ause it is almost all they have left. Most of their land has been taken away from them, and the generations that remember living on the land of their ancestors are all but dead. All that has been left to them is their heritage. James Welch uses this idea of group identity to illustrate how absolutely alone Jim Loney is. Loney does not have a heritage; he seems to not have much of a past at all. Being half Native American and half white, he feels as if he really does not belong anywhere, and that the land on which he lives is the only remaining connection he has to his identity. At one point he thinks that he has two heritages from which he must choose an identity, but neither seems to be the right identity. A mother's Native American world (which tribe he doesn't know) competes with his father's white world, which will not fully accept him because of what his mother was.Scott Momaday, on the other hand, sets out to find his own identity and in the process illustrates for us the identity transformation of the Kiowa tribe, as they moved from the Black Hills to the Oklahoma plains. They began their oratory tradition in the stories of their journey and created explanations for the things they saw that they could not comprehend, such as Devil's Tower: a huge rock jutting up into the sky. They had no answer to their questions on how such a rock formation was created, so they invented a story that would explain it and in so doing connected their heritage with the stars. Momaday's questions are answered in his journey through his oral history of his ancestors; the result is his own story.Luci Tapahanso has a different view of group identity to share. She illustrates how identity is important within a family, and that even during death, each person has their place in the group. They care for each other. When the great-granddaughter of Kinlichii'nii Bitsi was leaving for Europe her grandmother told her, "Remember who you are" She discov...
