MOMADAY TEACHES AT UAF

Pulitzer Prize winning Kiowa Indian writer N. Scott Momaday believes in the power of words. A professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, he has been teaching two English courses at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a UAF Northern Momentum Scholar for the year 2001-2002. One is an undergraduate course focusing on Native American oral literature and the other is a graduate writing workshop.

This is Momaday's first visit to Alaska and Phyllis Fast, co-chair of the Alaska Native Studies program at UAF, is honored and pleased he's spending the semester in Fairbanks. The Alaska Native Studies program is an interdisciplinary undergraduate bachelor of arts program in which students can major or minor.

Fast, a CIRI shareholder of Koyukon Athabascan heritage who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University, believes Momaday's classes are a great opportunity for students to learn more about the real roots of American literature, which, according to Momaday, started long before Columbus landed. He is referring to ancient Native American stories passed down through time via ceremony and word of mouth. Many of these traditional oral stories have survived through the years and have had a distinct influence on American narrative style and literature.
Momaday won the Pulitzer for his groundbreaking, postmodern novel "House Made of Dawn." Set in contemporary times at the Jemez Pueblo of New Mexico where he was raised, his novel follows the turbulent, restless life of its Pueblo protagonist, Able. It was his novel which inspired a new renaissance of American Indian writers.

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