Educational/Linguistic Autobiography
Gahudohkt means 'at the edge of the field'. This is my Oneida name and was given to me by my grandmothers, The Elders' Circle, in Southwold, Ontario, Canada at the Oneida Reserve. There had been a grandmother in the group who had already passed on and I was named after her. It is customary in the Oneida ways to be named after a person once they've gone on. The meaning of the name is indicative of my educational and linguistic life because I have always felt on the edge between to cultures. I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My grandparents left Oneida, Wisconsin to work in the automobile factories in Detroit, Michigan. They had a big family, nine children. I was educated by my Oneida family in my early years and then moved to Oneida, Wisconsin and continued to grow and develop.
One of my most significant early school memories is of learning Spanish in first grade. My teacher was of Chicano heritage and therefore exposed our class to the Spanish alphabet, names for animals and songs. I remember really loving to sing the song "El Gato". It made me giggle. I hold on to this feeling when I am learning a new language because it helps me during the acquisition process. Another important memory is of eighth grade language arts class. I had a wonderful teacher who showed our class how to manipulate the English language with poetry, transitional phrases, comparative and contrast prose, and the language of debate. I think this class is responsible for the way I write today. It gave me a strong foundation to build on.
In high school, I took three years of Spanish. I became confident that I could communicate with Spanish speaking people. I had a very important learning experience in regards to speaking Spanish. In 1995, I went to Veracruz, Mexico on an EarthWatch biological expedition, which studied rainforest fragmentation and the effects on species of birds and bats. I was there for about one month and that when I learned that the Spanish I was taught in school was sometimes very different from the Spanish spoken here in La Finca La Iguana 'the land of the iguana'. I met many different speakers of Spanish and one coffee and banana plantation owner who spoke an indigenous language from the region. At the time I didn't know which language he spoke but now I think it was a dialect of Nahuatl. This experience was one of the greatest in my educational process.
After returning from Mexico, I went to college at Haskell Indian Nations University and completed an Associates of Arts degree in Tribal Management. Attending Haskell was a life changing experience because it taught me about family and connections. I was part of a community of many different tribal people. At that time, there were more than 160 tribal nations represented at the school from the United States, Canada, Alaskan and Hawaiian natives. I was amazed at how we all worked as one huge family. Everyone knew everyone else. But more than that everyone cared about what happened to students at Haskell. This made the community more close nit and tolerant of each other and each person's unique cultural values and beliefs.
Haskell used to be an Indian Boarding School. I have several different connections to Haskell. In Oneida, Wisconsin, during the 1920's, my grandmother's family was separated from each other. Her mother and father refused to property taxes so tax collectors came to the house and arrested her father and uncles. They took all of the thirteen children and put them in different boarding schools. My grandmother was sent to Haskell when she was eight years old. She graduated from there in 1933 when she was eighteen years old. My aunties tell me that she spoke Oneida to them once in a while when she was raising them but never taught them any Oneida. Then, all of my aunties went and graduated from Haskell, which was a vocational training school at that time. I had a much better experience at Haskell than my grandmother did. Also, my brother graduated from Haskell in 2003. All of the friends I made and the people I know that went to Haskell I still keep in touch with. They are closer to me in some ways than my own immediate family is.
After graduating with my Associate's, I went home to Oneida and worked for one of our councilwomen. During that time I went to a few Oneida language classes taught by Ano:gi. I became interested in learning my language. I decided to go back to school for a linguistics degree. I went to the University of Kansas because it was close to Haskell and I was able to get in-state tuition prices because I graduated from Haskell. In a few years, I had my Bachelor's of Arts degree in Linguistics. I had done two summer field studies of Oneida language as part of my program. I documented my language with cassette tapes, field notes and video. Also, I attended the American Indian Language Development Institute (AIDLI) and became aware of ways of teaching Oneida from instructors who have taught their own heritage language.
During one semester of my undergraduate degree I spent approximately one thousand hours in Oneida language immersion by being an Oneida Language Teacher Apprentice to Ano:gi, my grandfather. I acquired my language quickly and was able to substitute teach for Ano:gi after seven weeks of immersion. I believe that the combination of studying linguistics and teaching methods allowed me to get sizable chunks of my language, for instance, names of animals, how to ask for things, what words to use when describing the weather, food names and everyday greetings. During AILDI, I became interested in a Master's degree in Native American Linguistics so I applied to the program and was accepted. My thesis was one part a descriptive grammar of Oneida and one part my own educational experiences acquiring my language as an adult.
During my Master's program I spent another seven hundred hours doing Oneida Language immersion and teaching. Some tribal politics drove me to pursue my doctorate. I applied to the Department of Language, Reading and Culture and started my doctoral program in the Fall of 2002. My units from the Master's degree program transferred to my doctoral program and now I am almost finished with course work for my doctoral program in Indigenous Language Education.
Some topics I am considering for my dissertation are ethnographical studies with interviews from elders, Oneida educational theory, practical teaching methods for Oneida, creating a CD ROM of Oneida, creating computer games and lessons in Oneida, authoring a comic book in Oneida and English and curriculum development for indigenous languages. Through the course of my educational process I have a lot of hands on, practical knowledge plus a decent amount of theoretical concepts (enough to know that I want to change some of the theories!). One aspect that I wish I knew more about is the psychological processes involved in acquire one's heritage language and the effects of knowing one's self through an ancestral language.
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