The Author

Anne O'Brien

Anne O'Brien has traveled Indian lands since 1948, when she first visited the pueblos of the Rio Grande. Her personal interest in Indian tourism might therefore be said to fall into the category of modern history.

Although she is a cultural outsider, Mrs. O’Brien has participated in a portion of this history both as a recreational and a serious visitor to Indian lands. She has visited Hopi since the 1960’s, explored Navajo country by car and on horseback, hiked the deserts of the O’odham and the mountains of the Apache, walked in honor at an intertribal powwow, and mentored Native American teenagers in the city. As an independent scholar and writer she has read and researched American Indian subjects and recorded oral histories. She’s visited and stumbled upon reminders of the Native past around Arizona and the Four Corners area and has written about contemporary Indian culture, as well as about ancestral sites and artifacts.

The author has considered the dilemmas of cultural ownership and public display in her capacity as a volunteer at the Heard Museum, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Museum of Natural History on Colorado University’s campus, and the Museum of Northern Arizona. She is a member of Pueblo Grande Museum and the Arizona Historical Society and Foundation and has served on the board and executive committees of the Indian Arts and Crafts Association in Albuquerque as well as the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.

Mrs. O’Brien developed an appreciation of the interaction of language and culture after receiving a bachelor’s degree in French at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her later studies and experience in the field of social services and psychology helped her learn how to approach human behavior from an appropriate emotional distance. She earned a master’s degree in counseling at Arizona State University and practiced as a therapist in Phoenix. (She recently discovered that Dr. Ruth Underhill’s interests also evolved from the study of languages through social work to ethnology.)

Anne O’Brien is a member of the American Association of Journalists and Authors (ASJA.)