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omnipoetics:s.ortiz [2025/04/05 16:52] – created audrianaomnipoetics:s.ortiz [2025/04/09 18:41] (current) – sydneyb
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 ===== Simon J. Ortiz ===== ===== Simon J. Ortiz =====
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 +Simon J. Ortiz is a Native American writer and poet who is also a member of the Pueblo of Acoma. Born in 1941, Simon J. Ortiz is currently 83 and is also an Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University ("Simon Ortiz"). Oritz is also considered a key figure of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance as he is committed to the preservation of the literary and oral histories of the Acoma people, a duty that he seemingly inherited from his father who was an elder in the tribe before his passing. 
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 +Oritz himself has lived a fairly colorful life, as he details his childhood in which he and his family only spoke Keresan at home. However, when Ortiz entered middle school, he was sent to Santa Fe to attend St. Catherine's Indian School. Disillusioned with the cultural dissonance of St. Catherine's rules, Ortiz began writing and composing stories and poems. While his situation frustrated Ortiz, it did turn him into an insatiable reader (as he just randomly read dictionaries?) with a passion for language. 
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 +Eventually, Ortiz transferred to Albuquerque Indian School, where he learned several trades (like plumbing and mechanics). Writing, however, stayed with him, and surprisingly enough, it was Ortiz's father who pushed for him to stay away from manual labor jobs. Ortiz did graduate and worked an odd job or two at the Kerr-McGee uranium plant, which influenced his works once he truly began his writing career. 
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 +For his education, Ortiz attended Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where he focused on chemistry. After three years in the Armed Forces, he attended the University of New Mexico, where he focused on literature and creative writing. In terms of his writing, Ortiz was inspired by fellow native authors, and much of his work is the current native circumstances juxtaposed against historical events, alongside various environmental worries, particularly those involved with land developers and uranium exploitation. 
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 +According to Ortiz, storytelling and narratives are more than just styles or types of literature. As explained on the //Annenberg Learner//, Ortiz argues that "The purpose of that story sharing or storytelling is . . . conversing, and the story listeners are conversing with us. We are sharing, or participating. And it’s the storyteller participating by his telling, and the listener participating by his or her listening. So it’s an exchange. It’s a dialogue. It’s an event” (qtd. in "Simon J. Ortiz (b. 1941)"). 
  
 ==== The Interconnectedness of Language in Song ==== ==== The Interconnectedness of Language in Song ====
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 His father’s song is born out of and part of who he is in that moment. The song does not exist apart from the act of carving, the act of sitting, or the aged lines in the curve of his hands and face. Each word and action are complete unto themselves, just as they form a complete interconnected whole as part of the same reality.  His father’s song is born out of and part of who he is in that moment. The song does not exist apart from the act of carving, the act of sitting, or the aged lines in the curve of his hands and face. Each word and action are complete unto themselves, just as they form a complete interconnected whole as part of the same reality. 
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 +==== Works Cited ====
 +https://search.asu.edu/profile/976829 
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 +https://www.learner.org/series/american-passages-a-literary-survey/native-voices-video/simon-j-ortiz-b-1941/
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