Archie Phinney

Nez Perce linguist, anthropologist, Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent, and American Indian activist; Archie Phinney left his home in Culdesac, Idaho to become part of a select group of Americans Indians mentored by Franz Boas. Phinney avoided government or religious schools and gained a college education that took him to graduate studies in the Soviet Union, exposing him to two of the world's leading anthropologists and their differing methodologies. Mentored by Franz Boas and Vladimir Bogoraz, fluent in Numipu and English, and a student of the Russian language, Phinney followed American Indian scholars William Jones and Ella Cara Deloria in a renaissance of American Indian languages and cultures. As a published author, doctoral scholar, and world traveler, Phinney learned the arts and crafts of anthropology and ethnography at home, in the field, and in the Soviet Union. Returning from Russia to participate in the development of Indian Reorganization governments, Phinney moved into the field of applied anthropology as a high-ranking Bureau of Indian Affairs officer. As an American Indian intellectual of the 1930s and 1940s, Phinney joined D'Arcy McNickle and others in forming the National Congress of American Indians. Phinney's Nez Perce Texts and various publications, his involvement with John Collier and the Indian Reorganization Act, and testimonies from Charles E. J. Heacock (1945), Franz Boas, and Ralph Maud (1982), speak to the breadth and depth of Phinney's legacy.