About Alfonso Ortiz

Alfonso Ortiz was a member of the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and a MacArthur fellow. Born in Espanola to an inter-cultural family, Ortiz graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in Anthropology in 1961. He went on to earn a masters degree in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Chicago. Ortiz believed that scholarship about American Indian people should not be limited to universities and academics, but that members of Indian communities should undertake it as well.

The collaborative vein that the Alfonso Ortiz Center promotes is one that shares research and practice to bring about learning and growth in understanding similarities and differences in outlook. Alfonso Ortiz was also responsible for supporting many Indian communities throughout the Southwest and nationally, and in that spirit of his legacy the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies was created.

Alfonso Ortiz’s Professional Posts

Board Chair- D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Pitzer College Claremont, CA.- 1966-67
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University- 1967-70
Visiting Assistant prof- Livingston College, Rutgers, spring 1969
Associate prof of Anthropology, Princeton- 1970-74
Prof of Anthropology, UNM 1974- until his death
Visiting Professor of Native American Studies, UCLA- 1978
Visiting Professor of Anthropology , Colorado College, 1981

Selected Major Publications

The Tewa World, Space, Time, Being and Becoming in a Pueblo Society, University of Chicago Press, 1969
Indian Voices: Proceedings of the First Convocation of American Indian Scholars (co-editor), Indian Histories Press, San Francisco, 1970
New Perspectives on the Pueblos (editor) University of New Mexico Press, 1972
The Southwest : Prehistory , History and the Pueblos, Volume 9 (editor), Handbook of North American Indians, Smithsonian Institution, 1983
Myths and Legends of North American Indians (with Richard Erdoes) Patterson Press, 1984
The Pueblos, Chelsea Press, 1994
North American Indian Anthropology (with Raymond J DeMallie) University of Oklahoma Press, 1995
The North American Indian Trickster (with Richard Erdoes) Pantheon, 1996
Native American Religious Freedom (guest editor of Special issue) Cultural Survival Quarterly, 1996