Morris Edward Opler American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 anthropologist and advocate of Japanese-American civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

, was born in Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

. He was the brother of Marvin Opler

Marvin Opler

Marvin Kaufmann Opler was an American anthropologist and social psychiatrist. His brother Morris Edward Opler was also an anthropologist who studied the Southern Athabaskan peoples of North America. Morris and Marvin Opler were the sons of Austrian-born Arthur A. Opler, a merchant, and Fanny...

, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

.

Morris Opler's chief anthropological contribution is in the ethnography

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 of Southern Athabaskan peoples, i.e. the Navajo

Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...

 and Apache

Apache

Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...

, such as the Chiricahua

Chiricahua

Chiricahua are a group of Apache Native Americans who live in the Southwest United States. At the time of European encounter, they were living in 15 million acres of territory in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona in the United States, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico...

, Mescalero

Mescalero

Mescalero is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southcentral New Mexico...

, Lipan, and Jicarilla

Jicarilla Apache

Jicarilla Apache refers to the members of the Jicarilla Apache Nation currently living in New Mexico and speaking a Southern Athabaskan language...

. His classic work is An Apache Life-Way (1941). He worked with Grenville Goodwin

Greenville Goodwin

Grenville Goodwin, born Greenville Goodwin , is best known for his participant-observer ethnology work among the Western Apache in the 1930s in the American Southwest. Largely self-taught as an anthropologist, he lived among the Apache for nearly a decade, and learned their stories and rituals...

, who was also studying social organization among the Western Apache. After Goodwin's early death, Opler edited a volume of his letters from the field and other papers, published in 1973.

Opler earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 in 1933. He taught at Reed College

Reed College

Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

during the 1940s and later taught at Cornell University and the University of Oklahoma.

Legacy and honors

• The University of Oklahoma established the Morris E. Opler Award in his name, for work in social anthropology by a student.

External links

• Morris Opler
• Guide to the Morris Edward Opler Papers, Cornell University
• A Chiricahua Apache's Account of the Geronimo Campaign of 1886, University of Virginia Library E-Text
• Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts
• "A description of a Tonkawa peyote meeting held in 1902", American Ethnography