Only five native speakers of the Wisconsin dialect of Oneida remain. All of these elders are over 80 years old, and only three are physically well enough to assist in language documentation. With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Carol A. Cornelius of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin will produce video and audio documentation of Oneida conversational styles, something under-documented in previous studies. The material will be archived along with previous documentation that is threatened because of inadequate archiving. A collaborative approach will be used which combines notable linguistic expertise, institutional support, business and personnel management expertise, database expertise, along with native speaker and apprentice training. The goals of this project are thus twofold: to conduct field work to document conversational Oneida styles with the last three speakers who learned Oneida as their first language and are able to assist in this project; and to research and construct a database on which to preserve and archive the information from current, previous, and any future documentation efforts.
The work performed here will provide a model of partnership and collaboration among programs (the University of Wisconsin's Digital Collection Center in Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's First Nations Studies program, and several programs within the Oneida Nation) and among different kinds of expertise (archiving expertise at the Digital Collection Center, skilled native speakers of Oneida experienced with fieldwork, documentation expertise both academic and local). The work also provides for advancing the training of Oneida community members in both language documentation (fieldwork, transcription, and analysis) and archiving (including improved preservation and access) so that a solid structure can serve multiple users. It is hoped that such integration can provide a model for other communities of similar size with similarly endangered languages. In particular, the conversations recorded are of particular value to future language revitalization efforts, since this is an aspect of culture that is crucial and yet easy to ignore when collecting texts.
