School Zone: Abbott’s helping to preserve Oneida speech (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Posted Nov. 28, 2003

School Zone: Abbott’s helping to preserve Oneida speech

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For 30 years, Cliff Abbott, a professor at the University of 
Wisconsin-Green Bay, has helped preserve the Oneida language. B.A. 
Rupert/PRess-Gazette
UWGB professor has taught the language for about 30 years

By Cynthia Hodnett
chodnett at greenbaypressgazette.com

He’s a professor of information and computer sciences and Native 
American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

But Clifford Abbott’s resume also includes 30 years of teaching the 
Oneida language to students on campus and Oneida people off campus.

“The work that I do with the Oneidas gives me an opportunity to spend 
(time in) a different world outside of academics,” he said. “It’s very 
refreshing.”

Spoken for hundreds of years, the Oneida language was nearly silenced 
during the relocation of Indian tribes across the country during the 
1800s and early 1900s.

Many children were taken from reservations and placed in government 
boarding schools, causing many to abandon their native tongue. Now, 
many tribal members are learning the language.

Abbott, 56, said he first became interested in the Oneida language 
while attending graduate school. It was there that he met a researcher 
who studied the history of the language.

Some words have several different meanings, he said. Those who are 
fluent in the language say the language also has more than 50 pronouns.

“The language is amazingly complex,” Abbott said. “I would have sworn 
that when I first studied it in graduate school that people actually 
studied it at one time.”

In the 1970s, Abbott worked with other tribal members with a program 
developed to train Oneida teachers for jobs in local school districts 
and tribal schools. His work continued into the 1990s with a group of 
Oneida speakers to develop a 700- plus page Oneida language dictionary.

Abbott is currently involved in a number of projects with the tribe 
including teaching a linguistics class and helping tribal members 
design a program to certify Oneida language teachers.

Amelia Cornelius, a member of the Oneida Gaming Commission and former 
director of the tribe’s Bilingual/Bicultural Program, recalls Abbott’s 
work in translating stories form Oneida elders from their native tongue 
into English and from English into Oneida. Many of those stories are 
contained in pamphlets used in tribal schools, she said.

“His work is invaluable to us,” Cornelius said. “He was a very easy 
person, a very understanding person who was diligent in his work.”
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