Natachee Scott Momaday:

Validating Native American Blood

Natachee Scott Momaday is a Pulitzer Prize winning, Native American novelist, poet, and essayist.  Natachee Scott Momaday was born in 1934 in Lawton Oklahoma and he spent his childhood on various southwestern reservations traveling with his parents who worked for the Indian Service.  He is of mixed ancestry, Kiowa on one side and part Cherokee and Mexican on the other, but he is enrolled as a member of the Kiowa tribe.

Due to Momaday’s mixed ancestry, as well as some lines taken from his various novels, his degree of “Indian-ness” is questioned (1).  Momaday touches on the subject of Indian blood in his novel The Names, where his mother “imagined herself Indian” through wishful thinking (1).  Today many Native Americans are asking: “How many white folks have attempted the same act of imagination” (1)? 

Many Native American intellectuals and writers are suggesting that many people who are of little Native American blood and even less Native American connection are claiming American Indian status in order to upgrade their mediocre writing.  They are suggesting that these people are imagining that they are of Native American ancestry and using this imagination to support their works in order to boost sales.  These Native American intellectuals believe that “it is the life, where and how it is lived, that validates both the blood and imagination” (1).  In this they are suggesting that Natachee Scott Momaday of the Kiowa Indian Tribe is and always will be a true Native American.  Scott Momaday is Kiowa because that is the identity he grew up with and because the foundation of that identity is immersion in the culture and life of the people who claim him.     

The Native American nation is suggesting, “blood is only the beginning” (1).  This blood can be invalidated by many things, including inactivity and lack of participation in the environment that you are supposedly from.  Using your degree of Native American blood in order to gain notoriety and prosperity, is to Native Americans a slap in the face and furthermore an embarrassment to yourself.  Natachee Scott Momaday is Indian due to his blood, upbringing, and attachments to the Kiowa nation.  What makes Momaday’s “Indian-ness” significant are his life experience and the work he has created, not his blood or his birth certificate (1).    

Note: The picture of The Way to Rainy Mountain came from http://www.dancingbadger.com/momaday.htm 

          The picture of N. Scott Momaday came from http://www.168.30.200.21/~ssmith/hoag/nscott.htm

          The picture of In The Bears House came from http://www.dancingbadger.com/momaday.htm

Note:  I found some contradictions when searching for Momaday's legal first name.  In one article he is clearly listed as Navarre, however most of the articles I found listed his first name as Natachee.  So for the purposes of this article I listed him as Natachee Scott Momaday.  

Works Cited and Consulted

1. "At Wanderer's Well~A Magazine of Literature and Opinions" (Last Modified 24 Oct 2000)  http://www.dancingbadger.com/momaday.htm (Accessed 25 Oct 2000)

2. "Merrit E. Hoag Lecture Series 1997 Speaker: N. Scott Momaday" (Last Modified 17 Mar 2000) http://www.168.30.200.21/~ssmith/hoag/nscott.htm (Accessed 25 Oct 2000)

3. "Native American Authors Project: N. Scott Momaday"  http://ipl.sils.umich.edu:2000/cgi/ref/native/browse.pl/A50 (Accessed 25 Oct 2000)   

Article by: Edward R. Milhorn