House Made of Dawn 2

Marcia Keegan's book, Enduring Culture: A Century of Photography of the Southwest Indians, beautifully portrays the Pueblo culture's strength. By juxtaposing antique photographs from the early 1900's, with photos of the same scene taken as much as a hundred years later, Keegan powerfully demonstrates how the Pueblo culture has endured the torment of the ages. In Momaday's The House Made of Dawn, we see how these fragile customs and rituals managed to survive a century …

…all the remaining North American Indian peoples, [they] believed that [they were] preserving a record of vanishing culture." (9) The almost identical images found on the Pueblo reservation a century later are visible proof that their culture has prevailed. Learning of Abel's struggle with identity in The House Made of Dawn, helps us realize the obstacles of forced assimilation and outside influence on the reservations, which the Pueblo culture had to face throughout the last century.