American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Alfonso Ortiz suffered a fatal heart attack at his Santa Fe, New Mexico home on January 28, 1997. Born in San Juan Pueblo, Professor Ortiz taught anthropology and Native American studies at the University of New Mexico since 1974, where he received an undergraduate sociology degree in 1961. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and taught at Princeton, with adjunct positions at the University of California, Los Angeles and Stanford. Ortiz was a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow who chaired the Advisory Council of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History at The Newberry Library in Chicago. He was president of the Association on American Indian Affairs and served on the governing boards of the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Cultural Survival, Inc. Among his many publications stood the pioneering study, The Tewa World. Alfonso Ortiz was a tireless advocate for Native American rights, an academic of international distinction, and a friend to many, from reservation to Congress, across the country. The anniversary of his death calls for a spirit releasing ceremony, according to tribal custom, addressed in the following eulogy.