A Journey Through Indian Time: Alfonso Ortiz's

Consciousness with Robert Kennedy and the 60's

Charles Cambridge, Ph.D.

Panel Discussion

American Anthropological Association

Copyright © 2000

This paper is not an attempt to filter the mountains of anthropological and cultural literature, but to provide the reader with some and short insights to the history, cultural process and legal conflict that surround Indian people which impacted upon the life of Dr. Alfonso Ortiz and his impact upon these issues. My purpose of this paper is to illuminate to you of an almost forgotten history concerning the aboriginal peoples of the United States as it pertains to the Dr. Ortiz, who became a leading expert on Indian culture and American anthropology.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy:

"We were in Idaho the other day and I was asking the superintendent of schools, where they had 80 per cent Indian children, whether they taught anything about Indian history or Indian culture. The tribe was a very famous tribe, the Shoshone, which had a considerable history, and he said, 'There isn't any history to this tribe; this has a tremendous effect on the children. So I asked him if there were any books in the library where all these children could go and read about Indian history, and he said, 'Yes,' and we went to the library. There was only one book and the book was entitled, 'Captive of the Delawares.' It showed a white child being scalped by an Indian." (Cahn:1969-35)

Senator Edward Kennedy:

"And what they are telling us is true. Before I became chairman of the Indian Education Subcommittee, that post was held by my brother, Robert Kennedy. He traveled America extensively in that role, exposing the severity and degradation of Indian poverty and the failure of this nation to help the Indian people."

My brother called America's treatment of the Indian "a national tragedy and a national disgrace." (Bahr:1972:533)

Vine Deloria:

ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND OTHER FRIENDS INTO EACH LIFE, it is said, some rain must fall. Some people have bad horoscopes, others take tips on the stock market. McNamara created the TFX and the Edsel. Churches possess the real world. But Indians have been cursed above all other people in history. Indians have anthropologists.

For purposes of this discussion we shall refer only to the generic name, anthropologists. They are the most prominent members of the scholarly community that infests the land of the free, and in the summer time, the homes of the braves.

Abstract theories create abstract action. Lumping together the variety of tribal problems, and seeking the demonic principle at work which is destroying Indian people, may be intellectually satisfying. But it does not change the real situation. By concentrating on great abstractions, anthropologists have unintentionally removed many young Indians from the world in which problems are solved to the lands of make believe. (Deloria: 1970)

These were the times and these were some of the issues.

The life of Ortiz [which for many of us was his name] is a confusing maze of different opinions and perceptions of his life. But, one can agree that he was a driving force on his ability to be an "insider" and to communicate these insights of tribal culture to the non-Indian.

Because of time limitations, this is a compression of truthful events that have shaped Dr. Ortiz's conceptualization of culture and his relationship to the world of Anthropology.

A member of the San Juan Pueblo, Dr. Ortiz was born in 1939. He passed away in January 1997 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico after a long period of poor health. Upon his death at the age of 57, Dr. Ortiz's body was cremated and his ashes were spread on the nearby sacred mountains of his San Juan Pueblo. With his wishes and that of his family, there was not a funeral service.

Ortiz became involved with the rising American Indian political consciousness that developed in the late 1950's and the early 1960's. Dr. Ortiz was a member of two important organizations which was in the forefront of this new consciousness: the Southwest Indian Youth Council and the University of New Mexico Kiva Club. These two organizations became the focus of Indian political activity in the greater Southwest area.

Student

Alfonso Ortiz became a freshman at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, just down the river from San Juan Pueblo. In attending the local university, (using New Mexico's spatial concepts, UNM was only a 1 hour and forty minutes away), he did not have to face a larger alienation faced by nonresident Indian students. He was in an area that was culturally and physically familiar. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology in 1961 from the university.

While a student at the University of New Mexico, he and others founded the Kiva Club for American Indian students. The Kiva Club was the first American Indian organization on the University of New Mexico campus and it was the forerunner of student organizations in the Greater Southwest. The political atmosphere of the time became complex.

Stan Steiner

"...[Herb] Blatchford said of the movement of new Indians. "It was never a disjointed venture . . . Let's start more Indian clubs in the universities, we said. We drew in kids from other colleges. The idea spread like wildfire."

