Oneida-English/English-Oneida Dictionary

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto. He is the author of Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women’s
Stories.

Oneida is an Iroquoian language, and fewer than 250 people speak it.
This dictionary represents the collaboration of Karin Michelson, a
linguist who began studying Oneida as an adult, and Mercy Doxtator, an
Oneida speaker who began studying linguistics as an adult, a good
combination of skills and insight.

It is the most comprehensive modern dictionary of an Iroquoian language
(boasting some 6000 entries), and a very important work, both for the
Oneida people themselves and for students of Iroquoian languages and
culture. The quality of the research is undeniable, maintaining the high
University of Toronto Press standard established by Frantz and
Russell’s Blackfoot Dictionary of Stems, Roots and Affixes (1995) and
by O’Meara’s Delaware-English/English-Delaware Dictionary (1996).

This dictionary, however, is somewhat less accessible than those,
especially to users who are interested in the Oneida language but are
not trained in the arcane language of Iroquoian linguistics. This is in
part due to the authors’ decision to use “bases” rather than verb
and noun roots as the dictionary entry headers, a choice not adequately
explained (the term itself is awkwardly defined). Unfortunately, this
choice may make it difficult in places for readers to dredge out useful
information. For example, we see that the base for mother, -nulha-, is
used in the terms for mother, an unspecified kind of aunt, an
unspecified kind of uncle, and mother’s brother; and that the base for
father, -niha/-ni-, is used in the term for father, though the term for
father’s sister is nuhelatukhwa. As any (good) first-year anthropology
student knows, “Iroquoian kinship terminology” involves the father
and father’s brother(s) taking the same term and the mother and the
mother’s sister likewise taking the same term. It is not shown what
the Oneida would call mother’s sister and father’s brother. One
assumes it would be “mother” and “father,” respectively, but
such is not indicated.

Overall, however, this is a minor flaw. The dictionary is an excellent
resource that should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in
Iroquoian languages, culture, and history.