Literary Context Blog: Native American Renaissance

In the Native American Renaissance writers focused on the relationship between tradition and modernity in Native Americans lives along with setting and tribal identity. Everything is written from a Native American point of view and they construct their ancestor’s history in their writings. This is shown in The Way to Rainy Mountain, where N. Scott Momaday focuses heavily on setting.

In describing the setting and the changes in their location the colonization of Europeans were automatically included. Momaday says, “They never understood the grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry. When at last, divided and ill-provisioned, they were driven onto the Staked Plains in the cold rains of autumn, they fell into panic” (1465). The setting, where they lived, was extremely important to the Kiowa’s, it was their life and they needed the land to survive. At one point Momaday said, “They could find no buffalo, they had to hang an old hide from the sacred tree” (1467). This shows that as the colonization of Europeans encroached on the Kiowa people their lives were drastically changed.

I think one of the main points of the Native American Renaissance is to tell their side of the story. In school we never learn much about Native Americans or different tribes and their traditions. This writing period allowed for American Indians to share their history from their own point of view and not the skewed version we learn about in grade school. 

Works Cited

Kalaidjian, Walter B. The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

"N. Scott Momaday- Kiowa Poet and Novelist." N. Scott Momaday- Kiowa Poet and Novelist. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2015.

"N. Scott Momaday." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 1 May 2015.

Porter, Joy, and Kenneth M. Roemer. The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.

Westling, Louise Hutchings. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment. New York, NY: Cambridge U, 2014. Print.