Joe Sando
Joe Simon Sando (Towa: Paa Péh; 1923 – September 13, 2011) was an American Jemez Pueblo historian, professor, and writer whose work focused on the history and culture of Jemez Pueblo and the Pueblo peoples in the Southwestern United States. He is known as the first Pueblo historian to write about the Pueblo peoples in Western academia.
Sando was born in Jemez Pueblo as a member of the Sun Clan. At this time, there were no written accounts of the Pueblo peoples by a Pueblo author despite a long tradition of Pueblo oral history since time immemorial. The lack of such accounts inspired him to become the first and leading Pueblo historian of the Pueblo peoples. After Sando served in World War II, the G.I. Bill funded his pursuit of studying the Native American history of New Mexico.
After returning from his studies Vanderbilt University to New Mexico in the 1960s, Sando began a prolific lifelong scholarly career focused on the history of the Pueblo peoples. Sando taught at the University of New Mexico and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He was also historical director for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, and served on a number of Native American boards, councils, and commissions dedicated to Pueblo and Native issues.
Sando is widely known in New Mexico and among the Pueblo peoples for his scholarship and historical knowledge, with his most famous works are Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History, and Pueblo Profiles: Cultural Identity through Centuries of Change. Sando remains the only historian of the 20th century whose work centered on the Pueblo peoples during that time. He is widely seen as the most famous Pueblo academics of the twentieth century along with the Tewa cultural anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz.
Similar Artists