ladder to the plain. […]

Man came down the ladder to the plain a long time ago. It was a slow migration, though he came only from the caves in the canyons and the tops of the mesas1 nearby. There are low, broken walls on the tabletops and smoke-blackened caves in the cliffs, where there are metates2 and broken bowls and ancient ears of corn3, as if the prehistoric civilization had gone out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before the dawn. For man, too, has a tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him.

1. altopiano          2. pietra usata per macinare il grano            3. pannocchie di mais