Three plays
By: N. Scott Momaday.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Norman
Language: eng
Number of pages: 177
ISBN-13: 9780806138282
Subjects: Indians of North America -- Drama; Indian children -- Drama; Kiowa Indians -- Drama; Off-reservation boarding schools -- Drama
Genres: Drama.
Work titles: Plays.
Description: Published here for the first time, these plays display the author's signature talent for interweaving oral and literary traditions. The indolent boys recounts the 1891 tragedy of runaways from the Kiowa Boarding School who froze to death while trying to return to their families. The play explores the consequences, for Indian students and their white teachers, of the federal program to "kill the Indian and save the Man." A joyous counterpoint to this tragedy, Children of the sun is a short children's play that explains the people's relationship to the sun. The moon in two windows, a screenplay set in the early 1900s, centers on the children of defeated Indian tribes, who are forced into assimilation at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the U.S. government established the first off reservation boarding school. These plays are works that preserve the mythic and cultural tradition of unique tribal communities in the face of an increasingly homogeneous society.
Table of contents: title: The indolent boys; title: Children of the Sun; title: The moon in two windows.