Trudy Griffin-Pierce: Navajo culture, beliefs were her inspiration

Though of Catawba Indian heritage and born in South Carolina, Griffin-Pierce was fascinated from childhood by the Navajo, said her aunt, Pat Wells of Florida. Diné, meaning "The People," is the name Navajos use for themselves.

"I remember her saying from the time she was 3 years old she had this interest," Wells said. "She had a children's book about Native Americans and she remembered her interest going back that far."

The Navajos' complex spiritual beliefs are based on Hózhó, which means existing in a state of balance, harmony, wellness, peace and completeness.

Griffin-Pierce, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, learned about Hózhó and other spiritual and cultural beliefs when she was informally adopted by a Navajo family in Northern Arizona. She learned about healing practices and ceremonial sand painting and that death is not to be feared because it is part of nature's course.

And it was Jan. 6 that 59-year-old Griffin-Pierce entered into the next phase of the ongoing cycle of birth, life and death. She died suddenly at home with her beloved sheepdog, Mr. Skippy, at her side. The cause of death is not known.

It was the sudden death of Griffin-Pierce's mother that sent her searching for a Navajo family with whom she could connect. She was 16 when her mother, a homemaker, died of an aneurysm.

They were living in California, where her father was stationed with the Air Force. Her parents' first three daughters all died during early childhood, so her mother's bond with her surviving daughter was especially strong. Her death devastated Griffin-Pierce.

After the anthropologist's death last month, Griffin-Pierce's longtime friend, Dawn Thornton Duke of San Francisco, found some musings among her friend's personal papers.

About the death of her mother, Griffin-Pierce had written: "The sudden death of the person who was my whole world shattered my core beliefs about reality and sent me searching for meaning. The only things in my life to which I was truly connected were writing and the Navajo Indians."

While studying for a bachelor's degree in fine art from Florida State University, Griffin-Pierce wrote to the chairman of the Navajo Nation, asking him to find her a traditional Navajo family that she could join.

"I wanted to live with them as a daughter, not as an anthropologist. To learn from them, not about them," she said in a 1992 Arizona Daily Star article.

"I lived with them in their hogan, and I didn't speak any Navajo, and they didn't speak any English," she said. "Every morning, I'd go out and herd sheep all day, and I'd ride the buckboard into the trading post with them, too."

Avery Denny, a professor of healing, culture, oral history, and Navajo philosophy at Diné College, in Tsaile, Ariz., was her adopted Navajo brother. Until Griffin-Pierce learned the language, Denny and his wife translated conversations between the anthropologist and his parents, who were practitioners, or "chanters," and sang at healing ceremonies.

Unlike most anthropologists, who observe a culture from the outside over a period of hours or days or weeks, Griffin-Pierce immersed herself.

"She was fascinated with the culture. She moved in and slept on the sheepskin and attended our ceremonies," Denny said. "A lot of these practitioners would not allow an outsider to be a witness to ceremonies.

"My mother and my father adopted her and she became a sister," he said. One of Denny's nieces is named Trudy in her honor.

The Denny family educated Griffin-Pierce in Navajo culture, customs and beliefs, providing information for her 1992 book, "Earth Is My Mother, Sky Is My Father: Space, Time, and Astronomy in Navajo Sandpainting." It's one of five books the award-winning author penned about American Indians.

In return, Denny said, Griffin-Pierce helped him learn about his own culture.

"She enhanced our knowledge and made us, even more, widen our perspective," he said. "She was an inspiration to our family. She taught me a lot about culture in just the way she posed her questions. She wanted to know a certain thing and I would ask my grandfathers, my uncles and my father and I would get the question answered, too. I was in training."

It was to be closer to her Navajo family that Griffin-Pierce moved to Tucson to earn her master's and Ph.D., after graduating from Florida State.

Denny and Griffin-Pierce, whose graduate work focused on cultural and medical anthropology, were working on a presentation for a Navajo studies conference in Shiprock next month on diabetes. Along with her teaching duties, Griffin-Pierce also was working with the Arizona Alzheimer's Consortium to provide outreach and education services to the state's tribes.

After finishing her master's degree in museum studies, Griffin-Pierce worked as curator of a small museum at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It was at the observatory that she met her future husband, Keith Pierce, an internationally known researcher of solar physics who was instrumental in selecting Kitt Peak as the site for the observatory. He also played a key role in the development of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope.

Griffin-Pierce earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology in 1987 and began teaching at the UA a year later.

As a teacher, she inspired her students.

Vija Garcia Dixon was her student during the fall 2008 semester. She thought of Griffin-Pierce as a mentor.

"She brought it all very much from the past to the present for us. She made us look at the culture and tradition and she wanted us to understand their oral traditions, places of emergence, their belief system; not to the point that it would be invasive, but to have us understand it."

Griffin-Pierce started the semester with a Navajo talking circle, Garcia Dixon said. A Navajo basket was passed around, signifying students' turns to tell something about themselves.

"She wanted to know who we were as people, why we were taking this class, what we wanted to gain from it. She wanted to get to know us as people," Garcia Dixon said.

It was that interest in others that helped Griffin-Pierce make and keep many friends from all over the world.

"She was the most warm, fun person. We would just laugh and laugh when we were together. We'd laugh so much our faces would hurt," Thornton Duke said.

Sue Raymond, who met Griffin-Pierce in Hawaii in 1959 when their fathers were stationed at military installations there, became a lifelong friend.

"She always saw the good in everybody; she saw the good and she saw the potential," Raymond said.

the series

This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.

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