Emory Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi linguist, artist and scholar, died on December 14. He was 78.
Sekaquaptewa wrote the tribe's first dictionary. He spent 30 years on the project and was working on a children's language workbook when he died.
Sekaquaptewa was also an artist. He and his brother are credited with developing a silversmithing technique that is widely used today.
Sekaquaptewa helped form the American Indian Studies department at University of Arizona. He earned his law degree there in 1968 and taught classes. He served as an appellate court judge of the Hopi Tribe and worked on the Hopi-Navajo land dispute.
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