Ondabuhku: Memme Newe Naibinee Gahni Gatte Gimmade

Abstract

The project goal is to reclaim Shoshone coming-of-age womanhood ceremonies with a holistic based approach centered in Shoshone teachings – Newe Deniwappeh – that will culminate in an Ondabuhku Camp that centers matrilineal kinship on Newe Sogobia, Shoshone Homelands. The purpose of my project is to reclaim Shoshone coming-of-age ceremonies by engaging the living community over (A)nthropologist’s archival research that is often full of errors. Since contextually based transmission of knowledge has been disrupted due to colonization, my project would disrupt the ongoing colonialization by engaging with land-based knowledges. My project aims to reconnect young women to their matrilineal lines that includes aunties, mothers and grandmothers, or nanawenee. In our language and cosmologies, we do not recognize relatives in a Westernized context and thus one of the objectives is to remember age-appropriate relatives as aunties and grandmothers. The main goal of the project is to host an Ondabuhku camp in an effort to recenter Newe voices in the proper context wherein Shoshone people are grounded on Newe Sogobia. All of my research is informed by the community and I engage with Shoshone cultural specialists – elders – who are regarded for their utmost knowledge through digital recordings following Shoshone protocols and reciprocity.