Streep and Momaday narrate Bandelier film

Meryl Streep, N. Scott Momaday Donate Talents For Film on Bandelier National Monument and Jemez MountainsWhat national park could refuse the star power of an Academy Award or Pulitzer Prize winner? Not the folks at Bandelier National Monument, who were able to get Meryl Streep and N. Scott Momaday to provide narration for a film on the monument and the Jemez Mountains.

The film, Sky Island, was written, produced and directed by National Park Service and Harpers Ferry Center filmmaker John Grabowska. It is intended for national PBS broadcast in 2011, but a short version of the film premiered in Bandelier's new theater this past August.

The film, according to Mr. Grabowska, traces and describes the interesting landscape of northern New Mexico, where a range of mountains rises up from the high desert. The volcanic Jemez Mountains, which cover about 1,500 square miles, are isolated from all other ranges--an island in the sky, surrounded by a desert sea, he said. Bandelier National Monument, meanwhile, is encompassed in this rise from the Rio Grande to Cerro Grande.

Sky Island "profiles this enchanting landscape and our place within it, with dramatic climate change effects already altering the desert and alpine ecosystem," said Mr. Grabowska.

I visited Bandelier National Monument several years ago. Here's the scoop on it:

Bandelier National MonumentBandelier National Monument is a 33,677 acres (13,629 ha) National Monument preserving the homes of the Ancestral Pueblo people. It is named after Swiss anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, who researched the cultures of the area. Bandelier was designated a National Monument on February 11, 1916, while most of its backcountry became a "designated wilderness" in October 1976. The National Park Service co-operates with surrounding pueblos, other federal agencies and state agencies to manage the park, which receives 300,000 visitors annually.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Native Documentaries and News.

Momaday on common denominators

Writing His World

Literary pioneer N Scott Momaday discusses culture, history and the writing life

By Charlotte JusinskiYou call yourself Kiowa, which is a nomadic culture of the Great Plains, but you call the Southwest your home, having grown up among the more stationary tribes.

I grew up in the Southwest. I lived among the Apaches, the Navajos and the Pueblos, and not so much among the Kiowas, but the Kiowas are my blood. So I really identify with that heritage; my father was a full-blood Kiowa. He told me a lot of stories out of the Kiowa oral tradition while I was growing up, so I identify with that very easily. Yet I have the practical experience of having lived outside that world. I was aware of the differences, and of the common denominators.

What are those common denominators?

Being Indian. Having blood that existed on this continent for 30,000 years. Having a way of looking at nature, an aesthetic that is peculiar to Indian people. A sense of humor. You could construct a whole catalog. There are many things that Indian people have in common, regardless of their tribal affiliation…. The Indian has a regard for nature that Western man doesn’t have. We think of the earth as living, as possessed of Spirit. And that’s foreign to most people in our society and most people around the world, I suppose. That’s just one example. The way that Indian people think of time is peculiar to them. Most Western people think of time as passing…The Indian doesn’t think of time in that way. Time is static. Time is going through the Grand Canyon and looking at the cliffs—they’re there, they’ve been there. We pass through time.Comment:  For more on Momaday, see Another Award for Momaday and Momaday to Get Medal.

Momaday on Indian sadness

Writing His World

Literary pioneer N Scott Momaday discusses culture, history and the writing life

By Charlotte JusinskiYou just used the word ‘sad,’ and that brings me to a couplet from your poem ‘Plainview: 2’: ‘An old horse is old / An old Indian is sad.’ Is that true?

I think it’s true, yeah. I think, with the loss of the culture, that’s a sad, sad thing. I think a lot of Indian people, when it happened, when the culture fell, they had to be terribly sad and demoralized. I can’t imagine coming out of that, surviving it. But they did. And that’s a wonderful thing. It shows the strength of the culture, somehow.

Do you think there’s still sadness in Indian culture?

I think it’s fading but, yeah, certainly there is a kind of sadness. I was talking to a man at the Kiowa Gourd Dance…He said, ‘We must be protective of this society; it’s all we have left.’ And I found that statement sad. And I think it’s more widespread than most people realize, but I do think it’s fading. The kind of sadness that I’m talking about is going farther and farther into the past and becoming dimmer and dimmer to the view. I have mixed feelings: Should that be? Is that sadness worth something to us in a cultural sense or is it not? And I don’t know the answer to that.Comment:  For more on Momaday, see Another Award for Momaday and Momaday to Get Medal.

Momaday on cultural change

Writing His World

Literary pioneer N Scott Momaday discusses culture, history and the writing life

By Charlotte JusinskiWhat are some of the biggest changes you have seen in Indian culture?

I think the Indian people have become more equal, if I can put it that way, more competitive with people outside the Indian world. And that’s all to the good. We want them to give a good account of themselves, to be responsible citizens of the world. And they are certainly moving in that direction. Things are moving so quickly. I remember when I first went to Jemez Pueblo, where I spent some of my most impressionable years, there was no electricity, no plumbing, no automobiles in the village; and all of that changed during my time there, and it changed very quickly. I saw things that no one would ever see again. I was there at the right time. I saw the old world of the pueblo, and then I saw it change, and it became another world. The fact that it happened successfully, that people did adjust to that kind of revolution, was very inspiring. It’s still going on. I’m pretty excited about the future of Native American people.

Have you had a sense of a shift in the way in which American history is taught and perceived?

We’ve changed a lot in our view of American history. For the better. Books like…Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee [by Dee Brown] really gave us a new perspective on American history, and we’ve been moving in that direction ever since. We’ve become aware that our idea of history has been largely misrepresented in early histories of the country, and it hasn’t been so long ago that that change really began to take place. I would say in the 1950s, maybe.Comment:  For more on Momaday, see Another Award for Momaday and Momaday to Get Medal.

Edwards plagiarized Momaday

Cassie Edwards Plagiarized THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAINSome of you may recall that Cassie Edwards, author of romance novels (including the "SAVAGE" Indian series) was caught plagiarizing last year. The site "Smart Bitches" catalogued a lot of the plagiarized passages.

I didn't follow all of it carefully last year, and missed this:

Edwards plagiarized from N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain. The novel is read in a lot of high school English/Lit courses, which makes me think that teachers who teach it might want to add a segment on plagiarism to their unit.(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature, 4/13/09.)

Comment:  For more on the subject, see Trashy Novels Trash Indians and Romance Writer Copies Native Books.