Description
Glimpses of Oneida Life is a remarkable compilation of modern stories of community life at the Oneida Nation of the Thames Settlement and the surrounding area. With topics ranging from work experiences and Oneida customs to pranks, humorous encounters, and ghost stories, these fifty-two unscripted narrations and conversations in Oneida represent a rare collection of first-hand Iroquoian reflections on aspects of daily life and culture not found in print elsewhere. Each text is presented in Oneida with both an interlinear, word-by-word translation and a more colloquial translation in English. The stories are told by Rose Antone, Margaret Antone, Clifford Cornelius, Hazel Cornelius, Pearl Cornelius, Verland Cornelius, Mildred Cutcut, Ruben Cutcut, Mercy Doxtator, Olive Elm, Ray George, Norma Kennedy, Georgina Nicholas, and Barbara Schuyler. The book also contains a grammatical sketch of the Oneida language by Karin Michelson, co-author of the Oneida-English/English-Oneida Dictionary, that describes how words are structured and combined into larger linguistic structures, thus allowing Glimpses to be used as a teaching text as well. The engrossing and often subtle stories in Glimpses of Oneida Life will be a valuable resource for linguists and language learners, a useful source for those studying the history and culture of Haudenosaunee people in the twentieth-century, and an entertaining read for anyone interested in everyday First Nations life in southern Ontario.