The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 4/6/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: buffalotrust.org

Author N. Scott Momaday joined the ranks of Whoopi Goldberg, Edward Albee and Anna Deveare-Smith as a visiting artist-in-residence at Emerson this weekend, speaking about his favorite subjects: identity, words, the oral tradition, the state of Native Americans and indigenous people worldwide and killing icebergs.

The stately Native American writer kept his audience at the Cutler Majestic Theatre enthralled with the tale of his trip to Greenland, where he found icebergs on the beach creaking and groaning as the sun's warmth melted them from the inside.

While his dutiful wife kept watch with a camera, he attempted to stone the iceberg into exploding, to no avail.

An indigenous man came from a nearby shack to assist him in "killing" the iceberg with a gun. After a wild-eyed exchange between the two men, Momaday said, it became clear that the indigenous man was simply being a good host, assisting his guests with their chosen (if mad) endeavor.

It is this rich exchange of communication across cultures and languages that fascinates Momaday most.

A grandfatherly figure, he has a handful of favorite stories that he told students, faculty and alumni over a series of engagements scheduled last weekend, including two luncheons at 80 Boylston St. and an appearance at the Cutler Majestic.

Momaday regaled attentive audiences throughout the week with tales of studying the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson as a Stanford student, a trip to a tribal burying ground in Oklahoma that formed the crux of his seminal 1978 work, The Way to Rainy Mountain, and his meetings with Native American elders to hear their stories.

Momaday said he felt that as communication specialists, Emerson students had a special advantage in expressing oral tradition, the main topic of his lecture/performance last Thursday night.

"Emerson has a very strong tradition for storytelling," Momaday said during an interview with The Beacon. "Theatre is the best oral tradition we have. And having been grounded in oral tradition, the arts, language in general, [students are] in a position to expand on that."

As director of the Buffalo Trust, an organization supporting indigenous peoples and the arts, Momaday has attempted to spread his love for words around the globe. A major problem he attempts to address is the "identity crisis" which many young Native Americans are suffering as their civilization becomes more urban and less grounded in reservations.

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