Dozier, Edward P.

Edward P. Dozier was born in 1916 at Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico. His father, Thomas Sublette Dozier, was an Anglo lawyer who came to New Mexico to teach; and his mother, Leocardia Gutierrez Dozier, was a Tewa Pueblo Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo. He began attending the University of New Mexico in 1935. He enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1941 and was discharged in 1945. He returned to UNM and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology in 1947.

In 1943 he married Claire Elizabeth Butler and had one daughter. They divorced in 1948. He remained at the University of New Mexico and received his Master of Arts in anthropology in 1949. He then enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles and received his Ph.D. in 1952. He became the second Native American to receive a doctorate in anthropology. His main research interests were the Pueblo Indians and he spent much time researching on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. His dissertation, “The Changing Social Organization of the Hopi-Tewa”, was published as The Hopi-Tewa of Arizona (1954). He married Marianne Fink in 1950 and they had two children.

He taught at the University of Oregon from 1951 to1952 and then moved to Northwestern University where he taught until 1958. In 1955 he joined the Association of American Indian Affairs and was later elected Vice President. Dr. Dozier and his family moved to the northern Philippines for a year to study the Kalinga of the Mountain Province of Northern Luzon. When he returned to the United States in 1960 he became a professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Arizona where he continued his research on the Pueblo Indians. He remained at the University of Arizona until his death in 1971. He was asked to be director of a new American Indian studies program at the University of Minnesota but was diagnosed with a brain tumor and advised to remain in Tucson. While convalescing, the University of Arizona began planning an American Indian Studies program with which Dr. Dozier helped. He died of a heart attack in 1971.

From the guide to the Edward P. Dozier Papers, 1885-1972, (Arizona State Museum)