SOURCE: "The Novel as Sacred Text: N. Scott Momaday's Myth-Making Ethic," in Southwest Review, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 172-79.

In the following essay, Kerr examines Momaday's ability to render Native American culture and beliefs within the Western literary construct of the novel.

Recently I sat through a noisy, irreconcilable argument between two Anglos about Indians. An Irish lawyer for the Navajos from Chinle, Arizona, accused an anthropologist friend of blind sacrilege in the Southwest. The anthropologist, who was not present, was defended as an ally of Indians and preserver of culture. The specific issue concerned the unearthing of Anasazi pueblos and especially gravesites in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, and the withering fear of the Navajo crews once within the Old Ones' middens. The most unholy of trespasses, the lawyer called it, and one likely to bring charges that the crew were brujos. Help the Indians, he said, but...