Navarre Scott Momaday was born on February 27, 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma.[2] He was delivered in the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Hospital, registered as having seven-eighths Indian blood.[3] N. Scott Momaday's mother was Mayme 'Natachee' Scott Momaday (1913–1996), who claimed to be of partial Cherokee descent,[4][5] born in Fairview, Kentucky,[6] while his father was Alfred Morris Momaday, who was a full-blooded Kiowa.[7] His mother was a writer and his father a painter.[2] In 1935, when N. Scott Momaday was one year old, his family moved to Arizona, where both his father and mother became teachers on the reservation.[2] Growing up in Arizona allowed Momaday to experience not only his father’s Kiowa traditions but also those of other southwest Native Americans including the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo traditions.[2] In 1946, a twelve-year-old Momaday moved to Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, living there with his parents until his senior year of high school.[3] After high school, Momaday attended the University of New Mexico, graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.[3] He continued his education at Stanford University where, in 1963, he was awarded a Ph.D. in English Literature.[3]
Literary career
Momaday's first book, The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman based on his dissertation, was published in 1965.
House Made of Dawn was the first novel of the Native American Renaissance, a term coined by literary critic Kenneth Lincoln in the Native American Renaissance. The work remains a classic of Native American literature.
As other indigenous American writers began to gain recognition, Momaday turned to poetry, releasing a small collection called Angle of Geese. Writing for The Southern Review, John Finlay described it as Momaday's best work, and that it should "earn him a permanent place in our literature."[8] The poems in Angle of Geese were later included in an expanded collection, The Gourd Dancer (1976), which also included passages excised from The Way to Rainy Mountain. Most of Momaday's subsequent work has blended poetry and prose.
In 2007, Momaday returned to live in Oklahoma for the first time since his childhood. Though initially for his wife's cancer treatment, Momaday's relocation coincided with the state's centennial, and Governor Brad Henry appointed him as the sixteenth Oklahoma Poet Laureate, succeeding Nimrod International Journal editor Francine Leffler Ringold. Momaday held the position for two years.[9]
In 1963, Momaday began teaching at the University of California-Santa Barbara as an assistant professor of English. From 1966-1967, he focused primarily on literary research, leading him to pursue the Guggenheim Fellowship at Harvard University.[11] Two years later, in 1969, Momaday was named Professor of English at the University of California-Berkeley. Momaday taught creative writing, and produced a new curriculum based on American Indian literature and mythology.[11]
During the 35-plus years of Momaday’s academic career, he built up a reputation specializing in American Indian oral traditions and sacred concepts of the culture itself.[10] The many years of schooling and teaching are evidence of Momaday’s academic success, resulting in 12 honorary degrees from several American universities.[10]
He was a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico during the 2014-15 academic year to teach in the Creative Writing and American Literary Studies Programs in the Department of English. Specializing in poetry and the Native oral tradition, he taught The Native American Oral Tradition.
Momaday received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Illinois at Chicago on May 9, 2010.
In 2018, Momaday won a Lifetime Achievement Award[22] from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards,[23] the only juried prize to honor the best books addressing racism and questions of equity and diversity. The same year, Momaday became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.[24]
In 2019, Momaday was awarded the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize.[25]
In 2019 Momaday received the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.[26]
Recent activities
Momaday is the founder of the Rainy Mountain Foundation[27] and Buffalo Trust, a nonprofit organization working to preserve Native American cultures.[28] Momaday, a known watercolor painter, designed and illustrated the book, In the Bear's House.
^"In terms of blood quantum, a standard (albeit a problematic one, but the one used by the United States government and many tribal governments), records list Momaday's [...] mother as 7/8 white and 1/8 Cherokee. While only 1/8 Cherokee "by degree," Momaday's mother considered herself an American Indian." Jim Charles, Reading, Learning, Teaching N. Scott Momaday (Peter Lang, 2007), p. 29.
^See Kay Bonetti, "N. Scott Momaday: An Interview," in Conversations with N. Scott Momaday, edited by Matthias Schubnell (University Press of Mississippi, 1997), p. 133.
^Nagin, Emily (Winter 2016). "Irredeemable Stories? Native American Children's Literature and the Radical Potential of Commercial Literary Forms". Studies in American Indian Literatures. 28 (4): 1–24. doi:10.5250/studamerindilite.28.4.0001. JSTOR10.5250/studamerindilite.28.4.0001. S2CID164607101. Momaday's mother was born in 1913 in Fairview, Kentucky, and her given name was Mayme Natachee Scott ...
^"2005 Summit Highlights Photo". 2005. Academy members: Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday and Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
^"Suzan-Lori Parks Biography Photo". 2007. Suzan-Lori Parks receives the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and novelist N. Scott Momaday at the 2007 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C.
