Navarre Scott Momaday

Navarre Scott Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, into the Kiowa tribe and spent his childhood on Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo reservations in the American Southwest. He earned his doctorate in American literature from Stanford University under poet Yvor Winters and subsequently taught at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Arizona.

In 1968, Momaday published House Made of Dawn, the story of Abel, a young Native American veteran struggling to reintegrate into reservation life and urban society. When it won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it marked the first time a Native American author won the prize, igniting what literary critics termed the Native American Renaissance. In subsequent works like The Way to Rainy Mountain and collections of poetry, Momaday celebrated oral storytelling traditions, the sacredness of the land, and Indigenous identity, earning the National Medal of Arts in 2007.