In my thesis, I examine the effects of the collective and personal traumas on the identity formation of Native American people through D’Arcy McNickle’s novel The Surrounded and N. Scott Momaday’s novel House Made of Dawn. I examine the effects of historical trauma, boarding school experience, deculturation, and the Split Fathers Syndrome on the characters’ identity formation, and observe the characteristic symptoms of these in the protagonists’ behavior. In these novels, the authors present the effects of the dominant policies on the lives of Native Americans, offering to see through the perspective of the Indigenous people. In both works, the protagonists are in the middle of overcoming their externally assigned identities and building their own sense of self, through coming to terms with their Native heritages. The things Archilde and Abel experience are rather similar, but there are significant differences regarding character formation, and the novels’ perspective regarding Indians and the dominant culture.