The dislocation and displacement experienced by the younger members of the community of Native Americans provide an insight into the trauma of growing up, resulting in the disintegration of their cultures. Even as the natives were engaged in a desperate struggle for retaining their hold on their land and their traditions, many Native American writers staged a spirited fightback against the `invasion' by the immigrants. Through their literary contributions, especially the autobiographical narratives, they gave a new lease of life to their sacred values and communal acts of worship that always nurtured and sustained the natives. While dwelling on the poignant growing-up stories of selected native American writers, this paper focuses on two types of sociocultural environment in which the children find themselves: The `tipi' environment and the Boarding School environment. Although the children were wrenched from their homes and placed in alien settings, they responded affirmatively to their alien settings. The Native American writers have successfully combined modern and traditional methods of story telling to provide us memorable accounts of young natives who are engaged in seeking grace in the wilderness at the most defining moments of their lives.

The adventure and sanctity of childhood of the Native Americans was comprehensively challenged after the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The European conquest and the subsequent colonization of America precipitated the destruction of tribal cultures and also brought about radical changes in the lives of the young members of the surviving groups.Even as the tribal communities were confronted with life-changing and overwhelming challenges such as dislocation, displacement and disintegration of their cultures and traditions, several dedicated Native American writers were engaged in a spirited fightback against the "invasion", and the forced acculturation methods, which were deployed against the natives by the immigrants. Contemporary Native American literature is essentially a literature in translation, oral tradition reshaped into Western literary forms. Many Native Americans such as Simon Ortiz, Luther Standing Bear, Basil Johnston and Lame Deer have emerged from tribal settings to study formal literature in the US Schools and have returned to their origins to adapt and transform spoken stories into songs, poetry, fiction, essay and drama.

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