The question I’d like to ask in this paper is whether we can understand a literay text coming from a culture different from our own. The example I have chosen deals with the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico as they are portrayed in N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968). To what extent can we say that the book makes sense if you are not a Pueblo yourself? If you are not an Indian? If you are not American?