These university clubs were the tribal fraternities of the collegiate Indians. Once they had set them up, the youth wished to bring the far-flung clubs together into a council-a powwow of all the young tribal intellectuals.

[Describing Charles Minton], " The old man was as enthusiastic as the young Indians about the idea and guided the formation of the Southwestern Regional Youth Conference."

Conferences were held yearly. One of the largest was held at the University of New Mexico in 1960-then a gracious host to the 350 Indian students from 57 tribes. "

"In the summer of 1960, the turning point was reached. The unwitting host to this tribal explosion was Professor Sol Tax, the editor of Current Anthropology, who had organized an American Indian conference at the University of Chicago." (Steiner: 1968:37)

With this political experience from the Kiva Club and the youth conferences, Ortiz graduated from the University. With the encouragement of many, he applied for admission to the University of Chicago. He was accepted and he received his masters and doctoral degree in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Professor

After he received his Ph.D., he was on the faculty of Princeton and Rutgers universities before returning to the University of New Mexico as a member of its faculty in 1974. He was with the University until his death in 97.

Awards and Public Service

During the course of his life, Dr. Ortiz received many awards and grants. A few are:

Guggenheim Fellow, 1975

MacArthur Fellow, 1982

Indian Achievement Award, 1982

As an example of Dr. Ortiz public service, he held the following positions:

Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Chairman of the D'Arcy McNickle Center of the Newberry Library.

National Advisory Council on the National Indian Youth Council from 1972 to 1990.

President of the Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., from 1973 to 1988.

Ortiz expressed it in 1973, that "The Association has set as its major and immediate goal the comprehensive implementation of Indian self-determination in all its aspects . . . " During his Presidency, Ortiz was involved with the issues of:

Native American Health

Environmental factors on Indian reservations

Day schools over Boarding schools

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978

Alaska Native Business Credit Fund

American Indian Arts Center in New York

Blue Lake

Land claims of Alaskan Natives

Pyramid Lake

Havasupai interests within the Grand Canyon

Tribal water rights in Arizona

Issues of Native American Self-determination

And, this I must inform you are a short list of his concerns.

Publications

Of his many publications, he is best known for his book, "The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being and Becoming a Pueblo Society." It was published in 969 and it was based upon his doctoral dissertation at Chicago. This dissertation disclosed that there was a different Space, A different Time, a different Being and a different Becoming of a Pueblo Society. Naturally, this was not following the policy and political line of public officials who wanted assimilation to become a reality. But, this work was a testimony of the fact of cultural survival on the part of tribal people.

His other major publications include:

American Indian myths and legends New York : Pantheon Books, 1984.

New Perspectives on the Pueblos Albuquerque - University of New Mexico Press, 1972

North American Indian anthropology- essays on society and culture Norman, OK University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

And, he was an editor of two volumes of the Smithsonian Institution's "Handbook of American Indians."

Anthropologist

Alfonso Ortiz attended graduate school at the University of Chicago at a time when Sol Tax and others had furthered the ideals of the American Indian Development, Inc. and the famous Chicago Conference of American Indians in 1961. Each had a major unique impact upon tribal people.

During this time and after graduation, Dr. Alfonso Ortiz never hid the fact that he was an anthropologist. Dr. Ortiz enjoyed being an anthropologist since it was a method and a means of being involved with Indians and Indian issues. Anthropology was "fun" and "it was a way of being concerned with Indian matters all the time." Within this context, he was concerned with every aspect of Indian culture and its relationship with their future existence. He was concerned with methods of historical survival of tribal people and how these methods would be used in the future.

And, he believed in cultural flexibility and change when it was required for the long-term survival of a traditional culture. In this manner, Pueblo people were able to reinforce the old with certain elements of the new. This cultural adaptation allowed the Pueblo cultures to survive generation upon generation.

But, what was the impact of D’Arcy McNickle, Fred Eggan, Sol Tax and many others from the University of Chicago? As in his case and many others, the social and intellectual impact was enormous. It was within this environment that Ortiz developed and grew. Many of the Chicago folks felt that the objectiveness of Anthropology was closely connected with the construction of theories and models in order to make universal statements of culture and how it functions. Ortiz followed this path.

