THERE IS A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE in getting to really know a parent – at any age. It has a poignancy: Act IV of the parent’s life and Act II of the child’s life.
Western literature begins with Homer’s Odyssey, where Telemachus is looking for his father – and vice versa. The father-son fascination never lost its grip in literature and mythology, yet we don’t hear much about father and daughter.
Jill Momaday has spent more time with Scott Momaday in the last few years than she did when she was growing up. He had become a legend at 35, a certified great man, and the world asked a lot of him. He lived large.
Jill evolved on her own — as an actress, model, and filmmaker. But her role as matriarch, mother, grandmother, and guardian of her father is the role of a lifetime.
And now she is on the cusp of her next act. She is writing, contemplating more acting, and handling her father’s literary estate. She is about to embark on something very powerful.
Jill is a firmly-grounded warrior. After all, her Kiowa name means standing solidly. And she knows it’s her turn now.
We were talking about buffaloes. What was your experience of watching Ken Burns’ The American Buffalo documentary?
It was heart wrenching. We got the screeners because my dad was in it and I helped with it. After watching this whole comprehensive history of what happened here, it got into my guts and heart and choked me in the throat.
I was stunned. I was crawling around on the floor sobbing, and I called my dad and I said, My God, dad, what did you think? This was so hard to watch.
I mean, there were 30 million buffalo on this continent. They were so abundant and so beautiful. It was our way of life. We put everything to use from the buffalo.
This is what we’re living with. I feel these things in my being. I feel this thing that I’ve always felt. As a little girl, I’ve always felt this exuberance when I’m out in nature. I can be walking or playing or just outdoors, and I’ll see something that excites me in the landscape, the light or a cliff or the sky or the clouds. And I get this overwhelming exuberance of feeling my essence come alive in nature. And as Indigenous people, we don’t separate ourselves from nature. It’s part of who we are. And you innately feel that it’s something that you are when you are born of Native American ancestry.
How does that translate when so much of what we call nature is being hurt?
It’s devastating. It’s scary for me. It’s scary for my family, but it’s a part of the world. I mean, I’m hopeful. I like to try to be optimistic. I look at what my ancestors went through generations ago and how they survived, how they had hope. I mean, they lived through great atrocities and near genocide.
It’s so shameful what we non-Indigenous people did. How do you deal with that?
It’s hard. I walk. I dance around the house. I’m surrounded by art and artifacts and things and that help me. I do find that I have anger in me. I’m a warrior. I really am. I’ve always been a warrior and I have a lot of anger issues that will bubble up from time to time. And sometimes I don’t know what to do with them, but I find that when I walk or I run or I’m just outside, it really helps.
What do you mean by describing yourself as a warrior?
I’m fierce. I’m really a strong woman. And I’ve always been that way. When I was young, we would go to Oklahoma where my dad was born and where my Kiowa people are, and we would attend the Gourd Dance, which happens on the 4th of July, which happens to be my birthday. And so I was immersed in this ceremonial life. You have the drum and you’re dancing on the sacred Earth and everybody is in their regalia. You just feel it. Everybody feels it collectively.
It’s just such a beautiful feeling. When I was eight, I was given a naming ceremony. The three of us girls were named. So my Kiowa name that my grandfather Fred Seidel gave me, means standing solidly. And I’ve always related to that. That’s who I was from the moment I came in. It means strong, fierce, connected to the earth, enduring and warrior like. I take after my dad’s mom, Natachee. She was a fierce woman, part Choctaw and Cherokee, part French and English. My mom is German and Irish. She grew up in Chicago. She was amazing. My mom was the anchor of our family, and she was a tower of strength, very unique and smart and beautiful. I get it from all sides.
What were the qualities that allowed your ancestors to survive?
Their spirituality, mostly, and that connection to nature. In the Plains Culture, there are four ideals of the warrior society: bravery, generosity, steadfastness, and truth. We all lived by that. You honor everything you hunt. It’s a tribal lifestyle where everybody matters and you’re all working collectively. The warriors go off on war parties and they hunt, and the women put up the teepees, they tan the hides, they make the food. They do beautiful beadwork. They take care of the elders and the children and the warriors.
We all come from our different ancestral backgrounds, our mythical lives. We talk about cultural heritage and we’re lucky because we are deeply rooted in that. I grew up knowing who I am. We have this rich culture and these spiritual practices and ceremonial life and story. It’s really about story.
The Kiowa people have such a rich oral tradition. My dad thought to collect these mythic oral stories through the generations and write them down.
I know them. My daughters know them. My grandbaby will know them. And that’s a wonderful thing to have.
Is the oral tradition a better way of recording what was?
Oh, absolutely. That started way before the written word, right? And I love that. And that’s how I got into theater when I was a little girl. Because I love story. I love imagination and I discovered acting. I loved that I could pretend to be somebody else and take on these different characters. I could be somebody else entirely and that really excited my imagination.
