Alfonso Ortiz Collection of Native American Oral Literature, 1959-1965

Órtiz, Alfonso (1939-1997)

Alfonso Ortiz was a Native American anthropologist, educator, and activist. Born in 1939, Ortiz was a member of the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh in New Mexico. He studied sociology at the University of New Mexico, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1961 and later studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967. In addition to a lengthy teaching career at the University of New Mexico beginning in 1974, Ortiz also taught at Pitzer College (1966-1967), Princeton University (1969-1974), and Rutgers University (1969), among other assitant professor and visiting professor positions. At Princeton in 1970, Ortiz organized the First Convocation of American Indian Scholars, and edited its published proceedings. Ortiz was fluent in Tewa, and his anthropological work was concerned primarily with the history and culture of the American Indians of the Southwest. He edited the two Southwest volumes of the Handbook of North American Indians for the Smithsonian Institution during the 1970s, and was also involved in negotiations resulting in the return of the Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo in 1970. Beginning in 1972, Ortiz served on the Advisory Council of the Program in Indian History at Chicago's Newberry Library. In 1973, he was elected as the first Indigenous president of the Association on American Indian Affairs, in which position he would serve until 1988. The written work for which Ortiz was best known was his book The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being and Becoming in a Pueblo Society, published in 1969.