Alfonso Ortiz, one of the first to recognize the importance of viewing a culture from the "Inside." As a member of the San Juan Pueblo and writing about its cultural reality, Ortiz was able to provide a unique insight of the mechanism of cultural reality. This established a new trend in the concepts of fieldwork.

Dr. Ortiz as with other Indian anthropologists, had problems with the early definitions of Culture, which is something that humans have and, nonhuman and physical entities do not. Acceptance of this thought would be the complete rejection of the traditional tribal way of life. For a tribal person, it is the nonhuman and physical entities are critically important within the tribal mythology.

He used the fact that after more than four centuries of Spanish colonization Pueblo people still live with their traditional culture basically intact. With a belief that native religion was associated with evil and Satan, Spanish missionaries swarmed into the Southwest to convert the Pueblo people. Death was the result for those who resisted. Naturally, Pueblo tribal people resisted and death for them was the natural result. Battlefields became fields of rotting bodies that would lie under a sacred sun. Many countless battles have been lost in time and history. Many nameless religious leaders persecuted and executed.

Speaking of the Pueblo revolt, Dr. Ortiz states: "That was the whole object of the revolt, to get the hated Spaniards to leave, and when they achieved that objective they sat back and were content."

A continuous burning issue with Dr. Ortiz was that the "history" of tribal people in the Western Hemisphere did not begin until Europeans discovered the Americas. Europeans have argued that Indian people did not have a written language and, therefore, no history. This argument is based upon the fact that Europeans believed that oral traditions could not serve as a valid indicator of history. Therefore, the history of Indian people could only begin with Columbus and his writings. Naturally, Dr. Ortiz believed that this thought was entirely incorrect. And, in his later years, Ortiz began to spend more time reflecting upon the importance of oral tradition. He was in a sense Becoming an element of oral tradition.

The Boarding Schools

The idea of a boarding school and its assimilation policy was a major concern for Dr. Ortiz. "Dear Lord, help me not to hate my mother and father." This was a prayer of a Navaho student who attended the famously strict Methodist Boarding School in Farmington, New Mexico. And, Ortiz used this quote in 1969 in his writings concerning Indian education.

Since most Indians were not standing in line to become Americans, forced assimilation became the answer. Many assimilative policies were initiated through the centuries, but an extreme method was the Indian boarding school. Education provided a means of destroying tribal culture. The beginning of Indian education in the United States was the federal funding of the Civilization Fund in 1819. The Fund began with a $10,000 federal allocation and was controlled by members of Christian organizations.

The feeling of government officials was that missionaries were ideal to educate Indian children. Later, the Fund was formalized into the Civilization Division in the federal bureaucracy. In 1884, the Civilization Division became the Indian Educational Division. Boarding schools became its tool for assimilation.

The basic logic of these boarding schools was the civilizing of Indian people by taking their children away from their homes and tribes. In 1879, the first Indian boarding school was founded in an abandoned army base in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

During Ortiz's early academic years at Chicago evidence surfaced concerning Chilocco, the most appalling and unjust of all boarding schools was the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Chilocco Indian School in Chilocco, Oklahoma. Many children in Chilocco were expelled from other BIA schools. Among boarding schools, Chilocco was known as the end of the line and the last chance. As a disciplinary measure, occasionally, young children were handcuffed to overhead beams and flogged. Others were placed in solitary confinement comparable to the sadistic discipline in penal institutions.

In the 1960's, when asked what he would do if given more money, the superintendent of Chilocco said he would build a jail and hire more guards. So, this educational approach was not supportive of traditional culture. Throughout the life of Dr. Ortiz, he had a lasting concern of this educational attempt to destroy tribal culture. Basically, Dr. Ortiz was concerned with using education as a means for the survival of tribal culture not its destruction.

Wanting to Be Indian

But Dr. Ortiz's vision of the survival of tribal culture was not expanded to include the non-Indians invading Indian reservations. Dr. Ortiz was well aware of the many whites who have claimed that, usually by accident, they came across an Indian elder who recognized them as lost relatives or as a person who is special. With this holy induction, the Indian elder would tell these honored whites all the tribal religious secrets during this encounter.