Your theater work, film work, modeling – is there a through line in all that?
The through line is being immersed in the arts, growing up in Santa Fe, being really aware of who I am culturally, spiritually, that led me into theater. Here there is art everywhere – music, dancing, artwork, theater, poetry, and it was a wonderful way to grow up. My imagination was on fire. After children’s theater, I got into local modeling, and back in those days it was the Santa Fe Catalog. Fashion was so much fun.
My mom was a model. When I was a little girl, sometimes I would model with her at The Shed. She and her modeling girls would walk around the tables and model for cool little Santa Fe boutiques.
Then I got into film, because the Westerns hit and I started getting parts in all these films back in the 80s. I was mostly an extra to begin with. I was always the hooker or the Indian princess.
Did that bother you?
Yeah. I was a teenager, but I already looked like a woman. At first I loved it, but the more I did it, all that I got was the hooker or the Indian princess, nothing else. Nothing else. I had been in theater and played all kinds of different things, and I wanted more.
Eventually I got other parts. I think the last film role was in Tony Hillerman’s Coyote Waits that Robert Redford produced. Then I quit. I quit the film business because I just felt like I wanted more. I played in Sam Shepard’s Silent Tongue. That was a little bit different. I was still a hooker, but it was richer.
Eventually I just quit it all. And now with this whole Native film movement with Sterlin Harjo and Chris Eyre, it’s really exciting. I secretly want to get back into film because I think I could play the shit out of some interesting roles that aren’t hookers or Indian princesses.
What do you care about? What makes you want to get up and be brave?
Family. Family first. I’m in this incredibly unique position right now as the matriarch of my family to be there with my 89-year-old father, helping him, looking after him, being with him daily. I’ve got two extraordinary, beautiful daughters that are both so creatively powerful in their different ways. We hear a lot about Natachee, but Tai is really the warrior of the family. She’s the leader. Then there’s the new grandbaby, a beautiful baby girl. We’re all girls.
I’m fiercely protective. And I kind of have this dual thing where I’m all warrior and a tower of strength, but then I also can be very soft and sort of reclusive and shy. Like the Cancerian thing that I am. I can recede back into my shell and just need to be quiet and read and be close to nature.
Maybe it’s just time for the women to take over.
Our whole world is a very male world. Yeah, so move over. I mean, there’s many matriarchal societies within Indigenous cultures, and that’s powerful. So family first, nature and spirituality, it all goes hand-in-hand for me. Those are the important things.
How is your relationship with your father?
It has changed deeply. It’s so much richer. When my dad was 35, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel. We were just little girls and that changed our lives forever. That recognition changed him and changed our family. It just turned everything upside down.
So my dad left. He was busy. He was traveling, he was writing, he was all over the map. He was gone when we were growing up. My mom raised us and my parents separated. My dad went back to teaching. He’s always taught. He was far away, even though we were still close and we spoke to him all the time. It was hard.
And suddenly he’s here and you’re here.
He’s here, I’m here. We took this long way around to come together. In the early 2000s, I started to step into being around my dad more, and my arts, acting, film, theater, modeling, traveling, led me into this very rich life around my dad. That was important to me.
In a way, he’s passing a torch to me because I am already doing it. We’ve butted heads before because I’m a warrior and he’s a warrior. I’ve got a mouth on me, and I’m emotional.
But we talk to each other as father and daughter. I was asking his advice and I said, Dad, you’re so wise. You’re an elder. I need your advice. I need your wisdom. And then he opened up about his life to me.
You are the Assistant Director of his Literary Trust.
Yeah, he’s gone through lots of health stuff and is in the wheelchair now. But he’s always writing. His mind is genius. He’s got a brand new, very exciting poetry project, which is going to be exclusive and beautiful. And he’s dictating to me and telling me, and sharing with me, and I’m scrambling around trying to help him do this and get it out there. He’s just brilliant, you know?
I was around my father in his early 90s. Even though we thought we knew each other, there was something very different. It’s the purest of love, right?
Yeah. Now, because my dad’s eyesight is not great I read to him all the time. I read to him, and we laugh, and Natachee and Tai and Cinéma come over and just this weekend, you know, we had four generations sitting in the living room. It’s just the most beautiful thing you can imagine.
You are starting to write your memoir.
I want to tell my own story. It’s time for me to do that. I’m just on the cusp of writing about my life, my ancestors, my family story.
I’ve asked my dad, Natachee and Tai, is it okay if I write about our lives? And they all said yes. Natachee said, Mom, you need to just tell the truth. I have so much to say and tap into and write about, and it’s exciting.
It seems you’ve been preparing for this all your life.
Yes. It’s destiny.
