Alfonso Ortiz was born on April 30, 1939 in the San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, and died on January 28, 1997 from a longstanding heart ailment. He attended the University of New Mexico where he earned a bachelors degree in 1961. He earned his masters degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Upon graduation, he taught at Pitzer College and Princeton University until he returned home in 1974 and became a professor at the University of New Mexico.
Ortiz was most famous for his book The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society published in 1969. In this book he explained how the Tewa-speaking Indians of northern New Mexico perceive the universe. He had a unique, insider opportunity to write about the Pueblo people as he was a member of that native group and an anthropologist. He first became interested in writing the book when, through his studies, he came to realize that many of the current texts on the Pueblo people were incorrect. However, in The Tewa World, he wrote about some religious secrets of his people. As a result of divulging this privileged information, he offended some of the tribal elders. Ortiz said in his defense that most of what he published was already widely known; he simply began "weaving the threads into a coherent theory." (New York Times Obituary)
Other books by Ortiz are New Perspectives on the Pueblos (1972) and the Handbook of North American Indians (volumes 9 and 10, published in 1979 and 1983, respectively). Awards he has received include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. He was a board member for Cultural Survival, Inc, the Peabody Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian. He was active in American Indian affairs and belonged to the National Advisory Council of the National Indian Youth Council. From 1973 through 1983, Ortiz was president of the Association on American Indian Affairs. Ortiz was an adviser for a documentary on the Pueblo people in 1993.
Two years after his death, the Department of Anthropology and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies. The Ortiz Center promotes academic discourse and mutual learning opportunities.
Johnson, George. "Alfonso Ortiz, 57, Anthropologist of the Pueblo, Dies." New York Times Obituary. January 31, 1997.
University of New Mexico: Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies. http://www.unm.edu/~ortizctr/dr_ortiz.html
Written by: Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota 2000
Edited by: Emily Hildebrant, 2007