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A truism of canon formation: unrecognized literatures need breakthrough events to gain attention and legitimacy. For American Indian literatures, the key event occurred in 1969 when a young, unknown Kiowa painter, poet, and scholar won a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The House Made of Dawn (1968). This event is filled with ironies, two of which offer revealing insights about the way Native American literatures have gained acceptance, about the nature of N. Scott Momaday's writing, and about the significance of contemporary Native American literature.

The most obvious irony is the great delay in recognition of literatures in several hundred languages that include centuries, even millennia-old oral narratives, ceremonial liturgies, and autobiographical accounts, as well as histories, essays, autobiographies, poetry, and fiction written in English. The delay reflects not only the power of cultural blinders, but also a 19th- and 20th-century disciplinary territorialism that......

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Approximate Word Count: 2208
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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