ABSTRACT
There is a romantic view of Amerindian tradition that one sometimes encounters in literature and among well-meaning counter-culturalists. In this view, it would be a relatively easy task to incorporate First Nations traditions with European traditions—or perhaps simply to adopt the former without the latter. Momaday does not believe that reviving, assimilating, and disseminating Kiowa tradition would be a simple task. Rather, he appears to hold to a version of Cooper’s view of inevitable loss, though the loss in Momaday’s case is one of cultural practice, not people. Indeed, Momaday seems to present almost the precise opposite of the romantic, countercultural vision. Amerindian cultures—at least that of the Kiowas—cannot be put in place again. It would require a radical change in virtually every aspect of people’s lives. But that does not mean that ethnic Kiowas are happily integrated into Americanism. For Momaday, ethnicity seems to bear with it a hereditary relation to culture and to geography, a hereditary relation that can be rediscovered and celebrated. However, that “memory in [the] blood” does not carry with it the ability to institute a complex set of cultural practices.
