Simon J. Ortiz
| Simon J. Ortiz | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 27, 1941 Albuquerque, New Mexico, US |
| Occupation | Writer, educator, politician |
| Nationality | Acoma Pueblo |
| Period | c. 1976–present |
| Genre | Poetry, fiction |
| Literary movement | Native American Renaissance |
| Notable works | From Sand Creek: Rising In This Heart Which Is Our America |
Simon J. Ortiz (born May 27, 1941) is a Puebloan writer of the Acoma Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second wave of what has been called the Native American Renaissance. He is one of the most respected and widely read Native American poets.
Ortiz is a member of the Eagle Clan. He was raised in the Acoma village of McCartys (the Keresan name is "Deetzeyaamah"), and spoke only Keresan at home. His father, a railroad worker and woodcarver, was an elder in the clan who was charged with keeping the religious knowledge and customs of the pueblo.
Ortiz attended McCartys Day School through the sixth grade, after which he was sent to St. Catherine's Indian School in Santa Fe, as most Native children were sent to Indian boarding schools at the time. Attempting to provide an English language education, such boarding schools sought to assimilate Native American children into "American" mainstream culture, and strictly forbade them to speak their own native languages. Thus, the young Ortiz began to struggle with an acute awareness of the cultural dissonance shaping him and began to write about his experiences and thoughts in his diaries and compose short stories. While frustrated with his situation, he became a voracious reader and developed a passionate love of language, reading whatever he could get his hands on — including dictionaries, which he felt let his mind travel within a "state of wonder."
Homesick for his family and community, Ortiz became disillusioned with St. Catherine's. He transferred to Albuquerque Indian School, which taught trade classes such as plumbing and mechanics. He took both metal and woodworking classes, but his father was opposed to the prospect of his son's future being in manual labor. However, the day after graduating from Grants High School (in Grants, New Mexico near Acoma) Ortiz began work as a laborer at Kerr-McGee, a uranium plant. Interested in becoming a chemist, he initially applied for a technical position. Instead, he was made a typist, soon demoted to being a crusher, and later promoted as a semi-skilled operator. His experience as a mining laborer would later inspire his work, "Fight Back: For the Sake of the People, for the Sake of the Land."
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