Gary Witherspoon

Gary J. Witherspoon (born 1943) is professor of Native American studies at the University of Washington. His area of expertise is the Navajo language and Navajo culture.

Early life and education

Born in 1943 in a Mormon family of Baltimore, Maryland he attended the Ohio State University then served on a Mormon religious mission to the Navajo in beginning in 1962 for two years. He married in 1964 and became part of a Navajo family. He received his BS degree in Political Science from Brigham Young University in 1966.

Academic career

While working on the Navajo Reservation he attended Arizona State University until 1968. At the University of Chicago, he earned his MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1970, two years after enrolling. After one year at Yale University, Witherspoon returned to the Dine and focused on research and teaching. His publication record in the early 1970s caught the attention of anthropologists, and he was hired in 1975 by the University of Michigan. In 1979 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. From 1982 to 1987 he lived among the Navajo. He taught at, and was director of, The Navajo Language Institute, part of the Navajo Academy near Farmington, New Mexico.. In 1987 Witherspoon accepted an offer from the University of Washington, where he chairs the American Indian Studies Department.