Learning Seneca: A Case Study on Digital Presentations of North American Indigenous Languages

Abstract

This chapter discusses the author’s creation of a website chronicling his learning of the Seneca language, or Onöndowa’ga:' Gawë:no. The first section discusses the inspiration of the project, in particular the author’s own grandmother who was born to the Tonawanda Band of Seneca, Wolf clan. From there, the chapter provides an overview of the historical phenomena contributing to the near-extinction of the language, focussing primarily on land theft and the boarding school policies of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries. In the third section, the author provides an overview of the website’s primary features and contents, especially the blog and the mission statement on the home page, which show the author’s commitment to transparency-one of the key features of public humanities and digital humanities projects. Finally, the author briefly ruminates on the impact of public-facing work, on those within and beyond academia.