Scott Momaday is an author who uses his roots to weave enchanting stories that get to the heart of things we normally overlook. He uses nature as a tool to illustrate the beauty of the simple, almost forgotten knowledge of Native Americans. His stories are rich with meaning, but in a subtle way that only really makes sense after experiencing the same kind of self-searching. They are steeped in the oral traditions of his ancestors to create extremely compelling stories with layers upon layers of culture and knowledge that are easily recognizable and understandable. Momaday was born February 27, 1934, at the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma. , to Alfred Momaday, a Kiowa painter, and Natachee Scott, a part-Cherokee woman. Since his birth, Momaday has lived and played with various Indian tribes throughout Arizona, not only with the Kiowa traditions of his father's family but with the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo Indian cultures of the southwest, an invaluable experience that it would indelibly color his philosophy and his writing. . Momaday himself said "I am an Indian and I believe I am lucky to have my heritage" and "I grew up in two worlds and I straddle both of those worlds even now, it has created confusion and richness in my life." I was able to deal with it pretty well, I think, and I appreciate that." House Made of Dawn was published in 1968 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Its success and acclaim sparked what scholars they called the Native American Renaissance, paving the way for other Native American writers to publish works dealing with Native life in the United States. House Made of Dawn takes its title from a translation of a Navajo song that is part.. .... half of the paper... a common theme among the works I've read, due in part to Momaday's struggle with identity and self. This is what makes Momaday's work so relatable: he inserts his feelings and experiences in his work. The journeys that his characters undertake are those that we all take sooner or later, journeys of self-knowledge, journeys of the heart. Momaday writes about the life and struggles of Native Americans, but the true meaning of his work it's deeper than that. Indeed, one of the most touching messages I have read in his novels is that the crises we go through are not limited to those linked to persecuted ethnic roots: we all feel them. People are people, we all struggle, we all fall, and we all need a support system to get back up afterward. We are all what we are, as the famous leader Sitting Bull rightly said: “Eagles need not be Crows.”