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The Wisconsin Oneida Language Preservation Project
The Wisconsin Oneida Language Preservation Project presents original stories and curriculum, with accompanying audio. The language resources originated with mother-tongue speakers residing in the Oneida Wisconsin community. These resources are accessible here in hope that they will be used to teach Oneida Language. The materials presented here include Curriculum (see below), Songs, and Stories in both English and written Oneida language. Audio files accompany these texts and provide additional instruction, allowing language learners to read and simultaneously listen to native Oneida speakers present the same material.
Project Summary
By UNESCO standards the language of the Oneida Nation is critically endangered, which means there is a real and present danger that the language will be irretrievably lost in the foreseeable future. At this point there remain less than 20 native speakers of Oneida globally. Sadly, all of the mother-tongue speakers that lived in Wisconsin have passed away. Luckily, there are mother-tongue speakers that still reside in the relative community near London, Ontario, Canada and they are working hard to help revitalize Oneida language.
This project provides video and audio documentation of Oneida conversational styles, to create a database for scholars and community members. The database and archive includes not only the documentation collected in this project, but also previous documentation that is threatened because of inadequate archiving. This collaborative approach uses notable linguistic expertise, institutional support, business and personnel management expertise, database expertise, community support, along with apprentice training. The goals of this project are thus twofold: to conduct field work of document conversational Oneida styles and to research and construct a database on which to preserve and archive the information from current, previous, and any future documentation efforts.
The original materials were collected by fluent Oneida people interviewing other fluent speaking Oneida people during the Works Progress Administration (1939-1940) Project. From the WPA project a written alphabet was created and all materials were written in Oneida. During the 1970s with a grant from the Title VII Bilingual Act, the K-6 curriculum was developed, and the WPA documents were converted to a new alphabet and recorded.
The Oneida language speakers who recorded the K-6 curriculum included on this site are: Amos Christjohn and Dick Christjohn. The female voice is Maria Hinton. Those sections that were missing the original recordings were recorded in 2009 by Randy Cornelius, the Oneida Language Archivist. The songs from the Kindergarten curriculum were recorded by Dellora Cornelius and Mercie Doxtater.
The WPA stories were recorded in the 1970s by Maria Hinton, Hudson Doxtater, Mary Danforth, Amos Christjohn and Oscar Archiquette.
If we have forgotten anyone it is not intentional and we continue to appreciate and utilize the hard work of our ancestors.
K-6 Curriculum
WPA Stories
The Wisconsin Oneida Language Preservation Project Sample items in the collection
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Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin 2009. All rights reserved.
No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin.
The copyright for all material in this collection is held by the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin. Written authorization from the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin is required prior to reproducing items in the collection for publication or exhibition.
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https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Oneida
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This project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. The following individuals and entities contributed to the successful completion of this work: Oneida Cultural Heritage Department, the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, Dr. Cliff Abbot (UW Green-Bay) and the UW Digital Collections Center.