Stories from the May 2007 Issue

Editor's Note: This is an expanded version of the story that appeared in the May 2007 print edition of Inside UW-Green Bay magazine.

When the remarkable Maria Hinton returned recently to the Oneida Nation’s Turtle Elementary School, it wasn’t only a class of 5th-graders who crowded around.

Every few steps down the hall, teachers and staffers would turn in recognition and rush over with a hug, a smile, or a delighted “so happy to see you!”

Mrs. Hinton, UW-Green Bay Class of 1979, is a revered Tribal Elder long at the center of preserving Oneida stories, language and culture.

“She is an inspiration,” says Oneida teacher Bev Skenandore ‘80.

Mrs. Hinton helped establish the K-8 Turtle School nearly 30 years ago. As a founding teacher, she wrote the cultural curriculum and then instructed generations of young Oneidas, and their teachers.

“I retired when I was 91,” says Mrs. Hinton, who will celebrate her 97th birthday in June.

“Retired” is a relative term, of course. She still has an office at the school. On her recent visit she took a turn in front of Skenandore’s class. “She-ku-kwatle?oku (Hello, my grandchildren)” she said, and most of the students responded with “She-ku aksot (Hello, grandmother)” as well as a traditional greeting, all spoken in the Oneida language.

For the students, it was a rare honor. Mrs. Hinton is one of a dwindling handful — as few as five, perhaps — of native Oneida speakers in the world. She grew up on old Seymour Road in a household that spoke only Oneida, learning English at the government school at age 10.

These days, a steady stream of visitors brightens her Highway 54 residence. Family, friends and helpers check in regularly. Other callers reflect community interest in keeping Oneida alive and off the most-endangered-language list: They seek tutoring on words and phrases or her vivid recollections of tribal history.

Some come seeking Indian names, which she assigns to newborns and adults alike. (Her petitioners don’t give her English words, what they’d like to be called, and ask for translation. Instead, she sizes up each individual and decides what fits.)

Her own Oneida name, given her half a century ago, is fitting: “She Who Remembers.”

Her keen memory was critical to the preserve-the-language movement rekindled in the 1970s. Maria and her brother, the late Amos Christjohn, collaborated to create the first written dictionary for the oral language.

It was the desire to enhance her language and teaching credentials that led her to enroll first at Milwaukee, then Green Bay, where she studied linguistics with Prof. Cliff Abbott, himself a student and teacher of Oneida.

At the time, she was the oldest ever to receive a UW-Green Bay bachelor’s, at age 68. She is now the University’s oldest living alumnus, and also one of its most honored: a few years ago, a major American Indian association flew her to Albuquerque to receive national “Elder of the Year” accolades for her continuing work.

"Oneida language is culture. It's just our way," she likes to say. “You don’t teach one or the other. It’s all together.”

The Oneida Language Tools Web site features sound clips for enhanced learning of the language, an Oneida dictionary and teaching grammar, and other features. The site is available at www.uwgb.edu/oneida. The dictionary on the site is driven by a database that, unlike the printed version, can be frequently corrected and expanded as additional research is completed, Abbott said. He added that the grammar is downloadable in numerous formats, including formats that allow sound to be embedded in the document. Cliff Abbott, professor of Communication and First Nation Studies at UW-Green Bay and architect of the site, notes that the Web site is only partially complete. He said about 900 words have sound clips attached. Eventually, Abbott and Tribal Elder Maria Hinton hope to build access to about 20,000 words.

Newly posted: The following items are additions to the content published in the May 2007 print edition of Inside UW-Green Bay.

Google Zurich, jazz and ‘wow’’
for this Green Bay grad

Fortune Magazine recently ranked search-engine goliath Google as the top company in America for which to work. The daily freebies — gourmet food, chair massages, doctors onsite — along with an amazingly creative culture, are extraordinary perks by anyone’s standards.

Randy Knaflic ‘95 however, says those weren’t the reasons he joined the company, nor the reason he’s successful.

“People may not believe it, but for myself and most Googlers I know, the free perks are great,” he says, “but the biggest draw is definitely the day-to-day challenges, and an incredible environment. This place is filled with some of the brightest people in the industry.”

Knaflic is a Google staffing manager for EMEA — Europe, the Middle East and Africa — with responsibility for overseeing engineering-team growth in key markets. His crew of nearly 50 recruiting professionals in far-flung countries (Switzerland, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland and Israel) is helping build Google's presence abroad.

“When I was first hired, my main focus was to help build Switzerland (his home base), but in very Googlelike fashion, the momentum picked up and we now find ourselves with an incredible opportunity… in many different countries,” he says.

Knaflic, communication and the arts major and an accomplished athlete and musician, was working as a headhunter when Google wooed and wowed him.

“Google was the one company that seemed to really value what I was bringing to the table,” Knaflic said. “They saw the whole picture; running marathons, starting a jazz record label, a jazz studies degree, a successful recruiting company during the tech bust…”

The interviewers in Kirkland (Wash.) served brats for lunch, and when the Wisconsin native traveled to New York City headquarters for a second interview, they broke up the day with a jazz session.

“I felt like I really fit in,” he recalls. “Most important, though, Google was giving me an opportunity to do something really big. Our engineering efforts in Europe were just starting, and while I may not have been able to join those first hundred in California, I jumped at the chance to be one of the early ones into Europe.”

His success, (and Google’s) he says, can be explained by a “willingness to dig deeper and fine a way to solve a problem.”

“There were plenty of map programs on the Internet,” he explains. “Google didn't care. We found a better way for people to find their way, created a simpler way to enter address information (one box) and have even found a way to drive revenue (businesses being able to post their ads right on the map). I'm the same way, I'll always find a way to do something better, from the jazz record, to finding a specific candidate with hard-to-find skills. People ask, ‘Why do you run a marathon?’ and I always say, ‘Because I can.’”