On the opposite end, Dr. Ortiz knew that another social phenomenon was taking place. This concerned the Indian individuals who want to participate in the growing business of Indian mysticism and occultism. Without the traditional education and religious training, many of these people have lived on the very fringe of traditionalism. For example, one Indian individual, by using illegal drugs, became a medicine man because "I had a vision." His decision was not based upon the request of the Indian spirits, but was a merely a manifestation of drugs upon his body and mind. In Albuquerque, he is now successful with a non-Indian clientele who seeks Indian secrets and cure.

But, what is an Indian anthropologist to do. Dr. Ortiz felt that working behind the scene was more important than public criticism. This follows the trend of a Pueblo person in the sense that only tribal religious leaders could to decide on the best approach. To this degree, Dr. Ortiz followed his cultural reality. This approach became a major focus in his life since he was well aware of his limitation of cultural authority to criticize.

Traditional Criticism

When one speaks of The Pueblos, one is hit with the images of their desert, mesas and their Anasazi ancestors. But, the biggest impact is the Traditionalism of the Pueblo Indians. As an American Indian anthropologist, Dr. Ortiz was both commended and criticized for revealing the traditions and people of his Pueblos. He was viewed as telling the secrets of his tribe to outsiders which among the Pueblos is a serious social crime. Ortiz believed that it was easy to be involved in this conflict, but he knew that some means must be found to lessen this tribal concern. His method was to participate in the required social manners dictated by the traditional Pueblo culture. But, throughout his life, he was not able to escape the suspicions of some traditional people of San Juan Pueblo.

His grandparents raised him, and they had a profound impact upon his life. The grandparents were his traditional focus and they defined his cultural position within San Juan Pueblo society. And, they protected Ortiz by their social standing within the Pueblo.

It is important for all to realize that Ortiz did not betray any tribal secrets. What he had theorized was a new way of looking at what was general known. His uniqueness was to construct new cultural theory. And, with any new Idea, it's new existence call for a readjustment of the cultural reality on the part of the discover, the population under discussion and the theoretical bases of anthropology. But, still the Clowns of San Juan Pueblo kept a careful watch.

Conclusion

Dr. Ortiz knew that, American Indians still have many things that Americans want, and they will take these items from the Indians. This reality sets in motion the mechanism working for the destruction of Indian culture. The future of the Pueblos and other American Indian tribes is fighting for survival as cultures wanting to be left alone. This ideal will not take place, which is the sad part of this story.

Tribes now face a real threat to their existence. Unfortunately, we now have reached a stage where some tribes are unable to marry tribal members because they are all related. They now must marry outside the tribe, and so the tribe is genetically doomed. These two situations do not speak well of the future of American Indian tribes.

At the end of his life Dr. Ortiz began to spend less time within the academic world and he took every opportunity to return to the land. He began to return to the oral tradition as the means to maintain the old.

Ortiz believed that an isolated society creates a strong sense of belonging, which is reinforced through an oral tradition that in turns reinforce customs and the traditions of the tribe. Within the tribal culture, traditional religions have been the sacred personification of the surrounding universe woven into mythological and sacred realities. Oral tradition is an aspect of the kinship and cultural systems, which may be reinforced by the ceremonial and religious cultural elements. Eventually, we reach a state of Becoming.

As tribal people, we live in a time of extremely rapid technological and social change. And, within this context, the Indian people find themselves in an increasingly complex global world with increasingly complex economic relationships. With the growing complexity, the tribal individual gets trapped in a multilevel economic world in which the international community affects the traditional community. Unfortunately, the tribal person has not been able to develop adequate social, legal or economic responses for the clashing of these systems. This new globalization requires that an Indian person be aware of new economic forces and social realities. In most cases, this causes deep confusion and turmoil. And so, we join Dr. Alfonso Ortiz's concern of our tribal future.

References

1969 Cahn, Edgar S.

Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America. New Community Press. New York.

1970 Vine Deloria, Jr.

Custer Died For Your Sins. Avon Books. New York

1968 Stan Steiner

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