Cholena Smith - Senior Project

12

December 15th was the day that the Obama Administration said that the Shinnecock Indian Nation exists!!. Finally. The day was amazing, so many Shinnecocks gathered together and to hear good news. We had a big celebration and tears shed, smiles grew big, and screams of joy were all around us. Speeches were made by our trustees and elders and the beautiful voices of our nation were heard as we sang traditional songs around the drum. It was such a historic moment and I am so thankful to have been there. I have been writing a whole lot in the Federal Recognition section of the book and it will be edited soon. I have met with my outside mentor and will see him again over the vacation. I also will be working on the outside cover of the book which will most likely be deer hide with leather burned designs.

11

I sent my introduction and first story to my mentor this week. He is now editing them and then I will send the next stories to him. I have decided not to send this book to a publisher because there is a lot more information that I want in the book before I publish and mass produce it. I have decided that I will create my own cover for the book either out of wood, leather, or cork and other natural materials. I will add a creativity section to the product rubric.

10

This week I have completed the interview with Eugene Cuffee and I have also finished the introduction to my book. I will finish another interview and then complete the story. Next week the stories will be edited. Here is a section from the introduction on the book. 

 Shinnecock has so much history. The way that our people learned our traditions and history was through story telling. Since the beginning of time, the only way that we teach traditions is orally. The laws of life, conduction of ceremonies, and all knowledge had to be learned by watching and listening to the generations before us. Today, people throughout the world rely on documents, books, images, and the Internet for information, whether it’s about the latest gossip of a celebrity or about someone’s ancestry.

 

9

This week I met with my mentor and had a great conversation about my project. What I am doing is an excellent cultural anthropological project. We decided that I should create an introduction and conclusion to the stories. Explaining what these stories are and why they are being created, as well as a brief historical description of the previous ways of Shinnecockand why this project is a breakthrough. I will finish the book over the break.

8

This week i did not do much on my project besides a little bit on the story of our federal recognition. What i did do was attend the feast and dances at the Jemez pueblo in New Mexico. I also went the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, California. Also, I visited UNM and Stanford University. Both of these schools offer the comfort of and Indigenous Population and offers great programs, organizations, and courses for Native people. I need to finish the book of stories during the Thanksgiving break so that I can send a copy to lulu. I believe that if I begin this week and work hard over the break it can definitely be completed by December 1st.

7!

I am so close to finishing the final story about the Circassian. I learned so many interesting facts and point of views about the ship wreck. I cannot wait until i set up the interview with my uncle, Eugene Cuffee, to get information and hear the stories that were passed on to him about the wreck. I have decided to create a novel of short stories that will be aimed for young adults and older. Some Shinnecock language will be used, however the language will not be my focus of this project. I am still attending the language development meetings and still doing my own research about the language. There is too much to learn before we begin teaching the community the Shinnecock language. I will include words that we are sure of so that people can become familiar with the language and so they will want to continue to learn more. When the language development gets along farther, we will create lesson plans and ways of teaching the language including the creation children books. I plan on creating the story about our federal recognition especially because we should be finding out in a few months if we are approved for federal recognition.

6

this week was good. i got started on the circassian story and I am now half way through. I want to get more information from the families of the men that died in the incident. I will be interviewing Eugene Cuffee because he has done extensive genealogy research for the Shinnecock. Along with this research he has done a lot of research and had previous knowledge of Shinnecock history, especially the Circassian event. 

Week 5

More research has been done about the Circassian incident. I will be interviewing more poeple within the community about more stories they would like to be known in the community. I also attended another language meeting at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus. They will be creating a center for sustainable culture within this campus.

week 4

This week i interviewed my aunt. I asked her which important facts or stories about Shinnecock she feels every generation should know. She told me about the Circassian. This was a boat that male members of the Shinnecock Nation worked on along with other Long Islanders. In 1876, there was terrible winter storm that the ship was caught in when it struck a sandbar. The crew was saved when the rescuers reached the freighter in dories. The Shinnecock members were hired to go back to the sandbar, unload the cargo and tow the ship off the sandbar. Another storm hit while they were doing their business. Some Shinnecock men left the ship, but 10 of them were ordered by an official of the salvage company to stay aboard and ride out the storm. Some say that they were forced to stay by pistol threats. No matter the reason, they stayed and this is an important fact because we lost very important people in the community and the fact proves the treatment of our people as well as our existence.

I will continue gathering information about this story and interview others to discover new information about the event and about other important events.

#3

A few members from different tribes on Long Island would like to collaborate the language revitalizing programs into one program. There was a meeting on Wednesday with Stony Brook University and they have decided to create a department for cultural studies and establish a section for Algonquian language research. Also, there was a meeting with the Wampanoag Nation in Mashpee, Massachusetts. I attended this meeting with other members of the language committee to learn how the Wampanoag Nation was able to revitalize their language in 9 years. There were representatives from the Wampanoag, Shinnecock, and Unkachoag nations. We asked questions and then listened in on their own language committee meeting. My sister told the head of their committee about the Shinnecocks' approach to learning the Shinnecock language. She mentioned which dictionary we had been using and the head of the committee told us that many of the words in the dictionary are either incorrect or the meanings are not completely accurate. The dictionary that we had been using was originally created for the Wampanoag Nation with Wampanoag words but the creator of this dictionary was not a professional.

So we need to slow down, back up, and find more accurate resources. This past weekend brought a huge speed bump. We learned from the meeting that we must figure out which dialect of the Algonquian languages we are(L,N,R, or Y). We are on the correct path of gathering information from our community about our language, but the best way to learn our language is to have an Algonquian Linguist come into our community to help us revitalize it. We have a long way to go, however, having Stony Brook supporting us, writing grants, working together, and having passionate volunteers, we will revive the Shinnecock language.

Because of the new information, I will have to make changes to my project. I will not create the book with stories written entirely in Algonquian. We do not have enough information to create it in the Shinnecock dialect of Algonquian at this time. I have decided that I will write the stories about Shinnecock culture in English and include Shinnecock names and words that we do know of today.